Stacey Solomon and partner Joe Swash are in a junk war.
‘Sometimes I get really annoyed with Joe because he chucks stuff in the bin, and I’m like, “I could use that! Wait! Don’t throw it away!” Like, we’ve just run out of maple syrup and the jar is really pretty, I might make something,”’ laughs Loose Women star Stacey. If – like 3.5million others – you’re a fan of Stacey (mum to Rex, Zachary and Leighton), you’ll know from her Instagram stories that maple syrup jar is now a vase.
After spending the start of 2020 getting us all obsessed with ‘Tap to Tidy’ (posting a room of an untidy space on Instagram stories, followed by one of it tidied and organised), Stacey has got everyone crafting. She uses items from around her home, craft essentials like wire and glue guns, and stuff she buys online and from small suppliers, to make all kinds. Vases, ornaments, shelves, pencil cases. Even the snacks she makes for her kids she arranges in the shape of various animals.
Stacey’s chatting to us about fronting a new campaign for Baby Dove’s Biodegradable Wipes and her tips about being more eco-friendly as a household. But, while reusing and upcycling is good for the environment, Stacey says crafting is important to her for a different reason.
‘It’s like my form of meditation,’ she says. ‘Ireally struggle with my anxiety, I have done since I was a child. When I look back into it, I don’t know what happened to make me the way I am, but it’s definitely affected my anxiety levels and I’ve spent most of my life looking for coping mechanisms. Loads of people talk about meditation and what it can do for your anxiety and I just really struggle to do traditional meditation. When they say, “Lay still and empty your brain”, the minute I lay still, is the minute I think about everything that’s going on. So the minute I sit still for five seconds is the minute every thought I’ve been worrying about, comes back into my head. And I just cannot do it. So I’ve have to find things that focus my mind on the task at hand and that’s my meditation. Rather than trying to clear my mind and think nothing, I have to do something productive that takes a lot of energy off my mind. Then that focus clears every other thought from my head.’
It’s catching too. People send her their craft projects on Instagram now: ‘I get so many lovely messages and so many people tag me in their own crafting and upcycling and I love it,’ she says. ‘It’s such a joy to see people seeing the things you enjoy. Even the tap to tidies, I get so much satisfaction watching them, it feels like I’ve done them myself.’
In fact, I admit, I’ve just bought a can of rose gold spraypaint to try and sort out some ugly old shelves that have been staring at me as I work from home. ‘I’m getting a bit obsessed with spray paint, it’s getting silly,’ she laughs. ‘Joe was like, “You can’t just spraypaint everything” and I was like, “I think I can…”’
Does it give her an extra motivation knowing it’s better for the planet than chucking stuff away? ‘I don’t know if that makes me eco-friendly or Ijust enjoy making stuff out of nothing. I’m not perfect, I’m not brilliant at everything, I just try my best and I enjoy crafting, If I have something old or broken and I can use it for something else, I get a real joy out of it. If it helps the environment along the way, then I’m happy.’
Stacey is similarly supportive and non-judgemental when it comes to people trying to be eco-friendly.
‘Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, it’s really difficult to be 100% eco-friendly, just make the small changes that you can that are easy for you and come naturally,’ she says. ‘That’s how I see it. If you have to do certain things because you can’t do it another way, don’t beat yourself up about it. At least you’ve got the conscious thought of it and I think sometimes even that is enough, just that you want to be better and it matters to you and it’s something you think about.’
Being a mum (and a mum to a baby, with nappies, wipes and washing constant), especially, is a hard time to try to help the environment. ‘I get that awful gut feeling, like I should be using resuable cloths and stuff but I just can’t keep up with it,’ she admits. ‘I can’t keep up with it with washing alone with four kids and Joe and me and then to think of putting pooey cloths in the wash as well… So when I found Baby Dove, I was using Baby Dove before I worked with them, I was like “These are actually a reasonable price and biodegrade”. Sometimes when you buy things they say they’re biodegradable and then you realise it all goes on landfill and actually takes years to biodegrade. But these only take six weeks, the same as an orange peel. And it just helps me feel that tiny bit less guilty. I’m not 100pc eco-friendly, I know I could be doing so so much more. But it’s the little things you can do, easy changes that aren’t 10 times more expensive, where you think, “Great, at least I’m doing something”'.
As some will know from her ‘refill sessions’, refilling everything from her hanging snack cupboard to her washing liquids, she also tries to make small changes there.
‘I try and do refills. It’s really difficult because a lot of my cleaning products, I buy in bulk from companies like Ecover and Bio-D and they come once a month, so I feel a bit better about that,’ she says. ‘But there are other areas where it’s really difficult to be eco-friendly, so I can’t sit here and say I’m 100pc environmentally friendly. We tried the refill shop for pasta and rice and things, but by the time we’ve driven 10 miles, it costs an actual fortune, so much more than a packet of pasta. It doesn’t work out economically viable. But I do really try.
‘I try really hard to recycle – we put our bins out the other day and the foxes got to it all, everything we’d put in separate bags for the last week! So it’s a constant though process and you have to keep trying your best. But it’s difficult for anyone to be perfect, you’d have to go and live on a kibbutz somewhere and live off the land.’
She does, though, aim to encourage, not judge, she says: ‘I hope I don’t make people think that everything I do is eco-friendly, I don’t have an electric car, for example, I’m just a normal person trying to make little changes where I can and where it’s feasible and possible,’ she says. ‘I don’t judge anyone else. I realise as well a lot of biodegradable might be 50p more than ones that don’t and some people can’t afford that 50p. I don’t judge people and you can only live within your means, it doesn’t make you a bad person.’
It’s comments like that which are the key to Stacey’s appeal, which has seen her popularity skyrocket this year. A lot of that is down to her Instagram and the community she’s built around, through her honest comments about parenting Rex, to having a blended family – Joe has a son, Harry, with a former partner.
But, she says she gets so much back in return – especially during lockdown. ‘Sometimes I feel like such a saddo because I’m thanking people, like “Thanks for being there”,’ she says. ‘I’m so lucky, I’m so privileged to have an amazing family and Joe and the boys, but sometimes even as a woman I feel quite outnumbered. I think a lot of people on Instagram in my community are women and they just have your back. You can ask questions, you can say things, you can talk about how you’re feeling and people say, “Don’t worry, you’re not on your own”. There’s no greater feeling than not feeling alone and you share experiences with people and you’re not a weirdo.
‘Sometimes even when you’re surrounded by people you can still feel quite alone in the decisions you’re making, what you’re doing, the way you’re feeling. And to have a community of people behind you, saying, “We’re with you, we’re in this together, everything’s ok” is such an amazing feeling and it has been such a blessing, especially in lockdown.’
Still though, she does have days where she puts her phone away in a drawer and concentrates on her family, something she says is vital. ‘Sometimes I can get carried away with being online, because I love it so much that I end up being on there all the time and sometimes, I step back and say, “Stace, put your phone away.” It can take over your life – when you really love something and you’re into it, but I think everything in moderation and you do need to have days where you say, “Ok, not today, just put it away and don’t look at it for the rest of the day”.
‘Sometimes there’s also an overwhelming sense of responsibility when you have influence of any kind and I think that get to me sometimes if I’m worried about doing the right thing or saying the right things. Then I feel like, come away for a little while because you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. So I really think it’s important to have time, not just from technology and your phone, just anything. When the boys go to their dads, I miss them with all my heart, but I appreciate it’s good for us. It’s good to get moments away from everything.’
Like all of us, lockdown has brought highs and lows, she says - but the light is at the end of the tunnel. ‘It’s been difficult, having all the kids at home all of the time is always difficult when you’re trying to work as well,’ she says. ‘But, me and Joe are hardly ever in the house together – one of us is always working. So to be at home, with the kids, has been quite a blessing. We’ve got to see things together – we got to see Rex’s first steps together, we just get to be around which is really nice. But I can’t wait for them to go back to school. I’m panicking because I’ve got to get them up to date with all their work before the summer and I think I can’t wait, soon as you’ve finished that last piece of work and school’s out…’
Not long now.
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