Shocking Truth #1:

No matter how many limits you put on the playthings that enter your home, you will find yourself amazed by how the toy paraphernalia builds up.

Shocking truth #2:

Although you may beg people not to shower your tiny infant with a million rattles, shiny singing doodads and plastic xylophones, they will.  Then they will do it again annually.

Shocking truth #3:

Your child will play with just ten to twenty percent of her toys.

Am I wrong?  I hope so, but in our household we have been amazed by the sheer quantity of stuff that entered our lives with our children’s arrival.  I co-wrote The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, a book in which we clearly state that voluntary simplicity is the way to go with baby for a myriad of economic and environmental reasons.  And yet, somehow gifts found their way into our lives and my son’s room was overrun with clutter.

What’s the magic answer for toy purging?  For us it was talking about one (hypothetical) child who doesn’t get playthings because his family can’t afford it.  We talk about what  he might like, and how happy he’ll be to get it.  If my son wants to give this imaginary boy toys but feels that he can’t get rid of them himself, he’ll even let his dad sort through the toys that aren’t being played with so that we can ship them off to Goodwill.

We also do a toy rotation, so that the items he doesn’t want to play with can be shifted out every month or so.  It feels like he’s constantly getting new toys and there’s less to trip over and clean up in his bedroom.

As for the limiting of the gifts, for our baby we specifically asked for no presents at her first birthday party and will probably limit gifts for her until she’s about three and can actually know she’s getting something.  For our son, we do ask family for gift certificates to children’s museums or swimming so that we can have experiences instead of stuff.  It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try!

Any other ideas?  Have any of you had success with actually keeping the wave of shiny new toys at bay in those first few years?

Do you like it?  I’m blushing a bit right now, but we are really proud of our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, and are hoping that many of you find it helpful as you prepare for baby or select a gift for pregnant friends who are looking for eco-friendly, budget friendly solutions.  Please let us know if you’ve read it!  Also, if you have ideas on how to spread the word on our little gem, please let us know.  We loved writing it and editing it hundreds of times, but marketing isn’t our favorite hobby.  Still, we’d like to let expectant parents know how to save thousands of dollars while going green.  Thanks for your creative ideas!

Is the baby registry list making you dizzy?  Are you wondering how best to launder dirty cloth diapers?  Do you need baby food recipes? Have you had more than three hours of sleep in the last two days?   Are you trying to squeeze more organic produce into your grocery budget?   Does pumping breast milk at work seem totally overwhelming?

We’ve been there!  But now that our kids are older, we have to be reminded of just what would be helpful to our readers.  What are your latest victories and what are your biggest challenges? I’ve shared my weight loss dilemma this week, but there are bound to be issues of far greater consequence. (Like the critical goal of getting enough food and rest in those first few months!)  Please give us ideas for upcoming posts this summer and we’ll personally do our best to address your needs.

During my first pregnancy, I didn’t know the difference between a pocket diaper and a prefold, but after much exhaustive research, I finally decided on the ultimate cloth diapering system for our family.   Unfortunately, I didn’t have the diaper diagrams and descriptions in The Eco-nomical Baby Guide to refer to because we simply hadn’t written it yet!

Four years and another child later, I have been given a huge assortment of absorbent and adorable diapers.  My daughter Jovi often sports cow print happy heinys, homemade hemp diaper liners, prefolds with various covers, and even colorful fuzzibunz pocket diapers.

What have I realized after gathering up this diverse collection of cloth diapers?  You don’t really have to choose just one type!  Of course paying full price for all this loot could be prohibitively expensive, but if you’re open to buying gently used cloth diapers, you can try an assortment and know that you don’t have to rule out any one kind.

What is your cloth diaper philosophy?  Are you strictly loyal to one brand or style, or have you too build up a variety of diapers?  Have you been lucky enough to inherit hand-me-downs?

Before becoming a mother, I rode chicken-laiden, multicolored buses in Latin America, Tuk-Tuk’s in Thailand, and rented bicycles in Denmark.

Breaking my arm, being pregnant and having a tiny baby put us through a three-year period of being car dependent. (Our car-free trip to San Francisco was the one exception.)  This summer, now that our baby has reached one year of age, we’re finally back to car-free creativity.

With our second child, we’ve come to appreciate our bike trailer even more!  It works beautifully for hauling both kids across town behind a bike and easily converts to a double stroller.  It’s also our most rain-proof baby toting device because of the clear plastic cover.  As you can see, it’s a bit cozy with both kids but as long as they have snacks, everyone stays happy!

We have a bike helmet for my son but haven’t yet found one that works for our one year old.  As a result, we just stick to side-streets and bike extremely carefully.  My husband transports my son to preschool every day in the bike trailer and they both thoroughly enjoy the ride.

Another fabulous development in our summer is my husband’s bus pass, acquired through his new job.  Now we can simply pay my fare and our whole family can travel the town by bus to our favorite destinations.  This is an utter thrill for my son and doesn’t require us to snap in car seats or fill up our tank!

Car free travel with kids can be an adventure, but if I was willing to sit atop a bus with the goats, why shouldn’t I be willing to embrace the challenge?   In our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we feature a story from the authors of Car Free With Kids, a blog written by a family that lives completely car free.  We are inspired by them each time we read a new post!

What are your creative ways for moving your children this summer?  Do you move on foot or have great public transportation to depend on?

For their adorable design, their convenience, and those clever snaps, I love my pocket diapers.  For leaks, I don’t.  It may be that my baby is too small for her large sized pocket diapers, but even when we double stuff them with liners, they seem to have major leakage issues.  The only way we can stop the leaks is to treat them like a diaper cover and line them with a prefold diaper.  I loved them with my older son but he wore then when he was a bit bigger, which may explain our leakage problem.  Does anyone else have these issues?  Are you partial to your pocket diapers or do you prefer prefolds?

Although I pride myself in being somewhat crafty, I didn’t take on that many DIY projects to prepare for my daughter’s birth four years ago. I did make my own cloth wipes. Anyone who can cut squares with scissors could do the same—I used my husband’s cast off T-shirts! I also created a mobile out of paper and twigs. It hangs in my daughter’s room to this day, so I consider the endeavor worthwhile. Plus, it cost nothing!

In The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we provide a list of resources for making your own baby gear. Now we want to know—what did you make yourself? Did you sew or knit your baby’s clothes—or even diapers? What about building furniture for the baby’s nursery? What did you make, and what resources did you find the most helpful?

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?

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.