Staple Store's Inspiring Women Series featuring Plyroom's Elise Heslop

Each fortnight Staple Store interviews an inspiring woman in pursuit of a simpler life...

This fortnight they featured our own Elise Heslop, founder of Plyroom. The following blog post has been reposted from Staple Store. The original article can be found here.

Elise Heslop is the founder of Plyroom, an Australian company dedicated to designing furniture and other products that help their users live a simpler life.

Words by Elise Heslop.

Images courtesy of Plyroom.

Elise wears our Eleonore knit in plum.

Elise, can you please tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you come to be doing what you're doing?

I’m a Perth girl originally but moved around with my family, first to Brisbane and then Melbourne, which I now call home. After doing a general degree in commerce and languages, I spent my early adult years trying to grab as many chances to study in Italy whilst I could.

I have a strong affinity with Italy mostly because of my mother’s and extended family’s Italian heritage. In my 20s and early 30s I worked mostly in corporate marketing roles. Working full time with a young family led my husband and I to cut the cord with Melbourne for a year and get away from the so-called rat race. We saved and planned for about 3 years and then headed to Italy with our children with little more than 4 suitcases.

The act of paring things back to the essentials enabled us live with less, all the while focusing on living better. This was how and where Plyroom was borne. With Plyroom I want to embody the idea of small-footprint living, and a simpler existence. Its origin comes from a very personal and wonderful journey.

What does living well mean to you? Where do you find it? What matters?

Living well means making space for things that ground me and help me to be a good human being. I am most happy when I’m in the bush with no phone coverage. This is definitely where I find answers and where the you can really focus on the basics. Problems that seem big and insurmountable fade into the background.

The combination of exercise, the lack of distraction and the reminder that mother nature is the boss helps put things back in the right perspective. I also love cooking. It’s both a creative outlet and an expression of love. Much like bushwalking I find it is one of those activities that puts you in the moment. Selfishly it is also very rewarding that something I have made can delight another person.

What is it about staples that makes them important to you?

Your staples embody my personal philosophy and the Plyroom ethos so beautifully. I don’t think we need as much as we think we do – we just need to make good choices. It’s not about having more or just having the basics or being a minimalist. It’s about choosing what you love and feeling good about. It removes the noise that arises when we have a lot of things around us that don’t quite work or that are ‘okay, for now’. That takes up a lot of energy that can otherwise be expended on things that give us joy. Staples remove a bit of the unnecessary noise so we can focus on living.

We couldn't agree more Elise! Thankyou so much for talking with us. Xx