Our Mission

After the birth of our first child several years ago, propelled by a lack of money and in desperate need of an organized living space, I taught myself how to build furniture with hand tools. When trying to focus on the important things in life, like raising children, keeping things in order around the house is imperative. I started by building a small platform for changing diapers, and subsequently learned traditional woodworking techniques that enabled me to design and build toy chests, cabinets, tables, chairs, and other hand-made furniture to fill our home. 

More recently, I’ve teamed up with gracious benefactors in order to share the joys of a hand-made life with other families who have children. Prompted by generosity, I learned the invaluable joy of being the bridge in a very meaningful gift exchange, and have committed myself to building furniture for families in need.

In order to open up the opportunity to as many people as possible on both ends of the spectrum, I started a nonprofit. Hand-Joined Family Furniture provides free, custom, heirloom-quality furniture to improve the day-to-day lives of families with children. Along the way, I also want to share my skill set with anyone who wants to learn how to build hand-made furniture. 

By working with community partners, I find families in need of furniture to help create more organized and stress-free living environments for their children. I then work directly with the family to build a custom piece of heirloom-quality furniture as a gift to them. Surplus donations to Hand-Joined Family Furniture go towards maintaining a community workshop equipped with the tools and supplies necessary to build furniture. Anyone who wants to learn will be granted access to the workshop along with dedicated instruction on how to build functional family furniture. Successively, everything made in our workshop would then be gifted to other families in need. The skills will be kept, the furnishings will be donated; thus empowering people to have a sense of accomplishment and self-sufficiency from the things they make with their own hands. 

Building this nonprofit has let me know the satisfaction of participating in a gift economy, and I would like to share that with as many as possible. Hand-Joined Family Furniture will perpetuate the synergy of learning and giving for generations to come.