At Home with Gus, Alice and Eva in Fitzroy North

Life with Plyroom

We wanted to show you our pieces where they're really meant to be - at use and well loved in a real home. Beginning with the home of Gustavo Prince-Gonzalez and Alice Blackwood, we're stepping inside some of our favourite houses filled with Plyroom over the coming months.

Meet Alice, Gustavo and Eva

Alice, Gustavo and Eva live in a little 1890s Victorian worker’s cottage in Melbourne’s inner north. Alice is a design editor and communications specialist, and Editor of Indesign magazine, while Gus is a small business owner. Eva is a professional play-gal, boss baby and blossoming two-nager. The three live in a happy kind-of chaos that remains in tenuous check thanks to their small living spaces.

Their home reflects their love of books, music (vinyl), art and original design. They live comfortably among a collection of vintage and new furnishings chosen for their refined beauty, their everyday-ness and an underlying element of the modern. In their hard-working home spaces every piece fulfills many roles – coffee table becomes easel; dining chair becomes cubby; hanging bookshelf becomes climbing range.

North Fitzroy Melbourne Home Interior Design Modern Minimalism

Eva is the proud owner of two Plyroom pieces. These sit lightly and comfortably in Eva’s bedroom space and will always be remembered by Alice and Gus as being the easiest, most idiot-proof pieces of flat-pack furniture they’ve had to construct. (Not to mention the great Italian design!).

Amidst a morning of coffee, play and a spot of DJ-ing, we speak with Alice about living simply with children...

As a young family do you have any tips for cultivating calm at home?

Cultivating calm is a constant pursuit, especially with an energetic two-year-old thrown into the mix! We can no longer rely on neat, clutter-free, zen-like home spaces to cultivate calm. So we look to other alternatives – music (of which we have a very large collection), reading, quiet moments spent in the garden inspecting plants and insects, digging up soil and watering plants.

Despite the toys, objects and scribbles climbing across ever surface of our house, little moments of calm can be found through white space. A beige carpet in the lounge room diffuses the busy bookshelf and heavy furniture items; our dining table and chairs touch the space lightly; select walls are left blank and free of artwork. Finding moments of visual breathing room is essential.

What's your favourite room and why?

The lounge and dining room is where our every-day plays out. Perhaps we love it a little too much – it bares the marks of our life a little too heavily (thankfully we can paint over the scribbles on the walls!).

It’s here that we play, read, draw, stick, paint, pitch tents, play records, nap, socialise, eat, connect, disconnect, sit on our phones, watch tv, contemplate the answers to all-important questions… the list goes on.

How do you try to live simply?

Having small kids is demanding. But we try not to focus on the constant tiredness and the challenge of fitting sleep, exercise, work and being a ‘good parent’ into each day. Instead we try to be a bit like Eva and live in the moment, to focus on the simplicity of being a kid – playing, eating, cuddles, sleeping. When it’s just Eva and us, those days are filled with parks, playgrounds, books, friends, new words and new skills. These are the things we try to savour.

Work is a source of great pleasure and vital vocation. But we’ve been forced to be disciplined with it – where before it easily filled every corner of our lives. It’s an ongoing assimilation, switching between work brain and parent brain. Will it ever be simple?

When the spaghetti hits the fan (so to speak), we get out of the house, go for a walk and breathe.