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Sometimes, a shop isn’t something you describe.
It’s something you experience.
That’s the best way to explain a visit to The Living Room, located at 95 Shaker Rd. in East Longmeadow.
The eclectic browsing experience blends a carefully curated collection of antiques with thoughtfully selected gift ideas in spaces that mimic areas of a house — including a living room, a kitchen space, a garden room — and more.
The shop and its carefully arranged contents are the ultimate labor of love for business owner Chrissy Fazio, a self-avowed thrifter, recycler and advocate for the growing sustainability movement to “reuse, repurpose and reclaim.”
And initially, it wasn’t supposed to be a shop at all.
Fazio said she was actually looking for storage space for her thrifting collections when she first spotted the location for rent on Shaker Road.
“When I came in here, I said, ‘It looks like a house,’” Fazio recalled, adding it wasn’t long before she began visualizing how the space could be utilized to display different pieces from her collections … and maybe more.
The idea for what became The Living Room, Fazio said, sprang from another shop’s demise. When the well-known gift shop, Giftology, in Longmeadow, was closing, Fazio said she asked members of her book club where they would be going to shop for gifts. Most, she said, answered they would be traveling up to Northampton.
With the Shaker Road space tailor-made for artful displays, Fazio saw an opportunity to fill that void.
“We run the gamut of every gift idea you can think of — from magnets for $5 to socks for $15, kitchen towels … whoever you are buying for, you can find something … we have gifts for the older generation, for young people, for everyone,” Fazio said.
“What people like is that [the displays] continually change,” Fazio added. “It might be antique dishes, a cute side table that I had [an artist] paint, we have jewelry, we have art.”
They also appreciate that almost everything in the store is for sale — down to the comfy couches arranged in a conversation pit to the old-fashioned stand-alone kitchen counter and cabinet spaces that display her kitchen items to the side tables and chairs that display lamps, jewelry, quilts and such.
“When I go into an antique store, I always want what’s not for sale, here most everything is,” Fazio explained, adding that she tries to display her wares in a way that will spark decorating ideas for clients.
“People always say ‘I love that, but I don’t know how I would use it in my house,’” Fazio shared, adding that she herself is “constantly thrifting, constantly estate shopping … there are so many ways to reuse these things” and she tries to illustrate this belief in her displays.
To create a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, Fazio said shoppers who stop by The Living Room are offered complimentary coffee or cocoa — and all the time they want to browse and shop.
“Sometimes I’ll have three or four ladies in here just chatting … I love it,” Fazio said.
Though her heart will always be with the repurposing and antique trade — “I got my start going to Brimfield [antique marts] — it breaks my heart that so much is being thrown away today” — Fazio said she is also utilizing The Living Room to help promote other women-owned businesses, both locally and globally based.
“I buy from local women,” Fazio said of the way she sources many of the gift items for her shop. “My candles are from a person in Longmeadow, I have a lady who crochets for me, I have a lady who paints for me, and the soaps and lotions are from women in Wilbraham.”
She added that her candle-making contact “comes up with new scents” for her clean-burning, soy-based candles each season. The woman who crochets for her often makes cute seasonal items — pumpkins, hearts, holiday trees — and other items Fazio sees and suggests to her.
Fazio also partnered with a local woman who makes the jewelry she sells in her shop, and she displays the work of a woman who “takes vintage jewelry and makes beautiful bookmarks” with the pieces.
Within her kitchen items displays are a collection of dish towels and heart-shaped gift card holders hand-made from old saris — the colorful cloth garment that is artfully draped around the bodies of women in South Asia. “These products help women in third-world countries support themselves,” she said. She also works with another global company where all the profits from the sale of their products fight human trafficking.
“I have customers who come in every week because they want to know what we have that’s new,” Fazio shared.
To help people discover all that The Living Room has to offer, Fazio said she hosts “sip and shop” type open house events every three to six months. “It’s usually on a Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. I do one for Christmas, for Valentine’s Day, and usually in the fall,” she said. When she hosts these events, Fazio said she always “partners with another women-owned business." For her Valentine’s Day Sip and Shop, she partnered with Juicy Cakes by Annie of East Longmeadow, showcasing her custom cupcakes during the event.
“I always try to partner with another women-owned business — we have to lift each other up,” Fazio said emphatically.
As The Living Room prepares to celebrate three years in business this October, Fazio said she’s grateful for the support of her loyal customers and the “slow and steady” growth of business as the greater community discovers what her shop has to offer. She also said she’s grateful for the help her 80-year-old mother — and her aunts — provide her in keeping the shop running and welcoming customers.
“This truly is a family-run business,” Fazio said.
The Living Room, located at 95 Shaker Rd. in East Longmeadow,
is open Thursday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
Follow the shop on Facebook at facebook.com/thelivingroom413.
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