Matilda Goad’s Favorite Under-$100 Home Items

I tend to veer back to these kinds of quite classic designs and materials. It’s a little bit of a nod to nautical, but they’re really classic, and this design has been around for years. It adds a punctuality of character without being overbearing.

I’m basically really obsessed with functionality. Increasingly so, as I now have three kids, I like things to just be efficient. So a bad knife is really bad. These Opinel knives are the everyday knives I use in my kitchen. They look cool when they’re in the drawer. I’ve got two different packs of them and they’re all different colors, and they’re just really good knives. You don’t want to compromise on a good blade. I’ve tried the Ikea knives and scissors in the past, and they’re not good. These are fun and they’re really good.

Cornishware — it’s a really classic design that I grew up with in England, and as children we always had the mugs and the jugs. I love this idea of decanting your milk on the table rather than a horrible, you know, plastic bottle on the dining table. And it’s in this classic, familiar print.

The washing-up brush from Salter House is just brilliant — you know, they’re aesthetic, but also there’s no plastic in them. It’s something I buy in stacks and keep the spare heads underneath my sink. I store it in a little brass caddy on the side of the sink, where I also keep my Fairy liquid dish soap. You don’t want them to sit in water. That’s when they go a bit icky.

I actually have never made it to their showroom in Brooklyn, but I’m obsessed with this brand. And I love the scissors. I love functionality in my desk drawer; I like to know where my scissors live. And it’s just a take on an everyday thing I really need.

A debobbler is essential in any laundry area; I’m obsessed with them. With a sweater, you sit and it makes it like new again. They’re amazing and really efficient. I find it relaxing. It’s a nice thing to do when you’re watching television or something.

Add a little to your floor cleaner; it’s very potent. I have wooden floors in my home, and it just has this really beautiful scent; it’s lavender but it almost seeps into the wood. It’s just a really nice way of adding a bit of fragrance to your cleaning. I try to stay away from scented chemicals, and this product is amazing.

I have toast every single morning with my family, and I like to have a little setup that makes a ritual of it. This bread board catches all the crumbs, but it’s really beautiful as well. I like to have a station with the knife just left there. The ease.

I actually have the full set: lime, lemon, and orange. It’s quite cool when you get them as a set, because they’re nested together. I use it every morning to make lemon tea — hot water with lemon. It’s a really great design.

Bread bins are really hard to find. I did a lot of sourcing because it’s very prominent in my kitchen, which is where my bread bin lives. But again, it’s a really classic design. I keep it where I have my chopping board for the bread. I like a bin over a box because you can cram quite a lot into it. And I love having accents of red or burgundy. It’s just this really nice pop of color in the kitchen.

I always have loads of fruit out, and I don’t like the fruit flies in the summer. It’s also brilliant when you are serving food. I keep it on an open shelf in my kitchen when I’m not using it; it’s genius.

I try not to buy stuff from Zara Home, since I have my own brand, but I have to put my hand up here and admit that they have done something very beautiful. I feel that there are quite a lot of designs imitated from other designers, and I think with the volume that they’re producing in, they’re able to really undercut pricing. But I’m a great believer in high and low, and in this case, I think it’s about bringing pieces into your home that you believe are going to be there for the long run. There are a lot of associations with Zara, that people buy in bulk and that the items have a very short life. Whereas I think if you’re buying a very conscious item, you know, that’s great.

This is really, really sad, but I’m obsessed with these. I even bought them for my fridge in our studio. I’m quite obsessed with organization in my fridge, and I like to unpack any fruit or vegetables that come in plastic. I like to undo the wrappers and keep everything in these wire baskets. I do all my lemons and limes in one, all my apples in another. These plastic trays are really good because quite often the shelves in the fridge are funny heights and you can’t maximize the space. I seem to have to have so much food in my fridge with my family. I use one of these for cheese and sometimes herbs and smaller bits. When you’re trying to think of something to cook and you open the fridge and everything is organized, it’s really inspiring to be like, Oh, I’m going to cook with this and this and this. When everything is crammed in and you can’t see what’s in your fridge, it’s very uninspiring. These fridge trays are not chic, but they are life-changing.

I am obsessed with Josef Frank. I love to serve tea by the television or by the fire. I like to put everything on this tray and serve cocktails on it. It’s just this really fun print that I don’t think I could take in a bigger scale. I love that you can bring it out and it’s kind of a party on its own.

[Editor’s note: This tray’s price is converted to U.S. dollars from euros.]

With my fridge obsession, you can wash all your fruit and then serve it straight to the table. It’s really purposeful, but I love that it can be out on show.

These are just, again, a really classic design. A bad tea towel is not great when you’re trying to polish your glasses and it’s all fluffy. These are the classic linen tea towels — you need to have a generous stack of them under your sink for polishing glasses and stuff.

It’s a really great scent. I keep it in the bathroom.

I like to have eggs out in the kitchen. I like to decant them from what they’ve come in. In my kitchen, I like that the food and the produce kind of punctuates the character and the colors within the space.

[Editor’s note: This plate is currently unavailable, but you can sign up for restock notifications on the product page here.]

I felt like doormats that were on the market were kind of small and not very generous in proportion. So we designed these doormats in two different sizes. The large is really generous; it’s quite a big size. And there is one that is very skinny and very long and it fills a doorframe, which I think is really useful in an area where people are coming in and out and you wouldn’t necessarily have a doormat.