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WATCH: Inside Alice Taylor's Eclectic Countryside Home

One of New Zealand's most-loved content creators built both her following and her home around keeping it real.

AI summary

Kiwi content creator Alice Taylor offers a tour of her countryside home, which reflects her "keep it real" ethos. Her style is eclectic, creative, and vintage, intentionally filled with mismatched, upcycled, and inherited pieces.

Prioritizing quality secondhand items over new, she has created a home that is a collection of memories. The property also features a productive vegetable garden, supporting her "garden to table" cooking and the popular, realistic recipes she shares with her online audience.

Kiwi chef turned content creator Alice Taylor describes her home style in three words: eclectic, creative, and a little bit vintage. "It's like a collection of lots of different things," she says.

Mismatched drawers sanded and spray-painted green, secondhand plates hung on the wall, a family dining table older than she is - her countryside home in Auckland is assembled with intention, not a budget.

"I don't like things looking cookie cutter. I like things looking a bit different and quirky," Alice explains. "I try not to make everything perfect online - we just live like normal people in a normal house."

As for the home’s quiet rural location, it’s something Alice - and her family - didn’t see coming.

“My parents gave me so much stick when I moved here,” she says. “18-year-old me could not imagine living in the countryside, but now I couldn't imagine not living here."

Alice has filled her home with eclectic pieces of art.

The-ever growing wall of unique plates is an instant attention grabber.

From chef to kitchen legend

Before the online success of her budget recipes, Alice was a professional chef who was completely burned out. "By the end of it I'd fallen out of love with cooking. I quit and went into a corporate job and I was like, I need to find some way to keep that love of cooking alive. And that's kind of how the videos were born."

Filming cheap, realistic recipes from a modest rental, Alice worried her home wouldn't measure up to the curated perfection of social media. "We lived like a lot of Kiwi. I didn't think it was going to be good enough." She posted anyway. "I'm really proud of overcoming that and sharing how we live." And Kiwi loved it.

Social success came with a new challenge though:working and living in the same space. "I was worried when I quit my job that home would start to feel like the office," Alice admits. "But [me and my partner Orjon] have really good distinctions - we work in the kitchen at certain times, and in the evening we just cook together."

Alice's custom chopping board was a gift from a friend.

A collection of memories

Most of what fills the home wasn't bought new. Furniture comes from relatives, parents, and secondhand shops - upcycled, restored, or just loved as-is.

"I'd happily buy a table or a desk that's secondhand but good quality and just spend more money restoring it than buying something brand new - and obviously you've got the environmental aspects to that too,” Alice says. "Basically all the secondhand stuff is better quality than the new stuff."

These drawers were sanded and painted by Alice and her partner Orjon.

But her most treasured item is a dining table that belonged to Alice's parents, and before that, her grandparents' kitchen.

Alice’s dining table has seated three generations.

Garden to table

Outside, partner Orjon tends a vegetable garden that's become central to how the couple cook and live.

"Even [if you grow] just herbs, - you can save a lot of money," Alice says. "We'll grow tomatoes and preserve them into winter." It's a routine that reflects her whole ethos: make the most of what you've got, and enjoy the process.

Alice says gardening and her recently picked-up knitting habit has been teaching her an important lesson. "I'm not a particularly patient person, but gardening and knitting have taught me to enjoy the process a little bit more."

The kitchen where Alice's videos are filmed.

The best seat in the house

The best seat in the house? It’s the red armchair in the corner (another hand-me-down from her parents). It’s just a shame she can’t enjoy it... "Basically Mimi doesn't let us sit on it at all. It's her chair. If we try and sit in it she'll bite our legs."

The couple's cat Mimi guards the lounge’s red armchair.

A home that gives back

Thousands of Kiwi tune in to watch Alice cook in this kitchen, eat at this table, and tend this garden. Ask her what makes it special, and she doesn't hesitate.

"We give the house its spirit," she says. "The home is where the heart is - the house is a collection of things we've done and the memories we've made."

Author

Sam Warlow

Sam is Trade Me's Video Content Specialist who believes the most interesting thing about any home is the person living in it.

Across property and motors, Sam creates content that helps Kiwi feel confident, curious, and inspired about the places they live and the decisions they make.