Happily striding past dozens of expensive cleaning products while shopping makes me infinitely happy.  Opting for homemade cleansers is just as easy, eco-friendlier, and far cheaper.

My favorite natural products include vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and Borax.  Do you have any of your own secrets for easy eco-friendly house cleaning?  Do tell!

Garage sales always seem like too much work to me. I don’t like waking up early to snag the best deals, I don’t enjoy driving around, and it seems like a pain to wade through piles of other people’s cast-offs to find a few good pieces of clothing or furniture.

This is why I prefer getting my secondhand goods at consignment shops. Everything has been culled over, so the clothes are in good condition and up-to-date with the current trends. If I like Danish Modern furniture, I can usually find a few shops devoted just to that style. So convenient!

But did you know that garage sales will save you 50% or more over consignment or thrift shops? You did if you read our book, the Eco-nomical Baby Guide! We go over the pros and cons of all the usual resale methods to help you find the best deals on used baby gear. I am lucky enough to live within walking distance of a few different children’s consignment shops. I drop in frequently to keep my child properly attired. I’ve found good deals on toys, too.

Where do you prefer to find your secondhand children’s gear? Garage sales, eBay, thrift stores? Why do you prefer one method over the other?

Isn’t it amazing how small children can often yearn for junk?  Whether it be unhealthy food, entertainment, or plastic gizmos, they are like moths drawn to the flame of marketing.

How do we counteract this onslaught?  With treasure!  We have taken a shelf in our mud room and used it display our most precious discoveries.  They include several jars of oddly shaped rocks, a vase stuffed full of sticks, scattered acorns, a few shells, six black feathers, a pressed flower, and a handful of agates.

Honestly, the idea started just because I hated that bare shelf in the mudroom.  I couldn’t figure out what to put on it until my son showed me his first treasure, a pinecone complete with intricate spirals, perfectly spaced.  Once we proudly set it on the shelf, every walk turned into a treasure hunt.

Two years since the treasure room’s inception, we are constantly finding new additions on a weekly basis.  We sometimes have to clear it out, or pull another glass jar out of our recycling to contain a pile of loot, but it’s worth the effort.  Noticing the supreme perfection of nature is a great way for my son to connect with his environment, and to redirect his appreciation away from those piles of plastic.

Does your child have treasure trove of goodies somewhere in your home?  Do you find that they’re especially obsessed with acorns, seashells or some other spectacle of nature?

Does your baby know the difference between a free-trade, hand-crafted bamboo stacking toy and your old set of stainless steel measuring cups? Probably not. That’s why we devote a page of The Eco-nomical Baby Guide to “The Top Ten Most Fun Household Objects for Baby.” Chances are, you don’t need to spend a fortune on eco-friendly doo-dads in order to entertain the little one. Dangle some keys in front of his face, let her tear up some old cereal boxes, watch him dig through the compost heap—(okay, maybe not that last one).

The point is, you don’t always need to buy something to fulfill your baby’s needs for fun and excitement. And what’s greener than buying a free-trade, hand-crafted bamboo stacking toy? NOT buying a free-trade, hand-crafted bamboo stacking toy.

Are there any eco-toys you regret buying? And what are your baby’s favorite household objects?

You love your baby with your whole soul, right?  Well that is how Rebecca and I feel about our new book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down-To-Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and The Planet. (We love our actual children more, but this creative work is a close second…)   It has taken us years to write this gem and it may take us years to celebrate its arrival.  So bear with me for today’s adventure in substandard poetry….

Ode to The Eco-nomical Baby Guide

Oh manifesto of glorious green thriftiness
How I love perusing your pages
And deeply understanding
Every cloth diaper in existence.
Oh treatise of eco-frugality,
Your creativity and humor
Fill my life with laughter,
my wallet with cash,
and the nursery with adorable
secondhand baby gear.

Oh green gift of practicality,
You help new and expectant
parents with your kind wisdom,  and tips
from the trenches.  You make
eco-friendly, budget friendly parenting
a spine-tingling adventure.

Thank you, humble guidebook,
for your emphasis on progress, not
perfection, as we seek to go green
despite our lack of sleep and the spit-up
smudged perpetually on our shoulders.

Do you whip it up in your blender or fork mash it? (Joy loves her blender, Rebecca does not!) Do you steam, boil, or bake it?  There are millions of ways to prepare delightful meals for baby and we’d love to hear some of your favorites.  Looking for ideas?  Our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide features some easy recipes for healthy homemade purees. We’d love to hear what you do!

In those early days with a newborn, did you by any chance find yourself staggering through a Target in search of a swing/bouncy seat/miracle blanket/breast pump? Something—anything—to deal with the demands of caring for a squalling babe? We have a few tricks for avoiding “desperation purchases” in our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide. (And now I’m picturing bleary-eyed parents tearing through a book store, desperate for a copy for our book!)

Will your baby feel deprived and sad without this plastic contraption?

Here are a couple questions for our veteran parents:

1. Did you make any desperation purchases? What did you buy on impulse—and was it worth it?
2. What tips do you have for new parents who may fall victim to a similar fate?

Let’s help out those expecting parents!

Nearly four years ago, I invested in cloth diapers because of their environmental appeal, their sheer cuteness, and their immense money-saving powers.  Months later, when it was time to head back to work, it hit me: If I couldn’t find a daycare that would work with cloth, all my efforts to save the world with adorable duck-covered diapers would be totally in vain.

The first daycare we picked didn’t allow cloth, but my son found the center a bit too overstimulating anyway.  Within weeks, we began searching for  a daycare with a smaller group of children.  The in-home provider we chose was wonderful, a perfect fit for our son, and happily willing to use cloth.

We haven’t had to worry about daycare with our daughter since my husband has spent the year as a stay-at-home dad after losing his job last spring. Just about a month ago, he had a job offer and when we found that our former care provider was full, we scrambled to find another in-home center that we could equally love.  We did!  And, she was willing to use cloth diapers!  Problem solved!

Except that the job offer fell through in negotiation.  About three weeks later, Jett got another job, and the care center we had just found had already filled up.  That meant another frantic search and lots of worrying, but again, we found an in home care provider who was very loving and willing to use cloth.

What’s the moral of my very long story?  I used to think that finding a care provider who would use cloth was highly unlikely, but now I think that it’s more possible than many might think.  In my somewhat minimal experience, smaller daycares tend to be more flexible and willing to try cloth.  It’s worth searching a little longer to find the right fit!

Is your care provider willing to use cloth?  I know you don’t always have lots of daycare options, but it’s a gift when the care provider is both wonderful and open to cloth diapering!

Do you need a wipes warmer in order to be the best parent you can possibly be? Will your youngster grow up sickly and deprived without a vibrating bouncy seat that teaches him the colors of the rainbow and how to count to ten in five languages?

In our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we answer these pressing questions and give some commonsense ideas for reducing the amount of baby gear piling up in the nursery. As I was looking over the “Nursery Necessities” chapter of the book, I wondered if we failed to address an important point: Some people truly enjoy buying things—finding adorable little socks and spoons adds to the anticipation when you’re expecting a new baby.

So—what are some great ways to prepare for a visit from the stork without buying anything? Any ideas?

I hate them.  If I was truly zen I’d make lovely dandelion chains and just get over it.  But when they raise their fluffy white heads out of the rest of the lawn, I want to leap from my chair and choke them out.

Instead, my children usually reach them first and make wishes while blowing the seeds all over the front lawn.  At that point I usually surrender.

Luckily, we did figure out some natural dandelion solutions last year that are far superior to polluting weed killers that keep our kids off the grass for a few days.

We tried corn gluten since it both fertilizes and doesn’t allow the dandelions to flower.  Great, right?  Nope.  Those persistent yellow spots kept appearing on our lawn.  Then we used Burn Out(which is made out of natural clove oil) to zap the dandelions individually.  It worked!  You have to wait for the right temperature and sunlight, but they die in just a few hours without all the chemicals!  Then the corn gluten can do its thing and the lawn really looks nice without any caution warnings about kids and dogs.

Problem solved!  My next goal is to sauté the dandelion greens and make a lovely, nutritious dinner some evening.  Apparently they’re incredibly nutrient-rich and delicious.  Have you tried adding them to your dinner menu?  Have you made peace with them?  Do tell!