While promoting our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, I have been on the phone with eco-friendly baby shops around the country.  Inevitably, this leads to an impassioned discussion about cloth diapering, but it’s even more exciting when I find an institution like The Frog Shop. Corinne and Heidi Britt have developed a thriving green business by selling secondhand clothes, cloth diapers, natural toys, and much more.  If you’ve ever thought about opening your own consignment shop or you’re a happy secondhand shopper, read on for inspiration!

What was your vision when you started The Frog Shop?

My partner Corinne and I have six kids between us. When our older kids were young, we used to buy and sell at consignment stores to save money, to recycle the items our children outgrew, and because it was fun – like treasure hunting.

In 2009, there were no children’s consignment stores in our current hometown, so it seemed like the right time to open one ourselves, but we wanted The Frog Shop to be more than just a store. We wanted it to be community hub for families.

How do you incorporate community service into your business plan?

The very nature of The Frog Shop is community service. All of the unsold consignment items that aren’t picked up by the seller are donated to one of about half a dozen local charities in town. These include clothing closets and organizations for teen moms.

Our biggest community service effort, of course, was our creation of the Parent Resource Association of Merced (PRAM). Through PRAM we refer families to various resources in the community, and we hold events for kids from low-income families (like our annual free pictures with Santa event in December, and free face painting during any downtown events).

Even though I’ve never been there, I love imagining what the atmosphere must be in The Frog Shop.  Some women breastfeeding, families searching for recycled garments, others discussing the details of cloth diapering.  Do you have such a place in your city?  Stay tuned for our second post on The Frog Shop later this week.

Every night for about three years, we indulged in the same late night snack: stovetop popcorn. What a tasty, cheap, and relatively healthful snack, right? Well . . . it turns out we were each consuming about 250 calories of popcorn every day!

Sure, we could lighten it up by switching to air-popped corn or we could simply eat less popcorn, but we didn’t want to do that. Instead, we aimed to diversify our nighttime snacking options. We now eat popcorn just a couple nights a week. Other nights feature sliced apples or some light dessert such as pudding (surprisingly much lighter than our popcorn!). But we could use more nighttime snack ideas. What are yours? (And please don’t extoll the virtues of not snacking. We’re unwilling to part ways with this evening ritual!)

We love reading the reviews of the Eco-nomical Baby Guide on Goodreads, most of which positively glow. We were surprised to hear a particular complaint, though: Some readers didn’t like our stance on used car seats. They believe it is never okay to reuse a car seat and advocate buying a brand new one for each baby.

So what is our stance, you ask? We say reusing car seats is okay—as long as you accept one as a hand-me-down from a trusted source. That way you can be sure of the seat’s age (under five years) and know that it has never been in a car accident (in which case it must be replaced). Borrowing a year-old infant seat from your best friend? Perfect! Picking one up at a garage sale? Not recommended.

We were especially surprised by the response to this stance because, in our green worlds of Portland and Eugene, almost everyone we know passes car seats around. I’ve been the recipient of quite a few emails asking if anyone had a car seat available to lend.

What do you think? Would you—or did you—borrow a car seat from a trusted friend or family member for your child? Does reusing a car seat in any circumstance give you pause? Let us know!

The funky odor.  The leaks.  Oh how I loathe detergent build up on cloth diapers!

With my first baby, I had no idea why his cloth diapers suddenly smelled like dirty sweat socks after being washed or why they refused to soak up even small amounts of liquid.

Then I learned how to use less detergent, I switched to greener detergents,(like Biokleen and, later, Country Save) and I found out how to strip diapers.

For us, one hot load with an extra rinse every few months totally does the trick.

Some people apparently have to strip diapers much more frequently and run them through several loads of hot water before the diapers work again.  But others don’t ever seem to need to strip diapers. (I’ve especially heard this from users of Charlie’s Soap Laundry Powder.)

I’ve even heard stories about mothers putting their cloth diapers into the dishwasher to be able to get the water hot enough to truly strip away the build-up. We’d have a small kitchen flood if I tried something so risky!

Do you strip your diapers?  If so, how often?  If not, what’s your secret?

After I posted Sulfate-free Shampoos: Do They Work?, everything fell apart. My hair, exhausted from moving from one sulfate-free shampoo to another, gave up. It was limper and greasier after washing it than before washing it and felt coated with a sticky film of wax. It was if I’d doused my hair in a mixture of oil and glue. Because it had so much product build-up on it, it took over ten minutes of drying with a hair dryer—and still didn’t feel dry. (In better days, my hair would dry completely after three minutes.)

One of the many “natural” shampoos I tried

This is when green living gets me down. Regular old shampoo always worked just fine for me. It would take over a year to get though one bottle. Once I decided to switch to paraben-free, sulfate-free shampoo, however, I started going through a bottle every six weeks or so. The sulfate-free shampoos all worked for a few weeks, but then my hair started revolting, necessitating a switch.

So what did I do? First I tried to go back to baking soda and vinegar. I had pretty good luck with that combination in the past, but it was no match for the weird build-up of wax and grease. Wearing a wig and large sunglasses to disguise my identity (and my gross hair), I went to the store and bought . . . conventional shampoo. Slowly but surely, my hair has become presentable again.

This is hardly a green victory. Perhaps once my hair is in a good place again, I’ll see if I can get back on the baking soda bandwagon. But I’m going to stop experimenting with different sulfate-free shampoos. It just isn’t worth it.

In Amy Chua’s recent book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, she notes that her children were never allowed to make play dates, ostensibly so that they could spend that time honing their academic and musical skills.

Now, there are many things about Tiger Mother that are gathering a fire storm of public criticism, but I choose to just focus on the importance of play dates. For my child? Sure. But honestly, they’re wonderful for me.

Unlike other professionals, stay-at-home parents have no supervisors, co-workers or job training. We are hurled into the trenches where we creatively deal with heaps of issues. Why is my child giving up naps? Should I start potty training her? Is it possible to somehow sneak vegetables into his diet? How do I do a time out in a restaurant?

At virtually every play date I have ever attended, I have come home with a new idea about this complex job of child rearing. These little pockets of community sustain and energize me while providing regular reality checks. Maybe if Chua would have had a few more play dates as a parent, she could have balanced that tendency toward neurosis, tyranny, and hovering.

Believe it or not, I really mean that kindly. Because we’re all slightly off as parents, but by seeing other examples along the way we can become more reflective. (Chua doesn’t really seem like the introspective type, but I think she doesn’t realize that she deprived herself of play dates too!)

Beyond our own personal growth, play dates are great for the environment. We swap clothes, cloth diapers, and composting tips along with parenting stories. By sharing one another’s company as we raise our children, we’re also turning less to material solutions and more to each other.

So long live play dates! Do you have a community of parents you can meet with regularly? Do you too yearn for playdates even more than your child?

I have gone on record with my love for Biokleen Laundry Detergent. (I swear I do not work for Biokleen! I just have had good luck with both the laundry detergent and dish washing powder.) What do you find works best for diaper laundry? Do you use the same detergent for the rest of your laundry, too?

I love watching home renovation shows—and I really love maintaining my own future remodeling fantasies—but I’m often struck by how wasteful it all is. Even when people try to do an eco-friendly remodel, it’s usually hard to avoid generating a pile of rubble that can’t be reused or recycled.

How much greener would it be to simply learn to live with what we have instead of making it more beautiful? Of course, as someone who did a full kitchen remodel over a year ago, I am certainly not judging those who choose to make the spaces around them more appealing and functional. Sometimes I just wonder if, instead of daydreaming about all the ways I could change my house, I should direct my energy to accepting it the way it is. I’m sure we’ve all seen remodeling efforts that left us scratching our heads and saying, “It looked fine before.” Or even worse: “It looked better before.”

Anyone in the same boat—fantasizing about tearing your house apart and putting it back together again? Wondering how to appreciate what you have instead of changing and “improving” everything around you?  One thought that helps me out—mere daydreaming is totally green!

We just returned, browned and blissful, from our nearly two week family reunion in Hawaii. Family came from all over the United States and an aunt even flew in from Thailand to join the fun.  It was a glorious, peaceful trip that exceeded our wildest expectations.  (I should add that we never, ever could have gone without the generosity of our family.  The money we save with coupons and shopping at thrift stores would never add up to enough for our whole family to go.)

Was it packed with green efforts?  Yep!  We used cloth diapers 95 percent of the time by washing them in the rental home’s machines and later in the hotel Laundromat.  Since Jovi is also potty training at 20 months, she wore her cloth training pants a good part of the time. She’s showing off her Fuzzibunz pocket diapers in this photo.

In addition, we passed up new sand toys, since we envisioned piles of sand buckets in Hawaiian landfills, all of them barely used.  Now that you can’t carry liquids on planes, how many partially used bottles of sunscreen are tossed into the trash too?  If you’re heading there anytime soon, I’d recommend hitting a Hawaiian thrift shop for sand gear (and maybe even sunscreen!) and then donating it back at the end of your trip.

So what were our eco-failings?  It was tough to find recycling receptacles around the island.  Even in the recycling containers we did find, some items were excluded.  That meant that we had to occasionally throw away plastic bottles and paper.  So painful!  Plus, our party of twelve family members didn’t have access to a compost bin so we tossed several pounds of fruit peels and food waste into the trash.

I had thought that since it is a group of islands Hawaii would be far ahead of other states in terms of conservation, but they are still in process.  Still, I think recycling efforts are quickly moving forward.

Nonetheless, we found Hawaii to be an incredible destination.  The people were genuine, friendly and helpful and the islands themselves were emerald gems.  It was a rare privilege to get to experience “aloha” firsthand—and we still have a bit of it left in us as we make it through a rainy February in the Northwest. My son, Roscoe, is hopping waves with his grandpa in this photo.

Have you been to Hawaii? Are you planning trips to any destination with a new baby in tow?

I just discovered Baby Awearness, a fabulous green baby shop on the island of Oahu.  They offer hula classes in children in addition to cloth diapering and baby wearing courses.  It looks like a great place to hook into local green baby culture!

I don’t know why it took me so long to discover this money-saving tip: pre-bagged apples are cheaper than those in bulk. I live within walking distance of two Whole Foods, but it’s difficult for me to stomach paying $3.99 a pound for organic apples. Then I discovered that I can buy a three-pound bag of organic, somewhat local Fujis for just $3! That’s comparable to what I’d pay for conventional apples at Fred Meyer.

The only problem: the plastic bag. Ugh! This is yet another case of one step forward, two steps back on my path toward greenness. Sure, I can avoid pesticides and support local / organic farmers with the pre-bagged apples . . . but then I have a non-recyclable bag to toss.

What would you do? Go back to conventionally grown produce? Buy the expensive bulk apples? Or is there another option I’m overlooking (harvesting my own apples from organic orchards in the fall and snacking on them the rest of the year, perhaps?)?