Cheap imports are cheap precisely because they cut costs by cutting corners—pay less for labour, think less about quality, design less for safety, and don’t worry about the environment. Good business? Only in the moment. In the long term, these short-term savings leave us with big bills to pay.

Over the past month, we have been looking at the true costs of cheap imports. In the cases of unpaid labor, unsafe products, low quality, and pollution, we have focused on what isn’t sustainable. Today, we want to shift toward the positive to show what sustainability looks like when it works.

Give It to Me Quick
Truly sustainable products don’t pass on real costs to others but accept and embrace the real costs, redesigning the product and the supply chain not to externalize the costs but to internalize the benefits.

Sustainability

We reach sustainability when we can meet our own needs while not interrupting the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, issues with imports overlap because they all lead to larger issues of sustainability. As long as we buy cheap products that externalize real costs, we have not yet reached true sustainability because we will pay those costs one way or another. There is no one answer to sustainability, but we can aim in that direction through constant improvement of our choices.

Sustainability isn’t just good for us as consumers. Sustainability is good for business. Happy, healthy workers who are paid a fair wage without being pushed beyond reasonable limits of endurance are more likely to do quality work over the long-term. Designs that start with safety in mind are more likely to become beloved products that provide profits over the long-term. Materials that don’t exploit the environment or cause health issues for those near the point of extraction or for the children who will use the final product are more likely to be stable resources over the long-term.

Yes, the theme is the long-term. Sustainability acknowledges that tomorrow matters.

Does it mean we don’t want people overseas to have jobs? Of course, not! If they build their own sustainable local economies, they will benefit in the same ways we will from our own. If they build sustainable products, there will be less hesitation from others to buy those products.

Does that mean we shouldn’t buy anything made outside our own country or even outside our own communities? Of course, not! For most of us, not everything we want or think we need is made in our local communities, anyway.

Sustainability builds on the positive at the same time that it works to eliminate or lessen the impact of the negative. Sustainability shouldn’t be about creating a collection of insular communities that seldom interact. Sustainability puts the priority on the simplest solutions and looks for those solutions locally first.

What Sustainability Looks Like

One of our favorite brands that we carry at bynature.ca is Montreal-based Bummis. They make great cloth diapering products, but that is only part of the story. They are good people who believe in sustainability at every level in their business. They are meticulous in their design and testing; they are careful in their sourcing; they are generous in their business dealings; and, by all reports, they are a great company to work for. When we look for ethical products, we look for companies like this.

Bummis tells consumers about their sustainable products in a Made Here campaign, in which they tell

“How value for us means so much more than just money – how it has to do with integrity and standards and sustainability. And how when you buy something from us, you are buying into our dream – a dream in which business is on the cutting edge of social change and where the bottom line includes the well-being and prosperity of all.”

In addition to making cloth diapering products Made Here and Worn Everywhere, Bummis has a store in Montreal, Boutique Bummis, where they sell baby and parenting products. Before a new employee can work in their store, they learn about the store Manifesto, which starts: “Everyone that walks into the store should feel welcomed and cared about and secure. Grumpy customers should be loved more because they need it!” Every guideline in the Manifesto, indeed every product in the store, builds connection.

“Our mission is to facilitate the attachment of parents to their children by offering products, information, resources and support that will promote that attachment. And the vision behind that is the belief that profound attachment of parents and children can create a paradigm shift that can engender powerful personal and social transformations.”

Bummis co-owner Betsy Thomas sees the store “as a statement of who we are and what we believe in – a place where every day we actively manifest our company values.”

I learned about the store Manifesto when Betsy Thomas and I sat together on a customer service panel at a business conference. I was particularly impressed that these instructions to employees include statements from past employees. This shows me that the concern isn’t just with who people are in their space in the moment but with who they are long-term and who they become through their experiences. One former employee in particular wrote about how her time at Bummis taught her to naturally present “information and options in a non-biased way,” a skill she carried into her training as a midwife—a skill her midwifery preceptors said made her the most advanced student at any level because people often struggle with the skill of compassionate teaching.

I love using Bummis as an example of ethical products and sustainable business because they practice sustainability on so many levels. They are conscious of having a positive impact on all who come in contact with the company.

Organizations Building Local Economies

Many cities and towns have Buy Local campaigns. If yours does, you can get involved. You can expand and shape the way you and your neighbors think about about and act within local economies.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is a national nonprofit organization supporting “environmentally sound and equitable community development.” The focus is local self-reliance, and that includes buying local. Yes, buying at a local business helps the business, but that isn’t the most important reason to support locally owned businesses. Consider local jobs, local innovations, and product diversity. Read their “Top 10 Reasons to Support Locally Owned Businesses” for more reasons.

The Business Alliance for Living Local Economies wants to create “real prosperity by connecting leaders, spreading solutions that work, and driving investment toward local economies.” In their decade of research, they’ve come up with Core Four strategies: local first, DIY entrepreneurs, local capital, and better together. Their members are business owners and other leaders. Read their “Localism 101″ to see what they find matters in building living local economies.

Keep in mind the Local Multiplier Effect. The organizations above and many others recognize that feeding your money and energy back into you local economy multiplies the effect. Buying local is good for you in more than the way it makes you feel. Research shows that when you buy local, $.45 of every dollar is reinvested locally; when you spend a dollar at a corporate chain, only $.15 of that is reinvested locally. Your money works harder in ways you will notice when you spend it locally. This Local Multiplied Effect feeds back into your own community and creates greater wealth than exporting your money to corporate headquarters.

What You Can Do

• Avoid exploitation. You need to know more about the products you buy in order to know whether workers or environment were exploited to produce them.
• Be a localist. Look for local solutions first without avoiding solutions from afar when they really will work for you.
• Only buy what you need.
• Buy what you need from people you trust. Especially with parenting products for new parents, you need support. You need to know how to use a baby carrier or a cloth diaper. The questions you want to ask are sometimes quite personal. Building a trusting relationship with a knowledgeable store owner can help you focus on what you really need and avoid those baby products you might leave on the shelf and never use.
• Meet more people so you can develop more of those trusting relationships. When people trust one another, they are accountable to one another.
• When you do buy, look for products that meet high standards. At bynature.ca we help you with that by adding the icons for our Safe Family Promise to every product in our store.
• Think about what makes you happy and put your focus there.
• Shift your focus from stuff to relationships between people. The Canadian Index of Well Being includes tools to help you build resilient local communities.
• Be part of the change in your local community, building a local economy that is more focused on happiness than stuff.
• Don’t get caught up in the negative. Reading about child and forced labor can be devastating. Work to right the wrongs, but also work to enhance the rights in your life. Feed the positive relationships in your community.

True Sustainability

True sustainability acknowledges true costs. Businesses that measure their success by a triple bottom line of People Planet Profit already understand that paying up front for people and planet pays dividends to them and their customers in the long run. We don’t need to embrace business that puts profit ahead of people and planet. If we want to give our children the same chances that we have, we can’t put profit ahead of them and their future.

When Betsy Thomas talks about Bummis, one of the things that really sticks with me is her observation that new parents turn naturally toward sustainability when their children are born because children give a face to the future. You and I as parents have a passionate stake in long-term sustainability through our children.

More in this series

• “Cheap Products at What Cost?”
• “Imports at What Cost? Labour”
• “Imports at What Cost? Safety”
• “Imports at What Cost? Quality”
• “Imports at What Cost? Environment”
• “15 North American Made Gift Ideas”

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On the most commercial weekend of the year, you are bombarded with messages to buy stuff so you can give stuff. If you are trying to keep stuff to a minimal in your house, you can extend that attitude to your giving. My daughter is my model of good giving this year.

If you are like me, you have a closet full of yarn (or craft supplies, beads, wood to carve, paints, or some other kind of craft supplies). Yes, the crafters I know tend to be hoarders of a sort. This year, perhaps you could pull all of those supplies out of the closet and see what you can do for the people you care enough about to make something personal. That is what my daughter has done.

Much like a hobbit, my daughter started around her birthday in July thinking of what she could do for her family for the holidays. We are going to spend a rare holiday with her grandparents and cousins, so she wanted to knit each person a scarf that suits them in particular—favorite colors, textures, and patterns. First, she emptied out my mother’s yarn closet, then she matched up yarn to people. She had to buy a couple of skeins to fill in, but that was only a couple out of about fifty balls of yarn. She did really well turning our closet into a beautiful pile of scarves. We leave for our holiday in a couple of weeks, and she is knitting the last scarf now.

Her advice is to start by thinking of the people: who they are, what they wear, and what kind of style they like. She used the same knitting stitches for every scarf because that is what she is comfortable with right now, but she made the scarves look quite different. She says your homemade gifts should not be about you but should match up the personality of the person you are giving to with your skills and time.

10 Ideas for Low-stuff or No-stuff Giving

1. Tuck a note inside an old book as a gift. Tell them why you enjoyed the book and why you think they might as well.

2. Sew old jeans into a bag. We made small jeans bags out of stray jeans legs. My son’s pant legs seem to come off as he wears holes in the knees that eventually join around the back. He gets long shorts for the next year, and he has a variety of legs in his closet waiting for a purpose. This year, he is giving his friends small bags that fit the cards they trade back and forth.

3. Create a craft kit for your child from some of your craft supplies. You could just to the closet with your child and choose, but the possibilities can be overwhelming. I always found kits exciting as a child. Write a note or draw a picture for younger children about the possibilities they will find in the kit.

4. Give a digital download of your favorite movie to a friend. I like gifts that keep on giving. Be sure to say what you like about the movie.

5. Create a family calendar. We did this for several years. We used big photos of our children then included birthdays and holidays for all of our extended family members. I still remember the year my aunt did this for every one of her nine siblings’ families. If you want to make this a regular gift, write on a certain day of each month a reminder to family members to send you more photos for the next year’s family calendar.

6. Give your child a big book of several hundred world folk tales then read one every night for the next year. I did this with each of my children, and they still talk about the stories. We not only shared all of those bedtimes, but we all have a common vocabulary of narratives

7. Make a holiday ornament from your craft scraps.

8. Make a photo album in a small book with photos from a typical day in the life of your child for a grandparent, aunt, or someone else they don’t get to see often enough. Sharing the little details can help them feel much closer.

9. Give the family a board game and a full afternoon of time to play. Yes, that’s a little bit of stuff, but this shouldn’t be about zealousness but about getting to the heart of giving. What your kids want is your time.

10. Bake cookies for a neighbor, and add a personal note of gratitude. Include a note thanking them specifically for chats, vacation mail pick up, shared dog walks, and anything else you appreciate.

Don’t just give for the sake of giving. Think about the person and what they mean to you, but let the feeling show more than the material stuff. Would a card or a phone call be enough? Don’t overdo it. You want to enjoy your holidays yourself as well, so give in ways that are personal to you and to the receiver without making yourself feel overwhelmed and frantic to get it all done.

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If you are serious about cutting down on stuff, it is simple to cloth diaper your child without all of the extras and accessories because the simplest diapers do the job beautifully.

Diaper-free without Stuff

If you are very serious about cutting down on stuff, go without diapers altogether. Elimination communication is a beautiful way to respond to your baby’s needs. Most diaper-free babies do wear cloth diapers occasionally, but they aren’t generally going through a dozen a day. If you are willing and able to focus on your baby enough to catch cues, you won’t need more than a few cloth diapers.

Wake Up to Marketing

Even if you decide to go full steam ahead for cloth diapers, you don’t need a stash, one of every brand, one of every color, or all of the accessories. And, you don’t need to believe the biggest ad campaigns that plant specific brand names in your mind as The Diaper to Own.

A week ago on Jian Ghomeshi’s Q on CBC, I listened to his interview with Martin Lindstrom, author of Brandwashed. I knew I was going to be writing about cloth diapers today, so I was very excited to tell you about this interview and this book. Martin Lindstrom is a marketer who wants to helps us as consumers understand how market research leads to subtle tricks that persuade us to buy. The stories he tells as he outs his own industry will shock you, and they should. He tries to make the process of persuasion transparent for us.

Applying this to cloth diaper marketing, step back from your non-conscious reactions diaper brands’ ads, posts, and carefully shaped personas to prioritize your actual needs over what diaper brands tell you your needs are. Sure, you want a free diaper, but do you really need to buy five new diapers to get it? Sure, you like prints, but do you really need one of each? Sure, you want “eco-diapers,” but are single-use diapers inside reusable, plastic-laminated polyester covers really your idea of “eco”? Bring your reactions into consciousness to make your decisions deliberate and transparent.

Be Conscious of Your Actual Needs

The not-so-secret secret to parenting without stuff is letting your specific needs guide your buying rather than letting yourself be swept away on a wave of marketing. The five points of Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative are Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle, and Reimagine. Even if we do find ourselves in need of a solution to some parenting issue, we don’t necessarily need to buy new. We can make, repair, borrow, and buy used to meet the need. We think we need diapers, but we can reimagine that need by learning more about elimination communication. There are far more answers available to us than the conventional.

Start by asking yourself what you need then give yourself some time for creative thought. How might you meet that need without buying a single-use problem solver and spending your hard-earned cash?

How Many Diapers Do You Really Need?

I’ve told the story before of my friend who has never bought a diaper. Her second child is approaching two years old. She has always used cloth diapers, but she is just open to accepting hand-me-downs. All of her diapers are passed on to her from others. I’ve seen some of my children’s old diapers in her stash, so I know those diapers are circulating around the city doing diaper duty for baby after baby. If you have a community of like-minded parents, it will be a lot easier to cut down on buying the stuff of parenting.

If you are collecting or even buying, what do you really need? Plenty of my friends used nothing more than 18 prefold diapers, a couple of wool soakers, and a bucket to hold them until wash day. You could cut up ragged towels (sew around the edge, so you don’t have strings that could hurt your baby) and knit a soaker. Don’t sew or knit? Look for used diapers. Can’t find any? Buy a few simple diapers. Start very simple then only expand your diaper stuff when you find that what you have isn’t quite working yet.

If I were starting over, even after years of using and making so many diapers, I would use flat diapers and wool covers. That’s all.

Bonus!

Your bonus for breastfeeding without stuff, babywearing without stuff, and cloth diapering without stuff is saving a lot of money.

A cloth diapering advocate local to me posted a photo last week of a huge pile of boxes of disposable diapers at a big box store. They were on sale—reduced some ridiculous amount. She said, “Even if you buy these diapers at this reduced cost, it will cost you more to diaper your baby than if you use cloth diapers.” If you use prefolds rather than diapers that tout useless innovations to solve problems you don’t have, you will save hundreds of dollars a year. Be vigilant!

You’ve probably already read a dozen messages today asking you to buy stuff this week. It’s the biggest sales week of the year. Saturday, I’ll share a few ideas for giving without stuff.

Image © Jason Stitt | Dreamstime.com

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You don’t need a lot of stuff to wear your baby. One baby carrier will cover most situations if you choose carefully. Around the world, women wear their babies multi-purpose lengths of fabric or scarves. Babywearing without stuff is not so difficult.

Most of us will probably opt for a commercial carrier for ease or safety, but don’t assume that is your only choice. If you use a length of fabric for your carrier, just be sure that you know how to keep your baby and yourself safe.

Limit the Number of Baby Carriers You Buy

Make sure your carrier or carriers match your actual lifestyle not the one you dream about. I was not a baby hiker, so a sporty Ergo would not have helped me. I did buy that style of carrier, and I didn’t use it. If you aren’t sure yet how you and your baby will travel around and what you will do, get a simple, newborn-friendly carrier to start. Wraps and slings are simple to start. If they keep working for you, you won’t need to add another carrier.

Buy a Neutral-color Baby Carrier

When you are wearing your baby, the carrier becomes part of your wardrobe. If you buy a more neutral color or design, you might not feel so tempted to get one for every outfit.

I owned several slings. Buying for my first child, I was stuck on the tail-end of the era of “all baby products are meant to make the parent look like a baby.” My first sling was an Over the Shoulder Baby Holder in light blue check with huge padded rails. I really came to hate that sling. As soon as I found my black Maya Wrap, I was set for life—then I bought half a dozen more Maya Wraps in various colors. I didn’t need them, though. Black served me well. It matched my wardrobe (as well as my graduation robes!). The revelation to me was that someone realized the parent doesn’t have to wear pastels just because she is carrying a baby. Hallelujah!

Choose a color or style that won’t deter you or your spouse or other caregivers from wearing your baby.

Don’t Get Accessories, Unless You Absolutely Need Them

If you aren’t going out in the sun, you won’t need an ozone cover up. If you are going to be spending a lot of time outside, you’ll probably be glad you invested in the cover up. If you already have plenty of blankets, why invest in a blanket that is only used for your baby carrier? You won’t need most extras, so don’t pre-buy accessories.

Use your simple baby carrier, and ask yourself what is working and what isn’t. Talk face to face with someone who has experience, and show them what you need. If you are near us in Orillia, Ontario, come by our store. We love to help parents solve bearwearing issues. Even if you don’t have someone close enough to help you face to face, call us and we will make sure you get the help you need in finding a carrier (and, sometimes, carriers and accessories) to fit your lifestyle.

Image © Andrey Burkov | Dreamstime.com

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If your focus is natural parenting, you might be trying to figure out how to navigate all of the stuff of parenting without letting the material stuff become the focus. How much stuff do you really need to breastfeed successfully? Not much. Really.

The key to keeping your stuff simple is an honest assessment of your needs. Don’t let others tell you what you need. Don’t buy a double electric breast pump, for example, if you are staying home with your baby most of the time.

Last week I was exploring a baby store, and I was just astonished by the breastfeeding aisle in particular. First of all, I want to say that I’m really glad to see so much support for breastfeeding. It should be the norm, and seems to be a realistic choice for most families. That is excellent. Along with widespread practice and publicity come the products. Yes, most of these products were created to support breastfeeding, but most breastfeeding mothers don’t need most of the products. Do you see the twist?

The person I want to hear this is the first-time mother who isn’t sure yet what she needs. The person I really want to reach is me when I was pregnant with my first child. I was so excited, and I let that excitement lead me to the baby store—a lot. I didn’t really know what I would need, so I bought a lot of extras just in case. Then, I left a lot of those extras on shelves, in closets, and in boxes. I wanted to jump into everything babies, and so much of what was available was commercial. I hope just one pre-spree parent reads this and says, “Maybe I’ll wait and see if I need those baby things.” You might need them, but they will probably still be available when you do. If you don’t end up needing them, you’ve saved yourself money and simplified your parenting.

What Do You Really Need for Breastfeeding?

When it comes to any breastfeeding products, make sure you start with a clear understanding of the need you are trying to meet so you don’t get caught up in buying for someone else’s needs. What is the rub? What would fix it? Is the need long term? Could you borrow anything that would fix it? Could you make anything that would fix it? Do you have something already around the house that could be re-purposed to fix it? Don’t go shopping until you are sure that is the only way to meet your need.

Start with good nutrition, and you could be all set. If you are going to stay home with your baby and feed on demand, you don’t really need any extras at all.

Breastfeeding book? Actually, I think this is a really good idea for the first-time parent (not just for mothers), but it isn’t essential if you already have a lot of support to get your questions answered. If you want extra information, how about reading Ina May’s Guide to Breastfeeding or the LLLI guide The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding? If you have a local parenting group, both of these are the kind of books that could be passed around among group members.

Nursing tea? Some kind of nutritious tea, like nettle, is always a good idea. Whether you need tea that will boost your milk production depends on your milk production. Don’t buy it unless you need it. Then, ask yourself again whether you really need it. If your milk production exceeds your baby’s need, you might find yourself engorged and needing breast comfort supplies. Find the balance and be aware of whether your baby is getting the milk needed for normal growth.

Nipple cream? You probably will need to use some kind of nipple cream at some point, but you may not need it much. Start with a very tiny (sample) size if you can find it. If you find that you get cracked nipples often, it is time to invest in a larger size. Also, ask how you might prevent irritation. Perhaps softer breast pads or nursing bra? Don’t just treat the symptoms, but look for a cure.

Nursing bra? Whether you need a nursing bra depends what you are wearing already and how you will be nursing. Support your breasts. They will be bigger and heavier, so you will probably need a new bra. A nursing bra can make things easier, but it isn’t an absolute necessity. A stretchy bra like Bravado can adjust as your breast size changes. Add at least one to your list unless you really need to keep your budget down.

Nursing shirts? This is one place I over-thought and over-bought. I thought I needed a whole new wardrobe. I didn’t; you don’t. Lifting your shirt works. If you will be breastfeeding in public, and you are modest (remember, not everyone is), having nursing tank tops to wear under your regular clothes can be enough. Start without and see if you need a nursing top. If you do, start simple with a tank.

Absorbent breast pads? You probably will need nursing pads at some point, especially if you are going out. They can be simple, though. If you sew, you can easily make them yourself. What kind of pads you need depends on when and how you need them. Are you away from your baby for 9 hours a day? You need pads—and perhaps a small wet/dry bag to keep them in as you switch during the day. Do you have tight or thin shirts? Look for pads that don’t create a giant boob target look. Thicker isn’t always better. Fiber matters, too. Pads with two different layers of fabric—cotton/wool nursing pads, for example—could be used either way, so they give you more flexibility. Start with a couple of pairs of simple pads and only get more if you find that what you have isn’t working for you.

Soothing breast pads? If you are at home, a nice, cold cabbage leaf will soothe hot, sore breasts. A multi-use rice bag could provide warm comfort. You probably don’t need breast pads that are specifically made for hot and cold relief. Try the simple solutions first to see if they do the job.

Nursing necklace? As they find their hands, babies use nursing time to explore. A nursing necklace can keep the exploration focused—keep their hands from your hair quite so often. Nursing necklaces can be very beautiful, but this isn’t a necessity.

Nursing bracelet or tracker? If you track feeding, you might want to put a small notebook at your main nursing station (where you keep a glass of water and a book). If you move around a lot and nurse on the go, you still might not need a specific tracker. I just remembered which side I was on. Swollen breasts have a way of letting you know which is next. If you find that you just forget and you don’t always sit in the same place, you might want a simple tracker. Does it need to be a bracelet? Probably not.

Nursing pillow? I had one. I didn’t use it for breastfeeding. I used it to prop up the baby when I left her sitting on her own. I had a great chair with cushy arms. You probably will need something to prop up your tired arms while you sit with your baby, but you might already have a pillow or furniture that will do the job. Start with the pillows you have and see if they work. If they don’t, ask yourself not just which nursing pillow is cute or which one your friends like but what you need the pillow to do and which will work best for your specific need.

Nursing covers? This is one thing I’ve never really understood the need for. There are a lot of nursing covers available, though, so this tells me that there are mothers who wanted and even needed these enough that they created covers for themselves and then for others. Try breastfeeding in public and ask yourself if you feel the need to cover up. If you don’t, skip it. If you do, start with a simple cover, like a blanket. Multi-purpose stuff will serve you better in the long run that single-purpose stuff. If you find yourself frustrated with the blanket, maybe you do need a cover. It’s worth waiting to figure it out first with this one.

Breast pumps? Most mothers will leave their babies for at least short periods of time, and some mothers still breastfeed full-time even if they are away from their babies for long periods. Simple hand expression works for some. I didn’t get much milk that way, so I used a hand breast pump for the time I was away from my babies. If you do get a breast pump, make sure it matches your needs.

Storage and bottles? If you are pumping, you need a storage system and bottles to feed your baby with the pumped milk. If you won’t be pumping, you don’t need to worry about this at all. But, consider this: even if you don’t think you will be away at all, it might be a good idea to have an emergency supply of milk in the freezer. Most breastfeeding mothers will want at least a simple, safe system for breastmilk storage.

Hands-free Pumping Bra? If you are pumping a lot—because you work full-time, for example—you might find that you lose a lot of time stuck to your pump. A hands-free pumping bra can free up that time for you. If you aren’t in this situation, you don’t need a special pumping bra.

You want to succeed in breastfeeding your child, giving her or him the needed nutrition and comfort while keeping yourself healthy and happy. You don’t need much in order to do that. You might be able to make do with simple solutions, but don’t keep yourself from finding solutions when you need them. If what you have isn’t working, fill the need, even if it means buying stuff. This caution isn’t meant to tell you never to buy anything but to clarify your needs before you buy—or perhaps to make or borrow before you buy new.

Support this beautiful relationship between you and your baby. If you run into problems, you will almost certainly find that someone else had the same problem, and some clever mother probably created a product to solve it.

Image © Elena Vishnevskaya | Dreamstime.com

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Have you heard about Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative? The initiative encourages Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle, and Reimagine. It’s about de-stuffing our lives—the part of our lives related to consumption of outdoor clothing, at least. They were already repairing used Patagonia clothing and taking back worn clothing for recycling, but now they are pulling all of this together into one program. They are even encouraging customers to buy used Patagonia clothing on eBay, both from the original owners and from Patagonia itself.

Cynics are saying that this is a brilliant marketing scheme designed to ensure customer loyalty, but I don’t think they need that. Patagonia customers are already loyal, and Patagonia has long shown their dedication to the environment through the actions of the company itself and those of the people who work there.

Plus, with so much in the world to discourage a person, I choose to believe that this initiative will reduce some amount of the overused stuff of our lives and that it will help us rethink consumption. We don’t have to consume nothing (yet). By reconsidering what stuff we need and how we deal with that stuff during its lifecycle, we can change our own lives and model responsible, sustainable consumption for the people around us—especially for our children.

While you are thinking about stuff, today the latest film is released from Annie Leonard of The Story of Stuff. The latest is called The Story of Broke, about why we DO have enough money in the world to take care of the petrochemical addiction and other issues we’ve created in the stuff economy. Watch the new film. I’m going to watch it and get back to you about it this Saturday.

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Family Basic
Families quickly accumulate excess ‘stuff’ when a baby first appears on the scene. Apart from a lot of love, healthy food, appropriate clothing, and a safe place to sleep, there really isn’t all that much our little ones need (despite the many Must Have lists out there!). Spend your money wisely on products or playthings that have proven to be the most useful necessities, or have extended play value beyond the first few years. We have limited our Family Basics products to the 25 top picks among our staff, customers and experienced parents.

We’re surrounded by stuff and nonsense. When I think of the difference between the stuff I acquired for my first baby and the way I let go of stuff for my second, I see the gap between the sincere intention to be a good parent and enough experience to know that I could do it without props.

There are cool tools out there in parenting land, but everyone doesn’t need the same cool tools. Our needs vary, so our appropriate stuff levels vary. There are a few rules to keep in mind, though.

1. All of us can probably make do with less than we think we can.
2. Multi-function tools that we can grow into will serve us better and longer than single-function tools we can grow out of.
3. Reusable stuff is better than non-reusable stuff.
4. Just because materials are new and revolutionary doesn’t mean they are essential to a sustainable future.

Remember, the stuff that you bring into your family while your children are young is important not just for what it does now but for how it will influence the future. We create our children’s patterns of thinking and acting as we model life for them. If we want our children not to be consumed by marketing, it helps if we aren’t consumed ourselves. If we want our children to value people and relationships over stuff, it helps if we do.

Only a few of our products are so necessary to parenting that we have called them Family Basics. These are the useful necessities with extended value.

Family Basics at bynature.ca

Our family basics fall into several categories: health with natural hand purifier by Clean George, creativity with non-toxic art supplies by Clementine Art Natural, household and personal cleaning with Bummas reusable wipes, and play with colorful playsilks.

Play cloths are the perfect toy, the kid example of multi-functional stuff that encourages a child’s creativity and resourcefulness. I have noticed this week that my children, on the edge of their teen years, are using several play cloths as rivers of water and lava around which they have built elaborate villages with other playcloths creating walls in their rooms. The same play cloths have been essential toys for my children since they were babies.

Our play cloths are 100% natural silk, in a dozen colors dyed with non-toxic dyed, and made responsibly in China.

For the past month, we have been telling you more about our Safe Family Promise at bynature.ca. To make it easy for you to identify products by their key attributes, look for our standards labels.

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Rules for inclusion on my list of best products for reducing the need for stuff:

• Must be reusable. Must prevent buying and using more stuff by replacing something commonly thrown away.
• Can’t just be super cool (like silicone popsicle molds, which are on the edge of necessary with a lot of children).

Bonuses:

• Replaces a toxic or questionable conventional choice.
• Makes life easier.

That said, there are a few products that lighten my footsteps.

Dryer Balls. If you want your tumble-dried clothes to be softer, you don’t need to add chemical softeners. You just need to flex the fibers. The fingers on dryer balls poke and prod your clothes into softness. Really, you don’t need a specific product for this purpose. Put an old hockey puck in a gym sock will do much the same thing.

If you worry about the loud banging that you get with a hockey puck (it is really loud) or you notice that your dryer starts to get little dents, you might find the dryer balls gentler on machine and clothes.

Wet Dry Bags. Wet bags have been around for a while, keeping many mothers from hauling home wet swimsuits or dirty diapers in plastic bags, but a wet/dry bag is a great new innovation that allows you to keep things together. One bag has two separate zippered sections to keep wet and dry separate.

The mini bag is the right size for reusable menstrual pads, so you can keep used and unused pads in the same bag. The medium bag is a great size for swimsuits and the larger bag for diapers. This seems such a logical progression, but it was just wonderfully surprising to me the first time I saw one of these bags in person. Very useful.

Stainless Steel Straws. One-time use products are such a waste. Suck down juice or water with a straw then goodbye straw. I tell my children that I don’t see the need for a straw, but my children seem quite attached to them. Really, with younger children straws prevent accidents.

If your family do like to drink with straws, reusable is the way to go. This also prevents more exposure to toxins that can be present in plastics. Stainless steel straws are very cool.

Obento Boxes. A lunch box or bag is not a new idea, but a surprising number of parents don’t send their children’s lunches in reusable containers. Any reusable bag or box is great. I especially like reusable sandwich wraps, which is yet another example of a new idea based on a very old idea.

My current recommendation, obento boxes, aren’t so much new as new to me and increasingly common. Among reusable lunch boxes, obento boxes are unique in that they don’t hold just any kind of food. Because of the long tradition of making obento box lunches interesting—art food, really—this particular container comes with encouragement to engage children. The laptop lunches system that Parenting by Nature sells even comes with a food ideas book. I’m quite sure that my Beatles lunch box came with no instructions.

No doubt there are a lot of interesting things to buy made out of lower-impact materials, but the first line of defense against the tyranny of stuff is to REDUCE.

• Reduce your need,
• Replace the stuff you use but might otherwise throwaway, then
• Replace the stuff that is reusable but high-impact or just plain toxic.

Throughout March we will offer guides to getting started with some of the basic practices of attachment parenting and sustainable living. This is Environmental Living Week with tips, products, resources, and personal experiences.

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