Looking for the perfect furniture for your new earthbag home? Everyone’s familiar with bean bag furniture, but most brands use polystyrene fill, a possible carcinogenic. Consider making your own furniture filled with rice hulls as an all natural fill.
Rice hulls are surprisingly comfortable. I discovered this by accident about six months ago when I sat down on an earthbag filled with rice hulls. Rice hulls are strong yet flexible, odor free, flame retarding, rot resistant, and resist settling and compression. Best of all they’re practically free, since they’re a by-product of harvesting rice.
You will need to make or buy an outer removable cover of canvas, denim, cotton or leather with a zipper. An inner liner (possibly of earthbags) makes it easy to remove and clean the cover. One low cost option is to simply cover rice hull-filled earthbags with a blanket or piece of fabric. This makes moving, adjusting or refilling the bags a breeze.
Shapes include standard bean bag chairs, large chairs for two or more people, ottomans, lounge chairs, floor pillows, kid’s furniture, benches, cushions for other furniture and almost any other shape you can think of. For example, a bay window loveseat (possibly with storage underneath) could be made very inexpensively.
Here’s a sampling of styles you can find with a Google search: www.awesomebeanbags.com
In addition to the typical uses in dorm rooms, recreation rooms, apartments, etc., bean bag furniture is popular with expectant mothers, the handicapped, and those with injuries or casts.