Unlike Ada who is all about zero-waste, my friend Beatrice is all about comfort and convenience. Her vision of a happy motherhood involves lots of cuddling while surrounded by fluffy blankets, watching the snow fall through her windows. I told Bea I was calling my post on her baby registry the Lux Baby Registry, and she pointed out that what it really was was a Hygge Baby Registry. Everything as comfy and cozy as possible for nesting down with a new baby.
Two of my best friends are having their first babies. One friend is as mainstream as can be, the other is my inspiration for reducing our waste and consumption. I’ve been having lots of conversations with both of them about babies and what they actually need, and I was inspired to share the fruits of these conversations with you all. I’ll post the Luxury Baby Registry that my mainstream, convenience friend and I put together later on this week.
This list is for the zero-wasters, the plastic-free, and the nature mamas. I tried to note vegan options as well.
I’ve gotten asked how to actually get people to buy cloth diapers off your registry a couple times now over on Instagram, and I spent this week helping one of my best friends register for her first cloth diapered baby, so I though I’d write a bit on making cloth diapers appealing registry gifts.
Kai and I still head out to our local nursing group twice a month, at the encouragement of our lactation consultant. She likes to have people who can model extended breastfeeding for new moms who are hanging out. Which means I talk to a rotating crop of new moms on a regular basis. I actually spend a lot of time thinking about how to help them out. This week I sat down next to a mom and her five day old and she was struggling at home by herself all day and wondering if she should invest in all the fancy baby gear.
So today, I’m paraphrasing my advice to her and all the other new moms who’ve asked me similar questions.
We spent a week at my grandmother’s house. This was wonderful as Kai got to spend time with her great grandmother, and my and her aunts, uncles, and cousins, many of whom she had never met before.
It also posed a few challenges. Two other small people live at GG’s house, which meant that there was a lot of sharing to be done. Food, space, arms, laps, and most contentiously, toys. And those toys made noise.
All of the noise.
Making turmeric dyed playsilks was possibly the easiest craft I’ve ever done. I purchased the silk from Dharma Trading Company in multiple sizes. I bought 8mm habatoi after doing a little research and am really happy with that choice.
When Kai was born we were basically hoarders, we needed everything single baby thing on the market and duplicates just in case. After surviving Kai’s first year and working on a minimalist, non-toxic, zero waste, plastic free and local lifestyle, our ideas about what you need for a baby have drastically changed. Baby #2 will have so much less stuff than Kai had as a baby that it isn’t even funny. So here’s a list of stuff that we either kept or will buy for baby #2.
When people think about modern machine knits, Sloomb’s Basewoolies are often the first thing that comes to mind. They’ve become the standard, even though it seems like Sloomb is branching away from them. Continue reading
I have a bunch of Rox + Rumble Double Layer Slim Pant and Capri Woolsters in my collection, they wear well, are easy to lanolize, and are so cute. Both the pants and the capris come in a variety of colorways, and there will be new colorways in their Winter 2016 line that is coming soon. The pants and capris are very similar, with the capris having a shorter leg and smaller cuff.
So you want to cloth diaper without using plastic or other synthetic materials. It can be done, but the learning curve is a little steeper, so I’m going to try and lay out some options that might make all natural cloth diapering seem more approachable.
This Craftsman Life 