A house made of found objects. How entrepreneur Lana Teslenko promotes conscious consumption

Lana Teslenko and her husband Oleksandr built an unusual house near Khmelnytskyi – it is almost entirely made of materials that the couple found in dumps and landfills. The furniture, plumbing, and interior decoration of the house are also made from reused items.

For Lana, reuse is both a philosophy of life and a way of making money. She has her own brand of used clothing and has created a platform where people can give and receive things and services – and it's not about junk. Among the gifts offered on the platform are professional cameras and trips to the Carpathians. Read more about how conscious consumption makes life easier, helps to save and even earn money in the article LIGA.net.

The first recycling

Lana first tried recycling when she was 13. She lived in Khmelnytskyi, and she didn't like the clothes sold in local stores. She wanted to make her own clothes – to create interesting designs, invent, and style them. But the family had neither a sewing machine nor new fabric. "What was left? I had to look at the clothes I already had and try to alter them," Lana recalls.

The girl started painting on fabric with bleach: she dipped a brush in it and made patterns on her clothes. The chlorine bleaches the fabric, and the pattern stands out in a lighter shade. In general, I did whatever came to mind with clothes: sewing on sleeves, punching holes in jeans.

"People looked at me with interest, some liked me, some not so much," Lana recalls. This teenage experience became a good foundation: after graduating from university, she moved to Kharkiv and opened a decor studio there. The specialty of the business was the reuse of things:

"We decorated photo studios, decorated events, and made backdrops for photo shoots. We were creative with this: for example, we aged the boards used for photo zones. But back then, it was more about creativity. Over time, we became more and more eco-conscious. We have been sorting waste for over 10 years. And with the outbreak of the great war, we went even deeper into recycling."

A house made of garbage

When the full-scale invasion began, Lana and her family returned to their native Khmelnytskyi. They temporarily stayed with her parents. She and her husband Oleksandr had little savings, so they thought: what if they could build a house without significant investment, with something that would literally give them life? They could look for building materials – wood, windows, doors – in landfills. But finding a land plot is an asterisked task. But the couple was lucky:

"We started flipping through the OLX feed. Yes, we didn't have enough money, but I always believe that if you look for something, you will find a way out. So I looked through the plots and added what I liked to my favorites. One ad had an extremely low price. And after a while, I received a notification that it had become even lower. We decided to go take a look. A small river flowed next to the plot. My future neighbor just gave me a rose from his bush... I felt that this was it."

Lana started talking about the idea, which she called "House without Garbage," in your blog on Instagram. She has been hosting it for some time now, talking about her life, conscious consumption and creativity.

"The subscribers supported the project – they liked it, wrote a lot of warm comments, and supported it a little with hryvnia. After a while, we were able to buy a plot," says Lana. Of course, the Teslenkos provided most of the money for it, but the donations were valuable to them as moral support.

Lana says that "House Without Garbage" is a crazy idea to prove that it is possible to build real estate from what is commonly considered trash. She tried to minimize the use of new materials, focusing on recycled ones. Everything inside the house was also supposed to be used: from cute little things in the kitchen to the plumbing.

After buying the plot, Lana started looking for materials for construction. She went to a waste sorting center. She approached the building, looked inside, and there were window frames.

"An employee came up to me and asked what I was looking for. I told him. He asked where I was from. I told him I was an IDP... He had tears in his eyes: "I'll show you another dump where you'll find much more." And he took me to the landfill. There I met with the director of the landfill and shared my idea of a house made of garbage. Even though the landfill is a restricted facility, he allowed me to visit. The employees still keep an eye on me when I'm there, because it can be dangerous to travel through the mountains of garbage."

Lana found windows, furniture, and even wood for beams and floors at the dump. However, she didn't stop there and started looking for resources in ordinary landfills. In addition to the planned construction, she wanted to sew again. Maybe someone had thrown away some fabric that would be suitable for this?

"You know, I never thought that a garbage can would become a place of deep transformation for me, a kind of space for prayer. I looked at garbage cans as a repository of other people's life stories... One day I came to a garbage can and there was a whole mountain of fabric. Waste from the production of warm tracksuits. Then the haters wrote: "She brought it in a truck to take off the signs."

After a while, Lana found out that the fabric was brought from the factory in bags. And it was clean. She just had to come a little earlier and pick it up before they threw it out of the bags. That's how another project, Green Hoodies, started – clothes made from garbage.

"I made my first hoodie. I posted it on social media and... I read the comments for about three minutes. All of them were positive. People liked the idea of sewing clothes from the fabric I found at the dump. They lined up to buy the hoodies. I continued to sew. They didn't really want a sweatshirt. It was important for them to be involved in the idea.

"Garbage is valuable"

Things went well: the blog was growing, and hoodies were being sold. We managed to make some money on it. In 2023, the eco-house got walls:

"We managed to lay the foundation in the fall of '22. It was made of car tires. Then we began work in the spring of '23. We did everything with our own hands. We made the frame. The walls are made of straw bales. I covered the house with clay all summer with my own hands. By the way, we also got the clay for free. Some guys I knew were digging septic tanks (underground tanks designed to collect and initially treat wastewater from a house – LIGA.net), and the clay was left unnecessary after that. I came up with the recipe for this clay mix myself, and it's been holding up like a rock for two years now."

The house was designed by Lana's husband, Oleksandr, who is an architect. To prevent moisture from getting on the walls, he came up with the idea of making the roof much larger than the house itself:

"Our house is shaped like an egg, as a symbol of new life during the great war. The roof covers the house like a mushroom cap, so the walls do not get wet from the rain. This roof is made entirely of purchased shingles – wooden tiles used in the Carpathians. Of course, we also bought nails and other small things. We also paid for the delivery of clay and gravel. But in general, only about 20% of what we used during construction was bought for money."

Lana considers every thing she finds in the trash to be valuable:

"People perceive a house made of garbage as if we build it out of plastic bottles. For me, garbage is a value. It's money and resources that are just lying around. How much would I pay for the panoramic window that is now in the house? Or for a rare chest of drawers? We even found a toilet with a cistern in a dumpster. It had putty on it, but there were no signs of use. I think someone was doing repairs in the new building and replaced this one, which came from the housing estate, with another. Someone will say: "Ugh, you could have bought a toilet by now." Yes, they could have. But why?"

The followers continued to support Lana. The blog gave her strength. She was especially pleased with those who were inspired by her work and went to thrift stores or started looking at things in garbage cans. Of course, there were also haters. They accused Lana of... not sharing. She doesn't give out the addresses of dumps, sorting centers, and landfills.

Museum of abandoned things

The construction was completed in 2024. The couple planned to settle in the new house, so there is everything for living inside. Bathroom, toilet, bedroom, kitchen, dressing room – all made from found items. But over time, they changed their minds. Sometimes they come for a day or two. There was an idea to rent the house to tourists, but for this we need to build a road to the house – it is far from the others in the village. They don't have the money or time for that yet. So now Lana is thinking about turning it into a museum.

"People are drawn there. People come to us from different parts of Ukraine and from abroad. These are both my blog subscribers and those who have watched the stories about us. I give tours, talk about recycling and conscious consumption. I see this house now as a museum of abandoned things, because it is not made in minimalism. There are many things there."

Often Lana finds exactly what she needs at the moment in garbage dumps. Once it happened during an interview. The journalist offered to go to the sorting center together and film Lana looking for things. And she was in need of a sink:

"We arrived. I walked in and there was a sink. No one agreed on anything, it just happened. And I just silently took this sink and put it in the trunk of the car. I think this is how the universe works. However, an ordinary white washbasin didn't really fit into the concept of the house. I wanted a designer one made of stone. And what do you think? Less than a year later, I got it as a gift through my service "Jewelry".

Free stuff on the "Jewelry" website

The idea to create a website with free second-hand items came after a wave of discontent from her subscribers. They wrote to Lana that she was taking everything she found in garbage dumps.

People envy even the garbage! It was a revelation for me. I felt like a housekeeper who has everything. And people think I should give it away. However, other people also have unnecessary things. Why take it to the trash when you can give it to someone who really needs it?

Lana created a group in Telegram where you can give and receive things as gifts. She called it "Jewelry". On the first day, 1,500 people joined the group. In a year, the group grew to 24,000.

The idea of such a platform is not new, but often such initiatives quickly run out of steam. Instead of quality items, they offer junk that you don't want for free. Lana decided that her group would give away good things:

"A robot vacuum cleaner, a vacation in the Carpathians, when someone invites you to their cottage or hotel – these are the jewels we have. And there is also a 'looking for' button. Everyone can write what they want to find, what they dream about. For example, one volunteer lost a fitness bracelet that helped her a lot. I had one, but I didn't use it. I gave it to her. I like to see people get what they want. For example, a photographer who had no money for a professional camera. There was a person who had one and was happy to give it to him."

"I help things start a new life"

In the first year, more than a million items found new owners thanks to the project. Of course, there were some negative aspects:

"There were scammers who wanted to make money off the group members. I received threats in my personal mail..." says Lana, "And there were a lot of ungrateful people. Then I realized that free is not always good. It was time to change the format."

Today "Jewelry" – A large platform, a separate website. She invested her own money in its development. There are categories, and it's easy to search. Clothes, shoes, gadgets, furniture, sports equipment, plants, food – the service looks like a marketplace without price tags. Gifts include jeans and psychological counseling. Anyone who wants to give something away can do so for free. Those who want to choose things for themselves pay a monthly fee of 99 hryvnias. There are thousands of such users today.

"This has increased confidence in the service, and fraudsters have been eliminated. Also, everything is now official: I pay taxes and have a contract with Ukrposhta. And Ukrposhta does not sign contracts with anyone, they need numbers: there are many parcels every day. We have a lot of them. I myself have given away about 350 things through the service. I'm also working hard to develop my website and have my own brand of second-hand clothes called "Jewelry by Lana Teslenko". There I sell items found at sorting centers or garbage dumps, as well as those that I made from production waste. The first were green hoodies, and now the range is wider."

For Lana, the life stories shared by the participants in the "acknowledgments" section are important. One lady found a book from her childhood on the site that she had been looking for for years. Another one was able to fully clothe herself and her child for the season, and with the money she saved, buy medicine for her father. Someone writes that they have become more conscious of their consumption, while others say they have been inspired to change their lives.

"Most people perceive a garbage can as something bad. As if all the worst things are concentrated there. However, this is not the case. People are afraid of diseases. But you can catch something through the handle of a supermarket trolley, so I'm not afraid of that. There are those who are afraid of the bad energy of used things. But I... You know, I feel things differently. As if they are asking for my help. And I help them start a new life. This is my mission."