While we haven’t yet discovered a ceramic crib, we are happy to report that there are some unexpectedly eco-friendly, beautiful and affordable pieces of green baby gear. Rebecca and I both focused on minimizing with our babies to avoid being swallowed in a sea of plastic doodads. But the Growing Up Green product line would have also been a great alternative considering that it carries sustainable, simply designed products at reasonable prices.

My favorite is the Growing Up Green Wood Step Stool. It’s currently half off at just over twenty bucks and is both sturdy and beautiful. Made from pesticide-free, sustainably raised bamboo, you can also feel good about its sources. (In the interest of full disclosure, I do have to share that it’s made in China. Sigh..) My kids are now five and nearly three, and the step stool is probably their most frequently used piece of furniture. I would love to replace the blue plastic garage sale number with one of these!

The Growing Up Green Potty Seat is simple, elegant and priced similarly to it’s plastic counterparts at just twelve bucks. If you try infant potty training, as we sort of accidentally did, you’ll be getting years of use out of this investment. (Plus, having a seat that fits on the toilet means that you won’t have to clean out a small potty on a daily basis…)

The Growing Up Green Bamboo Booster Seat is the most expensive of the three at nearly sixty dollars and the one I’m least sold on. Somehow all the right angles give me anxiety about applesauce and pureed yams becoming encrusted in the cracks. I cannot count the hours that I have spent cleaning my daughter’s high chair. It’s curved and has as few angles as possible, and yet…it can be horrifying what lodges in the corners. So if there’s a place for a secondhand plastic product, I think perhaps it’s highchairs and boosters.

Would you consider any of these bamboo products? Do you own any new or used wooden baby gear? Have you had success with the Bamboo Booster Seat?

This month we’ll be exploring how to outfit a green nursery with high quality baby gear on a budget. Of course, our favorite green strategies involve those old school R’s: reduce, recycle and reuse. But it can be tough to score all secondhand baby gear if you are the first one of your friends and family to have a child. You may end up being showered with so much loot that it’s hard to find your way out from under the pile of ribbons. If that’s the case, heading off to the consignment shop is a bit futile until your child grows out of all those gifts.

On the other hand, if you’re the last one to welcome a baby, herds of relatives and friends may be thrusting their gently used Boppy pillow and Ergo Carriers into your life. You may even be slightly bummed out that you won’t be unwrapping a single new toy, as you have grocery bags full of wooden cars stored in the basement. (Note to readers, Rebecca and I wackily loved all things used and never had the urge to purchase new gear. This may seem weird, but it’s true.)

I have to say that I belong to both parts of the hand-me-down system. We supply expecting friends with deliveries of sturdy secondhand cloth diapers and tiny denim overalls, most of which we bought used. But my daughter will probably never own a piece of new clothing as we have endless tubs of beautiful girl’s clothes handed down to us by my four nieces. It’s fun to be on both ends of the cycle!

So are you the one handing down the goods or are you receiving the secondhand baby gear? Are you buying secondhand gear online and hoping to stumble into some gear exchanges later on? Do you prefer to buy new items for your first child and save them for your future children? Do you loan out gear between the births of your children and ask people to return it?

During my pregnancy, I had some real concerns about giving birth and breastfeeding. But I also enjoyed obsessing over other issues that—six years later—no longer feel quite so urgent. Here were my particular bugaboos:

Nursing pads. What are nursing pads? Do I need nursing pads? How do I choose nursing pads? What if I choose the wrong nursing pads? Who knows why I cared so much about nursing pads. Read my nursing pads reviews. Or buy some LANAcare nursing pads and be done with it.

Cloth diapering. Prefolds? Diaper covers? Pocket diapers? All-in-ones? How will I ever decide? How will I wash them? If only I could have gone into the future and written the Eco-nomical Baby Guide, then brought it back to 2006 so I could read it and learn everything I needed to know about cloth diapering.

Pink clothes. Now that I know I’m having a girl, what if everyone buys her pink clothes? And pink blankets? How will my daughter defy gender expectations in pink ruffles? Well, it happened. And at six, my daughter’s favorite color is . . . yes, pink. She also wants to grow up and become a doctor (okay, or a ballerina).

Bad baby gifts. What if someone buys my baby something and I hate it? I really over-thought this one. Two choices: I can keep it or donate it.

For the baby, it’s a magical jungle. For me, a garish petroleum product that will one day wind up in a landfill.

Did you have any goofy pregnancy obsessions? What were they—and what did you do to alleviate your (admittedly silly) concerns?

If you haven’t, don’t worry…this is not a gathering will involve actual nudity. It’s really just a clothing exchange. I have to say that I’ve never attended a Naked Lady Party, but it sounds like a great way to bond with girlfriends while we hold each other mutually accountable for cleaning out our closets. Plus, we’d get to recycle our clothing while scoring new garments from trusted friends…for free!

I feel as though at this point, my closet doesn’t have much to offer, but someday I’m determined to set up a Naked Lady Party. My plan is to talk to interested friends and pick a date that is at least a month in the future. My pals will arrive with unwanted bags or boxes of clothing in hand. I’ll supply some wine and chocolate as we all strip down to the basics to try on each other’s unwanted loot. If you are more experienced in the art of clothing exchanges, is there a way to make this step more equitable so that there aren’t hurt feelings if one person ends up with several garments while someone else doesn’t find a single thing?

If we did have a few rejected outfits at the end of the Naked Lady Party, we’d donate them to a charity like Dress for Success, that helps low-income women find professional wardrobes as they search for employment. Or I guess we’d drop off the less professional duds at our local thrift shop. What a fun way to exchange clothing and make memories with friends at the same time! Have you attended a clothing exchange party? What tips can you share?

Ahh elastic. During the months leading up to my children’s births and the long struggle to find my waistline afterwards, I leaned on the magical stretchy waistline to clothe my ever changing body.

At a certain point though, I peered into my closet and saw not a single thing I wanted to wear. My maternity clothes were baggy, my pre-baby clothes were impossible, and I was tired of looking at all of them on a daily basis.

Since we’re focusing on eco-nomical solutions this month, we won’t recommend burning your old clothes—though I have to admit that I have had pyromaniacal fantasies about setting fire to those black stretch pants that I wore three times a week for almost a full year. There are less drastic ways to make your closet a more refreshing place without fire–and without tossing your skinny jeans, or your hopes of wearing them, into the wind.

Step One. Pull everything out you hate. As a frugal, green soul, I always got hung up on this step. I would contemplate how much that hot pink plaid flannel jacket with hideous vertical stripes cost or who gave it to me and grudgingly hang it in the back, where I would catch a glimpse of its woodsy ugliness every single day. Eventually I learned that if I hate it on a gut level, it’s time to let it go!

Step Two. Organize everything else. Once I had a giant pile of loathed garments on the floor, it was time to actually arrange what was left in a way that made my life easier. I made sure my favorite pair of jeans were easy to access and the lovely floral sundress I wear once a year at summer weddings is stashed in the back. Nail up some hooks or invest in some hangers if it makes getting dressed even the least bit more fun.

Step Three. Determine what you might need. Would your life be infinitely better if you owned a pair of black yoga pants? (Mine is..sigh.) Do you need more work blouses that button down for easy nursing access? Make a concise list of what you need.

Step Four. Go buy it! You can certainly head off to Macy’s with credit card in hand, but our favorite eco-nomical solution for post partum clothing is buying used. Consignment shops or thrift stores often have top quality brands for a fraction of the price. Since your body may be fluctuating a bit over the next few months, it’s best to forgo expensive clothing that may not fit in the short run for high quality used garments. (Note..buying clothing at thrift and consignment stores may become habit forming. I began hitting used shops after my baby was born, and am now fully addicted four years later!)

Step Five. Decide What to Do With Your Rejects. Stay tuned to an upcoming post about establishing a clothing exchange with friends to swap out clothes and get new ones without spending a dime. You can always donate the lot or sell them at a consignment store to earn some cash for the clothes you’d like to have. The pre-baby jeans can be packed away out of sight for a later time so that you don’t have to view them on a daily basis.

Step Six. Enjoy Getting Dressed! Every day that you open your closet doors to see comfortable clothes that fit, is a day that starts out just a tad bit better. Celebrate your body where it is and realize that it takes time to shift back to your former shape. In the meantime, make your closet a friendly space!

Have you pulled out those maternity jeans yet? Are you still wearing them? Have you managed to attack your closet while caring for a newborn?

“I am just too vain to wear my husband’s jeans and bulky sweaters for the sake of anti-consumerism and the environment, but it would have saved me $277 in maternity clothes,” I wrote in The Eco-nomical Baby Guide. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “I can’t wear my husband’s clothes! I have to look professional!” Obviously, I never managed to pull off the pregnant Annie Hall look myself.

The point was (and there was a point . . . I think) that, if we had to—like say we truly had no money or if we went into anaphylactic shock upon contact with stretchy elastic waistbands—we could avoid spending money on maternity clothes. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting cute maternity clothes. Your body is expanding in every direction at an alarming rate; is now the time to start dressing like an overstuffed Raggedy Ann doll? And there are professional appearances to consider, of course. I was lucky (?) enough to work somewhere without much of a dress code: an art college. One of my students made his one set of clothes himself out of raw deer hide. Another doesn’t wear shoes, ever. But I digress.

Assuming you do want to reduce the amount of maternity clothes you buy, here are my top tips:

1. Low-rise pants. I managed to wear one pair of regular jeans all nine months of pregnancy.

1. Rubber bands. Extend the life of those waistbands my looping a rubber band through the buttonhole. Attach the rubber band to the button. Voila. That should hold your pants up for a few more weeks, at least.

1. Long-torso tops. Regular long-torso tees will see you through those first months. Regular maternity tops were always much too loose for me, as I didn’t “pop out” so much as thicken through my midsection.

1. Long-torso camisoles. A variation on tip #3. With a few long camisoles, you should be able to extend the life of your regular clothes. The bottom of the tank will cover your belly, and you can wear regular tops or unbuttoned tops over them.

1. Hand-me-downs. Obviously borrowing maternity clothes is the most affordable way to get through a pregnancy in style. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have anyone to borrow clothes from. Boo-hoo.

1. Bella bands. I never got one of these, but they’re a great idea if you want to extend the life of your regular clothes.



2. Belly-bearing fashions. If you got it (a big belly, that is), flaunt it. Admittedly, this is not an appropriate corporate look.

1. Your husband’s clothes. Ha, ha. No, don’t do that.

So, if you do want to buy maternity clothes, go for it! We recommend scouring the consignment shops and thrift stores for the best deals. But if you want to reduce the overall amount of new clothes you buy for this short-lived bodily state, you now have my tips to guide you. Do you have any secrets for cutting down on the amount of new clothes you have to buy during pregnancy? Or ways to extend the life of your regular clothes? Let us know!

January is a great month for reorganizing your bathroom or decluttering the kitchen counters but I remember that both my pregnancies spurred my (limited) organizational tendencies into overdrive. At the time, our house was a thousand square feet and we wanted to evaluate how we used every inch in the days before our babies arrived.

But instead of rushing out to buy hundreds of dollars of bins, shelves, and baskets to hold our stuff, we started with what we had. (This is mostly due to our green ideals, but our tightwad tendencies were a factor as well.) So where do you start if you are overwhelmed, without an organizational system, and pregnant? With tiny, tiny steps.

Start small. It gave me great happiness to attack the medicine closet or a spice cabinet. I simply pulled out everything, tossed it into a box, and was very selective about what we put back in. Having these small, but really important areas organized spurred my motivation to move onto the next zone in my home that was driving me crazy. (We are currently living in a much bigger home and I am not pregnant, but I had the pleasure of sorting through my medicine cabinet and bathroom shelves last week. I still have to open them regularly just to admire the neat, labeled pull-out tubs made out of empty kleenex boxes. One is for cold and flu medicine, one for first aide, etc. Order, even in small spaces, is bliss when life with kids is such chaos.)

Play Furniture Tetris. A friend of mine with a similarly sized home coined this phrase and I loved it instantly. For awhile we kept baby in our bedroom and gave up the nursery altogether. Then we shifted the office contents into the living room and moved everything about once more. We were constantly asking ourselves how to repurpose what we already had. Could the baby’s dresser also work as a changing table? Could our small shelf be a spot to stash towels in the bathroom?

Recycle for profit. Taking boxes of rarely read novels to the used book store or selling our loot on craigslist earned us the money to buy what we really wanted for our home. Plus we scored space on our shelves to display what we really love.

When in doubt, donate. Even if I think I just might someday use that ugly turquoise fish pitcher, I’ve learned to toss it in the donation pile. I feel it improves my personal thrift store karma and of course it scores us a lovely tax write-off as well. Also, by recycling something I loathe we recover precious household space.

When I was in the midst of parenting a newborn, any change in our environment took approximately sixteen times longer than it normally would have. But when I was pregnant, I could organize three cupboards of tupperware in less than fifteen minutes. (I so wish that crazy organization drive was still with me today!) Where are you in the parenting spectrum? What do you plan on being able to organize this month? Stay tuned for upcoming posts on tackling your closet…maternity jeans and all!

I jumped on the green bandwagon in the early 1990s after watching a celebrity-studded Earth Day special on television. I was an impressionable teen living in the not-so-eco-minded Nevada high desert. I was looking for something, and I found it in taking Navy showers, eschewing paper towels, and sorting out recyclables. That last effort was somewhat diminished by the fact that no recycling facilities existed at the time.

Me, in greener times, cherishing a prefold cloth diaper.

In 2006, I had a baby, and my passion for all-things eco only grew stronger. Bringing a new life into the world made me reflect on the burden I was placing on the planet—and the way the planet, with all that acid rain and air pollution—could harm this fragile new creature I’d brought into the world. My renewed devotion to Mother Earth had me buying organic produce and washing cloth diapers (in a front-loading washer).

It happened to my old college friend Joy, too, in almost the exact same way. Frugal and eco-minded since childhood, her enthusiasm for thrift stores and granola ramped up a notch when she had her baby boy. In 2007 we began talking about writing a book about raising babies with the environment in mind. We had so much to say about it, so many odes to so many cloth diapers to write, so many important thoughts on pureeing yams to express!

Now it’s 2012. Joy and I are entering our fifth year of blogging here at the Green Baby Guide. In 2010, our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, was published. This is our 940th post. Is it a surprise, then, that some of the rosy glow of my first Earth Day in 1990 has faded a bit?

I’m ashamed to admit that the thrill has gone from green living. I once bought fourteen pounds of overripe organic bananas for a dollar and spent hours running them through a food mill and divvying up the mush to store in the freezer. Think of all the baby food I’d make, the banana breads I’d bake! (Strangely, Joy has a similar tale of doing the same thing with an overabundance of pumpkins.) While this sounds like an awful lot of effort for little payback, I thought it was fun. No, more than fun: exhilarating! I didn’t just put up with some of the inconvenient parts of green living, I actively enjoyed them.

I’m sure that compared to many Americans, I still qualify as a tree-hugging hippie. I compost and recycle and keep my thermostat at 64 degrees during the day. Maybe that should be enough. But the thing is . . . I don’t love it anymore. I’ve lost that righteous sense of superiority (okay, that’s for the best!). I’m not scouring the neighborhood for dandelion greens to make into a salad or constructing doll houses out of cardboard boxes like I used to. I don’t hang my laundry to dry; it got moldy anyway. I succumbed to the elicit pleasure of warm laundry straight from the dryer.

Once the thrill has gone, how do I get it back?

I have experienced the joys of pregnancy (and the swollen ankles, back pain, and cravings.) And I remember the things I so longed for on a daily basis. On the whole they weren’t material items, but rather support. And the best news is that “gifts of service” are utterly eco-friendly, thoughtful and very low cost.

A bottle of The Naked Bee Green Tea Lotion and a free coupon for regular foot massages. The lotion is made from organic ingredients that will nourish her itchy, stretching skin. Husband alert: She will LOVE this! (I would love this, and I’m not even currently pregnant…) If a partner is attentive enough, foot massages could be delivered on a daily basis.

A Hamilton Beach Half Pint Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker and a promise to whip up a batch of butter brickel at a moment’s notice. I’m convinced that in the late stages of pregnancy I needed ice cream as a nutritional supplement. An ice cream maker allows you to whip up mango sorbet or mint chocolate chip without climbing into the car. And the fact that this one only makes a half pint can help limit those late pregnancy scarfings.

A copy of our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, along with a gift certificate to a consignment shop or green baby boutique. Our masterpiece will give her everything she needs to know about cloth diapering, buying secondhand gear, and saving money while going green. She can use that gift certificate to buy maternity clothes, baby gear, and heaps of onesies before baby arrives.

A Pyrex Storage 10 Piece Set filled with homemade spaghetti, vegetable curries, and brownies. After all, why wait until the baby arrives to support an exhausted woman in the third trimester of pregnancy? You can (and should) always bring her more food in a few months.

Are you currently pregnant? What are you hoping to receive this holiday season? What was the best gift you ever received during your pregnancy? (For me, it has always been, and will always be, food.) Sigh…

ReCrib is a dreamy place to purchase high quality baby gear or make money selling used baby items. Thank goodness a site like this now exists!

If only we would have had reCrib when our babies were little. In our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we share that we each spent about a thousand dollars on our babies’ first year, and we did it by reducing, recycling and repurposing what we already had. (Typical american families spent upwards of seven thousand on baby’s first year alone!)

With reCrib you can buy heirloom quality baby gear at 40-60% off retail prices, and then sell it back (using reCrib) for a respectable sum when your baby has outgrown it. It’s essentially a top quality, online consignment store.

For more information on reCrib, here is an interview with one of its founders, Daniel Lehmann. (The images you see are items that are currently on sale at reCrib for about half of what they’d cost new.)

1. What exactly is reCrib and how can people use it?
reCrib is a free online marketplace for the best gently used baby and kids gear – the must have cribs, strollers, high chairs, etc. It’s great for parents who want to declutter and recoup the costs of items their kids no longer use – and also great for new parents who want all the best brands and products for their kids but at a significant discount. But the best part is that it’s the green thing to do!

2. What inspired you to start reCrib?
We were moving apartments and decided to take the opportunity to declutter and sell the gear and toys our kids outgrew.We assumed there would be a great site targeted towards parents but were surprised to found out it didn’t really exist. We had all this amazing stuff – Netto Cribs, Bugaboos, Peg Perego High Chair, etc. – in nearly perfect condition. As parents, you acquire all this stuff that you use for only months to a couple of years. We wanted to create a solution and believed there would be a market for this idea.

3. What types of gear can people buy and sell and on reCrib?
Think of a dream list for a baby registry at a top modern design store. Cribs, strollers, high chairs, bikes/scooters, bouncy seats, toys, furniture, and more, all by the best designers and manufactures.

4. Many people say that parents should only buy new cribs because of safety concerns. We at Greenbabyguide are in full support of used cribs, but how do you ensure that the used cribs you offer are safe for consumers? How do you deal with drop side cribs? ( We wrote a post about crib side stabilizers and I wonder if you offer those to customers)
We try to stay as informed as possible about any safety issues and constantly monitor the site. We will immediately pull an item off the site if there is any recall or safety concern. We also do our best to keep people updated through Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, we encourage our users to do their homework regarding product safety.

5. At Greenbabyguide.com we firmly believe that buying secondhand is greener than buying new. Have your customers had similar reactions?
Yes!! reCribers care deeply about sustainability and do whatever they can do on the green front. It feels good to know you are doing the right thing.

So what can you buy at reCrib right now?

This bugaboo black stroller sells for over a thousand dollars on Amazon, but you’ll find it for just $500 on reCrib. We realize that’s still a lot of money, but if you resell if for $300 after you use it, it will cost less than many lower quality travel systems on the market. And top quality baby products will last through dozens of babies–it’s better to be the second or third family to use it than the first!