Meet Jessica Manning: Sustainable Living Content Creator & Style Guru
By Jaclyn Tracy
All Images sourced from Jessica Manning
Welcome to the purpose-driven, street style inspiring, interior design influencing, sustainable living content creating life of Jessica Manning.
What motivates you?
I am motivated by goals for the future and family. I love to live life with with the purpose of gathering experiences with loved ones, so that always keeps me going.
What inspires you from a home design perspective?
I'm always inspired by designers and creatives I admire and I also really love old European spaces and architecture. I love the feeling of a beautifully designed space but I never want to be precious about my home or my things. I like for things to feel cozy and lived in. I think there's a way to balance both and designers such as Athena Calderone achieve this really well, I think. There's also something so beautiful about passed down items or things that have a story.
“I love the feeling of a beautifully designed space but I never want to be precious about my home or my things. I like for things to feel cozy and lived in.”
— JESSICA MANNING
OUR PHILOSOPHY AT SISTAIN IS
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, TAKE CARE OF THE PLANET
How do you take care of yourself?
I try my best to take space from work, social time, etc. when I need it. I am someone who really enjoys spending time alone at home. It's truly where I recharge, so I do my best to listen to my mind and body and give myself that space when I need it.
AND WE ARE ALL ABOUT THAT PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION
SMALL SUSTAINABLE CHANGES > NO CHANGES
Where are you on your sustainable journey & are there any eco-friendly tips you'd like to share
I am always a work in progress. And that's something I really appreciate about SISTAIN as well, this "progress not perfection" mentality. It allows us the space to do our best and continue to learn and do better. I do my best to utilize reusable items in my home and to not use single use plastics. I also receive a fair share of packages because of my job as a content creator and I do my best to be mindful of how much I receive and to save packaging materials to reuse in the future. An additional thing I've started to implement as well is clothing/fabric recycling. So much of clothing donated to your big box thrift stores doesn't even make it on to the floor, but instead gets thrown away and ends up in landfills. So I've started sending clothing that's not it great shape to a recycling program that will turn old fabrics into new materials such as insulation, etc. That would be my tip, look into recycling programs for your unwanted items, I think you'll be surprised how many items can be given a second life.
SUSTAINABLE TIPS FROM JESSICA
TEXTILES
Jessica uses the For Day’s Take Back Bag for recycling clothing. They accept all textiles, including socks, underwear, sheets, pillow cases, towels, linens, shoes, and handbags in any condition. Ripped, torn or stained, your oldies will get a new life with the help of For Day’s recycling partners and be diverted from landfills.
UNDERGARMENTS
Jessica has also used Second Life by Parade, an underwear recycling program. Get yourself a free Second Life by Parade package here. Similar to For Day’s Take Back Bag they send you a biodegradable pack and then recycle you old underwear into new recycled goods, like housing insulation.
BEAUTY
Jessica takes her finished beauty products and drops them off at Nordstrom BEAUTYCYCLE, where you can recycle all brands of beauty and skincare product packaging.
From SISTAIN, her favorites are our ceramic collection.
Favorite sustainable brands?
There are so many great sustainable brands! But just to name a few... for clothing a standout is KOTN, for accessories I love CUYANA, for kitchen wares Fable, for household items SISTAIN of course, for cleaning products I love Koala Eco. There are so many other incredible sustainable brands in all categories but these are some that came to mind immediately.
Anything you want to share about sustainability and wedding planning?
Events and weddings can be a largely wasteful industry and that's something I have been aware of from the beginning. We opted to have a really small and intimate wedding so having less guests will already cut down on waste which I'm really grateful for. We are also not doing much additional decoration to our venue since it's already a beautiful small restaurant space. We'll incorporate a small amount of flowers and keep in fairly simple from there. Another big tip I have is to not send "Save the Dates." If you can get all or *most* of your wedding details planned in advance there is truly no need for an extra piece of mail sent early to tell people about the date you chose. I think it's more efficient and less wasteful to send just one invite and create a website for guests to see all additional information they may need.
She has most of our handmade mugs as well as our matcha collection and our glass straws.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jaclyn Tracy is the founder of SISTAIN. Her goal is to make a greater difference by educating, activating and making sustainable consumerism not only easier, but aspirational. She believes success is in the collective impact, getting a whole group of people to change their behavior by committing to choosing sustainable brands, less waste and imperfect progress.
