Skip to main content

Baby Clothes

How do you go green with your baby's clothes? Just like with everything else, reduce, reuse, and recycle!

Yes, babies need lots of clothes unless you do laundry every day. Sometimes Sweet Pea goes through three or four outfits in a day, depending on whether we play outside, and whether she feeds herself or not. However, there are a several ways to maintain a complete wardrobe while still meeting your goals for living green:
  • Buy used. In my town, there are lots of consignment shops that specialize in childrens clothing and accessories. One of them even has a sale every month with boxes and boxes of clothes that are only $.25 per item. Then there's always Goodwill or whatever sells used in your area. This is a really cheap way to get a lot of clothes, and they often have very little wear, especially in the smallest sizes since kids grow so quickly. I have bought items with the original tags still on them! In addition, check craigslist or your local yard sales.
  • Share with friends/family (hand-me-downs). This can be a fun way to get and share free clothes. We have friends with kids aged on either side of Sweet Pea so we have passed many things back and forth. It's really fun to see a favorite item on another baby! I also remember getting clothes from my older cousins when I was a child, and I always thought it was exciting.
  • Recycle clothes (make new out of old). There are many patterns out there for making kids clothes out of used adult clothing - tee-shirts into pants or dresses, sweaters into diaper covers, dress shirts into dresses or shorts. Really, you can make anything you can think of as long as you have a big enough piece of fabric. Resweater offers 100% wool sweaters and lots of ideas for ways to recycle them.
  • Buy organic or buy local, or both!
How are you reducing consumption or saving money with your kids' clothes?

Links to good  recycled clothes patterns would be welcome in comments!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Summer 2020 - Life in a Pandemic

I'm in my final week of summer before work as a middle school teacher begins again. This time of year I'm always in a reflective mood.  I look back and feel so lucky to have had this time with my kids. We went camping, biking, boating, golfing, and hiking. We celebrated my sister's wedding, we did projects together, watched movies, and just hung out at home. It really was everything that summer is meant to be. There were many events and plans that we canceled due to Covid, but we did all the most important things. We missed friends, but I also reveled in the togetherness with my little family unit. Today, I spent time registering for fall childcare and activities. It's less than usual, but still I can see the pace of our lives picking up. As we move into a season of more busy-ness, more work, and likely more stress, this poem sums up the feelings I'm experiencing.... Vacation End by Leslie Pinckney Hill From the charm of radiant faces, From the days we took to dream

Woollybottoms Giveaway

I am hosting my first giveaway! I have been wanting to do this for a while, and I'm so pleased to have it finally planned. The item I chose to give is a new pair of Woollybottoms - wool pants for babies. The retail value of these is $29.00. I have been really into the wool pants thing lately, as you may have noticed from my recent posts (about Nifty Knickers , and my baby blue longies ) so this seems like a good fit. Wool pants can be used as a cloth diaper cover, or just as snuggly warm pants for the winter or for bedtime. These ones are "footies" so they should keep your baby toasty! The pair I am giving to one lucky winner is light blue with fish fabric for the footie part. Maybe a little more boyish than girlie, but Stella would definitely wear these if we got to keep them. They are size medium, and have the following measurements: 8" waist (elastic) 9" rise 18" length Here they are: To enter, simply comment below and let me know why you wan

Follow-up follow-up travel post; Or, Please check for all personal belongings before leaving the plane

A drawing of the interior of our first plane, on the back of a napkin, by Average There are other stories from our cross-country trip that I didn't mention in my earlier posts , as Average pointed out in his comment . Some may be worthy of sharing, so I'm going to write and post a few. Here is the first one: On the way to our vacation destination, our last flight is on a tiny commuter plane. Average and I are seated in the front row on the side with two seats (I think there's a bathroom in front of us), and therefore have no underseat storage place for our extra large bag full of all of sweet pea's clothes and diapers for the entire week. I assure you, it did meet the rules for carry-on, but there was no way it would fit in that tiny overhead storage compartment. I'm doing my best to stuff it up there anyway, when the teenager in the seat across the aisle from us offers to stow it under the seat in front of her. This is the kindness of strangers! We are very gratefu