Brooklyn couple turns trash into treasures for your home
After two years of creating new items from discarded ones, Real Good Goods founder George Denison says he and co-founder Olivia Leyva ‘learned to not overthink it, to just put it out there and not be afraid to experiment’
Most side hustlers start out knowing exactly what they want. But sometimes, the side hustle finds you. For Olivia Leyva and George Denison of Brooklyn-based Real Good Goods, salvaging and restoring one-of-a-kind wooden products was sparked by chance – and their resourcefulness, eyes for opportunity and passion for waste reduction.
When Leyva and Denison, who works for Squarespace, moved in together and needed to furnish their home on a budget, they came across discarded cabinets and wardrobes in front of a nearby school. “It was beautiful furniture that just needed some care,” Denison recalls. Leyva says with a laugh: “It was gross and wet, but we brought it all into our hallway and spent days cleaning it.”
As an art and theatre student in college, Leyva helped to build sets and learned how to “upcycle” prop furniture. Denison’s interest in woodworking grew in college when he built filmmaking rigs.
When they started Real Good Goods, they converted their bedroom into a workshop, sharing the rest of the apartment with two dogs and a pair of cats. While space is a premium in New York City, sacrificing it to further their side hustle helped them build up savings and make rent in tough times. “Sometimes it felt like fate, because we were trying to make something new together while trying to find new jobs,” Denison says. “We’d [worry] about making rent and then we’d come across this small gold mine that [got] us to the next paycheck.”
Fate brought them another idea in the form of a tree branch that had fallen after a storm. For weeks, sanitation hadn’t bothered to pick it up, so Denison went out one night, sawed it up and brought it back to the apartment. He cut and sanded some pieces and Leyva painted holiday illustrations on them. That abandoned branch was turned into dozens of beautiful Christmas tree ornaments.
The unique stories behind each product are what set Real Good Goods’ goods apart. But without Leyva and Denison’s passion for waste reduction, these tales would have never been told. When Leyva was working at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), an artist’s organization in Brooklyn, she’d save the leftover supplies they threw out. These supplies would sometimes last the couple for months. Leyva and Denison even dumpster-dived for wood. (Consumers worried about such discarded materials can rest easy, since the furniture builders have conducted research on bugs and chemically treated wood.)
Their “green” approach is a big part of Real Good Goods’ business. And it lets them be selective about to whom they sell. “It’s important that [the furniture] goes to a good home,” Leyva says. “It’s sad that in New York there’s so much garbage [and that] people find big things really disposable.” Denison adds: “Seeing the potential in things that most would discard or ignore is really the foundation of this pursuit. We are always challenging ourselves to make these things new and imagine the possibilities.”
Denison also delved into the side project’s personal significance: “Spending a lot of time online – especially working in tech – you kind of need that thing to get you offline, to build something that’s tangible.” For him, a side hustle is “a healthy outlet for growth.”
Leyva believes that people who are thinking about starting a side hustle should “just take a chance. It’s not about winging it … If you really believe in it, then go for it.” She says Etsy, Instagram, Craigslist and Pinterest have grown their fan base and the popularity of their online store; George adds that their website and logo “offer a legitimizing presence.” Good to keep in mind if you’re someone who thinks starting a side hustle is daunting.
After two years, Leyva and Denison say they’ve “learned to not overthink it, to just put it out there and not be afraid to experiment.” On a personal note, Denison says: “We never want to put [our side hustle] ahead of ourselves or in the way of ourselves. [We] just take it serious enough to do a great job.”
More broadly, Denison adds, current and potential side hustlers simply “want to [explore] what really makes their gears turn, what they’re daydreaming about at their desk.”
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