Supporting Small Businesses (And Not Amazon) This Holiday Season

As with all things in 2020, this holiday season is going to look quite a bit different this year.

The presents you might usually wrap under the tree don’t seem to make sense right now.

Our mini Christmas tree a few years back.

A cashmere sweater? Mary doesn’t leave the house and exclusively wears sweatpants.

New shoes? Bob hasn’t been to the office in months.

A nice pair of earrings? The last thing Wendy dressed up for was the dentist.

This is all coupled with the fact that we probably aren’t going to be seeing all of our family members and loved ones this holiday season. I know our Thanksgiving and Christmas will just be my immediate family.

So maybe you will be buying fewer presents because you will be seeing fewer people, or instead you want to spread a little more holiday joy because you won’t be seeing loved ones. Either way, you have a choice in where those gifts come from and who your purchases support.

Your dollars count.

While I used to love Black Friday (when it actually meant shopping in store), I have since changed my tune. Unless you are buying a TV, the deals are usually not as great as you think. Instead participate in Small Business Saturday on November 28th or better yet, shop small all holiday season!

I still haven’t gone shopping in a retail store since March, which automatically punts all my holiday shopping to the internet. Not my favorite, but it will have to do this year.

The good news is that there are still so many ways to do your holiday shopping without leaning solely on the big box stores and Amazon***. Our local and small businesses are in dire need of our help anyway due to the pandemic, so the best way to finish off your holiday shopping is by supporting them.

***Full disclosure: While I am hating on Amazon here, we do have an Amazon Prime account that we use occasionally. We have a baby and sometimes 2 day or same day shipping is super necessary when you run out of diaper rash cream.

Here are a couple ways to shop small this season:

Local Businesses

Cute, small mom and pop stores have lost the walk-in customers they used to rely on. I plan to order some gifts from some of my favorites for curbside pickups this year.

In Chicago, here are some of my top shops for the following:

Etsy

I love Etsy all year round, but I am definitely shopping here this holiday season. One of my favorite features is being able to filter by shops in the United States, and then even by state and city. It is fun to discover local, nearby shops that don’t have a brick and mortar location.

Etsy is a great option when you are looking for something specific!

Local Restaurants

I am sure you have heard or experienced in your hometown, the intense impact the pandemic has had on restaurants and bars. Pick your favorite place around the corner or down the block and purchase a gift card for those on your list. High on our list is Lucia’s!

While in some cities and states you cannot eat inside a restaurant, your recipient can still use it for a special takeout dinner or save it until they are comfortable and able to dine inside again. Something to look forward to, I suppose?

Additionally, everyone loves a good baked good or a special treat on a Sunday morning. Our favorite local bakeries to support are Floriole, Spinning J, Bennison’s, and Dinkel’s.

Experiences

The gift of an experience is one of my favorite to give. A sports game, tickets to a musical, a membership to a museum or zoo are my usual choices, but this year some experience gifts are not an option.

Not all are cancelled though! The zoos and aquarium here are still open, but operate on a reservation basis and there are plenty of virtual workshops and classes out there.

Virtual Maker Events

Often, I would check off unique, handmade gifts for my recipients from craft fairs, like the one sponsored by my high school to raise money for the athletic boosters, to the more upscale artesian maker shows downtown and throughout the city.

Made in Chicago Market

My personal favorite, the One of a Kind Show, is going virtual this year and you can still shop all of the vendors, but unfortunately miss the great interaction with the artists.

Two other shows that I have shopped at in the past are Show of Hands and Made in Chicago Market. They are online too.

So while the fun of wandering past booths and eyeing items across the room is out for this year, we can still shop!

That’s it! If you are a family member reading this, you got a sneak peak, because you will definitely be getting something from this list!

Want to Compost in Chicago?

It’s hard to believe we have been using a composting service in the city for almost 5 years now. And I have a lot of content on it!

I have been using Healthy Soil Compost since 2016 at home and even had them compost at my wedding in 2018.

For those of you who are interested in starting a compost journey, I wanted to pull together a little guide on all the options for composting services in Chicago I am familiar with. Each provides you with a 5-gallon bucket for you to fill up that can be picked up at different intervals (besides Block Bins, see below).

Healthy Soil Compost

  • Services:
    • Commercial
    • Residential
    • Events & Seasonal (yard waste, pumpkins, Christmas trees)
  • Service Area:
    • Most Chicago neighborhoods from North Lakeview to Logan Square/Hermosa. West to Garfield Park, East to the lake, and South to Hyde Park/Woodlawn.
    • Beverly and Mt. Greenwood
  • Residential Pricing:
    • Monthly: $20 (When I signed up, it was $15 a month and I still get charged that rate!)
    • Bi-Monthly: $30
    • Weekly: $40
  • Extra Benefits:
    • Finished compost
  • Restaurants that Compost:
  • Farmers Market Compost Collection:

The Urban Canopy

I have had experience with Urban Canopy composting at some events for a non-profit board I used to serve on. They also have a CSA, which is awesome!

  • Services:
    • Residential
    • Commercial
    • Events
  • Service Area:
  • Residential Pricing:
    • Monthly: $15
    • Bi-Weekly: $25
    • Weekly: $35
  • Extra Benefits: 
    • Finished compost
    • $5 voucher to a local farmers market or a $5 voucher to one of the restaurants that also compost with Urban Canopy
  • Where Does it Go?
    • Their farm in Englewood and local compost-processing facility
  • Farmers Markets

WasteNot Compost

Chicago’s first and only zero-emission compost collection service.

  • Services
    • Residential
    • Multi-Unit
    • Commercial
  • Service Area
  • Residential Pricing
    • Weekly: $10 per service ($40)
    • Bi-Weekly: $12 per service ($24)

Collective Resource

  • Services
    • Events
  • Service Area
  • Residential Pricing
    • Weekly: $10.50 per week ($42)
    • Bi-weekly: $15.50 per week ($31)
    • Monthly: $20.50
  • Restaurants that Compost:
  • See a full list of organizations that compost with Collective Resource here

Block Bins

  • Services:
    • Neighborhood composting (set up a bit differently than the others, Block Bins allows you to compost with your neighbors using a large 35-gallon, locked bin placed in the alley)
  • Service Area:
  • Residential Pricing:
    • $10/month: 5 gallons of waste per month (~1-2 person household)
    • $15/month: 10-15 gallons per month (~3-4 person household)
    • $20/month: 15-20 gallons per month (~5-6 person household)
  • Where Does it Go?
    • An industrial composting facility in Harborview

So there you have it! Do you want to start composting?

A Tiny Baby’s Big Impact: Part 2

A lot has changed since having a baby (see Part 1 here), but our lifestyles have also taken a double whammy by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Here’s how both a baby and a highly contagious virus have changed our lives.

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Spending a lot of time inside…

Ordering

We are still doing some online orders when we need stuff, but I have been using curbside pickup more. It is also a reason to get me out of the house! Target Drive Up is also really great.

Our grocery shopping is still 100% online. We get our produce and meats from a local grocer here, called Local Foods. They are still completely closed to customers and do everything by delivery and pickup. Other basics and staples get delivered as well.

K used to love grocery shopping in person, so I am not sure if he would have stuck with delivery for so long if there wasn’t a pandemic, but it was definitely helpful in those first few weeks at home with a newborn.

The super annoying part of all these deliveries is the packaging. The basics and staples get delivered in plastic bags every time, despite a note on our account asking for paper bags. Thankfully Local Foods always uses them!

This means my bag of plastic bags gets full very fast. Just last week I finally took the last 4 months of plastic packaging I have collected and brought it to Target to recycle. I had to make two trips into the store because 1.) I could not carry them all and 2.) I did not want to look like a crazy person.

We have similar issues with ordering takeout. A gracious family member gifted us a Grubhub gift card to help keep us fed in the first few weeks of newborn life. We have been using it to support local restaurants in the area, but pretty much every order we get includes plastic silverware and napkins and things we specifically requested not to include.

Self Care

Pre-baby and pre-pregnancy, I would shave with a safety razor, but since I barely have time to shower lately, I have gone back to using disposable razors for efficiency reasons. I hope one day, when I can devote a bit more time to myself, to go back to it.

While gyms and exercise studios were closed for a while, they have opened back up, but we don’t plan to partake in any inside exercising. Unfortunately, the yoga studio I frequented for prenatal yoga was unable to sustain itself after going virtual and has closed. So for now, I mainly focus on getting in a good stroller walk during the day and the occasional yoga video. I may venture and try an outdoor yoga class if I can find the time.

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Taking a walk on our shared street, which gives neighborhoods more space to walk, bike, and run during COVID. 

Back before we got married, I started getting monthly massages to deal with headaches and it was wonderful. I kept it up through pregnancy, switching to a massage therapist who was certified in prenatal massage. They closed sometime in March and opened back up in July. I did go back once because my neck and back were so sore from breastfeeding and picking up and holding the baby. It was nice and they had what seemed like good COVID precautions in place, but I was pretty uneasy the entire time being in an enclosed room with someone, even if we both were wearing masks. So I have put a hold on my membership for the time being and will have to survive without my monthly treat for now.

Working from Home

For at least the rest of the year, both my husband and I will be working from home because of COVID, not because of the baby. I only had 12 weeks of leave (unpaid mind you), while my husband had 6 weeks (paid). Not going into the office removes our commuting impact, saving us on not having to purchase gas as often, equals less time on the road, and no money spent on parking.

Once I start working again and after my husband has done a few weeks of paternity leave, we made the decision to go with a nanny for a few days a week instead of sending our child to daycare.

Having a nanny, a baby, and two adults in our two-bedroom apartment is a lot of people in a small space. K and I are going to end up co-working in our bedroom to give the nanny space to place and care for our baby in the living room and nursery. He already has an office set up in our bedroom, so we now need to buy another desk for me.

The plan is to get the same desk as his so we have a matching set. I am already thinking about resale value! We have not purchased any office chairs and are currently using our kitchen chairs, which are cushy and do the trick for now.

While we certainly expected life to change once the baby arrived, I don’t think we thought it would look like this! 

 

A Tiny Baby’s Big Impact: Part 1

Our little bundle of joy is almost 3 months old now and we have been deep in the trenches of survival mode.

When in survival mode, sleep-deprived, still self-isolating, and all you want is your kiddo to fall asleep, caring about the waste created from this new human unfortunately gets kinda pushed to the side.

I hate it, but I have to accept it because I currently don’t have the energy not to.

Birth and Recovery

I gave birth in a hospital setting, meaning my kiddo’s arrival was wasteful from the get-go and I have no regrets about that.

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As for recovery, I had to use a lot of single-use items such as pads for post-partum bleeding and adult diapers. Speaking of diapers…

Diapers

Obviously, our biggest landfill contributor here is diapers. We are not cloth diapering and using regular old disposables, SHOCKER! I did some research on this before the baby came and there were a lot of factors involved that lead me to go with disposables for the time being:

  1. We don’t have a laundry room. While we do have in-unit laundry, we don’t have a good space to keep a bunch of diapers until I do a load of laundry.
  2. While there are diaper pick up services in the city, they are quite expensive.
  3. Cloth diapers use a large amount of water and electricity in the cleaning process, almost negating the benefit of staying out of the landfill. Learn more.

For about two months, we actually didn’t use any wipes because of a diaper rash issue and instead used little washcloths. It did end up with me having to do a load of laundry a day though, which was not ideal.

Clothing and Toys

As our babe is getting bigger, she is growing out of her clothes quickly! She mostly has been dressed in generously gifted clothes and some hand-me-downs, but soon she will need more as she moves out of the smaller sizes.

I have wanted to focus her wardrobe on secondhand options, but with COVID going on, I haven’t felt safe to go browse secondhand stores like Once Upon a Child. Facebook Marketplace is an option and most people are doing contact-less pickup. I have been browsing for a few items and keeping my eye out for them. There are so many bouncers and swings available. People want them out of their house!

There are some secondhand stores here in Chicago that I cannot wait to frequent when it is OK again like Velveteen Rabbit and the Second Child. And there is also a rental option that I am intrigued by.

Breastfeeding

While breastfeeding may seem like the perfect zero-waste way to feed, it is not so cut and dry zero waste. Yes, in a perfect world, you don’t need bottles, but there are a lot of things you still need even if you are feeding straight from the tap.

For instance, breastfeeding kinda hurts in the beginning, so I bought some soothing gel pads that can go in the freezer or the microwave. You’ll also need nipple cream, nursing pads (I have washable ones, but there are disposable ones), nursing bras, nursing tank tops, nursing shirts.

Sure you can go around this and use some natural methods, or cut up a bra or wear your old shirts and just have your stomach exposed, but right now, for me, the easiest method is best.

Now if you’re a mom who is eventually going back to work, or would like someone else to feed the baby for once, you are going to have to get a breast pump and its not hygienic to share these, so secondhand is not recommended. Pumps have a bunch of parts that need to be replaced and then this is where bottles and bottle parts come in. So we do have bottles, just not as many as if we were exclusively bottle feeding.

Any milk that doesn’t go straight to the baby gets frozen for later and in a single-use plastic bag, which breaks my heart. You can freeze in sterilized glass containers, but we do not have the freezer space for that.

That’s it for now!

 

 

A Secondhand Nursery

One thing I did not want to do once we transformed our guest room into a nursery was buy a whole bunch of new furniture.

The transformation process was pretty slow going because we had to move a ton of stuff out of the guest room to make way for baby.

We utilized Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist to sell a lot of the bigger items including the desk, some lamps, pillows, and other odds and ends. I also paid someone to recycle our mattress and box spring.

As things have left, we were able to start focusing on the items we needed and a lot of the main components of our nursery ended up being secondhand, coming from family members, strangers, flea markets, and online stores.

Here is how we ended up furnishing our nursery with pre-loved items:

The Crib

Our baby’s crib came from my cousin and it was previously another baby’s crib before that! Don’t worry. The issue with using a secondhand cribs is not knowing where the crib came from or if it’s super old with a drop down side. We know where it is from and no drop down side, so we are good to go!

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The Dresser/Changing Table

I scoured Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for a vintage midcentury modern lowboy dresser to use as a changing table. The goal was to find a piece of furniture that could be used as a regular old dresser down the road and not look like a standard changing table. I ended up finding this one on Facebook Marketplace and am so happy with it!

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The Rocking Chair

This rocking chair was actually my mom’s and she rocked me in it as a baby. Growing up, the rocking chair was in our computer room and I spent many hours talking on the phone sitting in it. Now I get to rock my own baby in this chair!

Additionally, the original cushion on this chair definitely did not go with the nursery theme, but luckily my mother-in-law was able to reupholster it!

The tallboy dresser behind the rocking chair is also secondhand, but we have had it for a number of years and it was bought on Craigslist. Luckily it matches pretty well!

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The Clothes Tree

This kiddie sized clothes tree has also been around the block! It was originally in my mom’s bedroom as a child and eventually was in mine. It has been painted a number of times including yellow, pink, and now grey! It was already grey before we added it to the nursery, so we didn’t have to paint it again!

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The Vintage Posters

As for decor, our theme is loosely “vintage science classroom,” and these vintage science posters were the inspiration. I found these at the Grayslake Flea Market and bought them from a retired high school science teacher who taught in the 70’s.

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The Vintage Map

The pull down geographical classroom map was the second piece we collected in the theme from the Elkhorn Flea Market. It sat in our closet for a few years just waiting for a baby to come along.

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The Vintage Children’s Books and Microscope

To round out the theme, I found some smaller pieces for the tallboy dresser.

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The vintage children science books are from the 50’s and 60’s and I found them on Etsy.

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Also from Etsy, I picked up a vintage microscope to use as a bookend.

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And there you have it! We do have another storage piece of furniture in the room with fabric bins (not pictured) and that came from Facebook Marketplace.

Otherwise, a majority of the rest of the items came from Target including both table lamps, the rug, side table, ottoman pouf and blackout curtains.

Not bad? I think we did a pretty good job of keeping it secondhand. What do you think?

 

I’ve Never Shopped Online So Much In My Life

Pre-pandemic I would occasionally shop online.

I most likely had an Amazon Prime order or two every couple of months and preferred to buy online and pick up in-store or leave things in my cart until I had multiple items to ship.

Fast forward the 50 days we have been in quarantine and that habit has changed drastically.

Living in a densely populated urban area like Chicago and being high risk since I am pregnant, my husband and I have made every effort to reduce our risk of contracting the virus by staying home (and luckily we are both able to work from home).

We have not set foot inside a physical grocery store in over 7 weeks. The last time I have been in an enclosed space with a number of people (that wasn’t the doctor’s office) was the pharmacy some 5 weeks ago before I realized I could just send my prescription to my house.

Every single thing we need gets delivered.

Normally I would find it annoying to get our groceries delivered in plastic bags even when we asked for paper and for the insulated bags Amazon delivers frozen items in to be non-recyclable or personal care products shipped in like 5 different shipments.

BUT, since we have a baby’s arrival rapidly approaching, the number of boxes and packaging we receive is exponentially more than just the standard young couple due to baby shower gifts and trying to stock up for the baby.

You see, I have this fear that it is going to be 3 AM with our newborn and we need some specific item and we try to buy it, but it is sold out or on backorder and won’t ship for an obscene amount of time.

To combat this scenario, I have been trying to be proactive and stock up on newborn needs before they arise. This means my cart at Target.com has approximately 20+ items in it, which is just insane. And with talk of diaper and wipe shortages, I am just trying to make sure we have enough to get us through an unknown amount of time.

So on top of the groceries and baby shower gifts, we are also getting those shipments.

This means we have A LOT OF BOXES coming through our house. Like A LOT.

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Our vestibule on a normal day.

A lot of boxes, a lot of plastic packaging, and a lot of waste and it seems to be never-ending.

I have to write notes for when deliveries are occurring each day throughout the week just to make sure I don’t forget to get something on the doorstep (you know since I don’t leave the house).

After opening items, we flatten the boxes and keep them outside on our deck until recycling day, which means from the alley down below, we look like crazy box hoarders. The reason we don’t take them down to the recycling carts immediately is two-fold:

  1.  More boxes will most likely be delivered the next day
  2.  Everyone else is ordering stuff too so the recycling carts are always packed full. We legit have to wait until Monday afternoons after the recycling gets picked up and then we run downstairs and stuff the boxes in the carts.

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Not shown: the boxes behind me, the boxes still in the nursery, and the unopened boxes still in the vestibule.

I have also been collecting the plastic bags, wraps, and bubble mailers that can be recycled in this gigantic plastic bag to one day recycle. Unfortunately, I don’t know when that would be. Anyone want to take my giant bag to the grocery store?!

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Anyone want to take this to the grocery store to be recycled for me?!

All the other non-recyclable packaging gets tossed in the trash.

It’s rough and I hate it, but there is not much I can do about it. Staying home and staying healthy is our number one priority right now. And there is no way I can do that without online orders.

Hopefully, the boxes should be slowing down with shower gifts petering out and most of my last-minute we-might-need-this-for-the-baby-because-this-list-says-so shopping completed. We still obviously need to get groceries though…

 

 

How To: Not Buy Baby Stuff

We have not bought much for this baby so far.

I haven’t bought a cute outfit or a soft blanket. Really all we have bought is some stuff for the nursery and most of it was either given to us or purchased secondhand (that’s a post for later!).

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Our first baby purchase were some little booties from our alma mater to announce the pregnancy.

The moment we found out we were expecting, we knew that it would be a slippery slope of baby stuff coming from every which direction, be it grandparents, friends, or a box being delivered on our doorstep.

For me personally, not buying stuff for the baby was not all that hard. Given that we don’t know the gender, there wasn’t much I could get anyway unless I wanted my baby to dress exclusively in grey and white (gender-neutral clothes are so lame <insert eyeroll>).

For others though, the urge to shower me in stuff was a little stronger and I had to have a conversation with both future grandmothers not to run out to Homegoods and buy everything in sight.

Right now, pretty much everything in baby’s nursery has come from someone else, be they hand me downs from other little babies in our lives or pieces of furniture.

This baby is going to get stuff though, even with the uncertainty of my baby shower even happening. I did my best to be conscious of what was going on my registry. I focused on multi-purpose items such as our bassinet/pack-in-play combo and a high chair that grows with baby. and quality materials such as wood, cotton, and glass over plastic.  Using Babylist, I was also able to ask for non-material items, such as house cleaning, babysitting, and home-cooked meals. I could even ask for preloved clothes and books!

Any advice for keeping the overwhelming amount of baby stuff at bay? Please share!

 

 

What It’s Like Being 7 Months Pregnant During a Global Pandemic

The last couple of weeks have been weird.

Pregnancy itself is weird, but add in a global pandemic of a highly contagious virus and things just get weirder.

Two weeks ago, I was aware of the virus, just slightly concerned, but I went about my daily life with a bit more hand sanitizer and hand washing. Today, I am “social distancing” and working and staying at home pretty much 24/7.

Everything has been canceled. Everything is closed. There is pretty much nowhere to go.

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My dad and I practicing social distancing when he dropped off provisions (AKA Cheez-its)

Work 

Working from home for the past 6 days feels like an eternity. Everything is uncomfortable: my dining room chair, the island stool, sitting on the couch typing on my laptop over my belly.

At first, when work events were canceled last week, I was excited because I knew a full day of work and then an evening event was going to completely tucker me out. Now we have no events, no students, no interns. A good 50% of my job has disappeared in a matter of days (while I know other’s entire livelihoods disappeared overnight).

Luckily, my husband and I are both in positions that allow us to work from home, so we are spending A LOT of time together. Whoever said get some one-on-one time in with your spouse before the baby comes surely did not imagine a situation where soon-to-be parents spend 3-10 weeks holed up in their apartment together. Guess we don’t need a babymoon…

Leaving the House

Every day I am trying to get some activity in. On the first day of our full week working at home, K and I did lunchtime yoga together. Then we went for an afternoon walk in the sun on non-busy residential streets and crossed to the other side when someone was headed our way.

Yesterday, I had to go to Walgreens to pick up a necessary prescription. I planned to go right when they opened to avoid any additional people, but that plan backfired. When I got there, there were 4 other people waiting in line (albeit far apart). I panicked. I could go back home and try coming back later, or I could just wait as far away as possible from people and get it over with because I didn’t want to have to hype myself back up to try again. I waited, I got it, I ran out of there.

Within a few days, entry after entry in my calendar was deleted and now all that is left is my prenatal doctor appointments. That’s the only place I plan on going for now: our apartment, out for a walk, the doctor. Nowhere else.

Food and Necessities

K has been watching this situation diligently and had an inkling we might have to stay home for a while about 2 weeks before all of the mass hysteria set in. We did a grocery shop then and got the staples we needed (including toilet paper and disinfectant spray).

Trying to shop since has been challenging. Not wanting to risk going into the grocery store, we tried a grocery pick up last week and were met with probably only half of the items we had originally ordered. We are waiting a little longer to try again. Otherwise, we absolutely have enough food to not be hangry all the time, except I eat a lot of the snacks.

The Reality

I am not so much worried about myself catching the virus, it is also super possible I or my husband have already had it. We are more worried about others, such as our parents, grandparents, and friends with underlying health issues.

I am concerned about the next two-ish months before the baby comes and the next few months after. My baby shower is most likely going to be canceled, I am not sure if we will get to take maternity photos, and my hospital has postponed all birth classes until the middle of April. It’s also a very high possibility that our families won’t get to attend the birth at the hospital.

When everything seems to be so uncertain, the only thing I can control right now is getting the baby’s nursery ready, so I have been doing that. It is better than scrolling through social media (which I have limited my time on to 10 minutes a day via Google’s Digital Wellbeing settings).

We tried to set rules that we can’t talk about coronavirus news on Wednesdays and the weekend. We failed miserably. So much is changing so quickly.

Overall, I am just sad.

Sad to be missing out on many of the things first-time mamas get to experience.

Sad my mother doesn’t get to see my belly grow with her first grandchild in the last few weeks.

Sad to be confined to our 2 bedroom apartment 3 months before we have a baby and come June, are confined at home in a different way.

Sad we probably won’t have visitors to meet our bundle of joy for who knows how long.

These are my own selfish things to be sad about related to being pregnant at this time, and I am not trying to downplay all of the hundreds of other sad things about this pandemic. There is so much more pain and suffering more legitimate than me complaining about not having a baby shower.

We will get through it. While there is so much uncertainty, there is one thing I know, and that is this baby is coming. No matter what.

I can live without maternity photos. I can find birth classes online. I can celebrate with friends and family when it’s safe to have more than 10 people in a room again.

It will be different from how I pictured it, that’s for sure, but the safety of friends and family and people I don’t even know is more important.

 

 

 

The Paralysis of Getting Rid of Things Correctly

We are currently clearing out our guest room to make way for baby and it has brought up a phenomenon that I don’t think I am the only one to have encountered.

It is the fear of disposing of/getting rid of items correctly.

If it were up to K, he would either throw everything out or haul it all to Goodwill. No questioning whatsoever.

I can’t handle that.

From the odd things like the collection of free fridge magnets we have acquired from our insurance agent to half-used Christmas candles to the normal stuff we just no longer had a use for, I wanted to make sure each went to the right place once they left our home.

For the most part, the reason we still had all of these odd things was that I was waiting to figure out what to do with them. Sometimes I figured it out and sometimes I didn’t, but they stayed in our home longer than necessary and it was causing me a lot of stress as we wait for the baby’s arrival.

I figured out what to do with our mattress and got it recycled. I used Facebook Marketplace and my local Buy Nothing group to get items into the hands of people who want and need them for free. Those half-used Christmas candles got picked up by someone in that group! So did old Amazon Alexas, a Roku, underbed storage containers, an old backpack, an old crockpot, a desk lamp, a fruit bowl, headbands, two purses, an old Fitbit, tools, and a bunch of personal care products.

 

Utilizing the Buy Nothing Groups meant that my stuff wasn’t automatically sent to the giant truck that sits outside the Salvation Army to be sorted and possibly purchased down the road. My sheets, bed skirt, and duvet cover immediately got a second life, along with many other items!

We did have to institute a rule that if things aren’t sold or picked up within 2 weeks of posting, the items will be donated. That way we could keep the flow of removing items and they weren’t just sitting around until I went crazy.

There were also things that didn’t get figured out and I had to let go of it. That collection of fridge magnets needed to go and I had to begrudgingly toss them in the trash.

It has been hard and has taken a bit longer than necessary, but I am glad I took the time to make sure things went to a good home.

 

I Paid Money To Properly Dispose of My Mattress

That old saggy, squeaky mattress.

Everyone has one or will encounter one eventually.

Ours came from a friend in college. My husband used it for a while post-graduation, then it was our bed when we moved in together, and then it was finally relegated to the guest room when we moved two summers ago.

It has to be at least 10 years old and we tried to cover up the body divets we created with a mattress topper, but this baby is done.

We also don’t have any space for a queen-sized bed anymore because an actual baby is about to take over the guest room.

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Bye-bye mattress! 

As we purge the items in the guest room to make room for its new inhabitant, I am trying to be very cognizant of where everything is ending up. I could have definitely posted the mattress, box spring, topper, and metal frame on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for an extremely low price or even for free. I also could have put it in the alley and hope someone picked it up before the garbagemen did. It is important to note that most charities do not accept used mattress donations.

All in all, I figured both those options will eventually end with our mattress in a landfill. Sure, handing our old mattress off to someone else will extend its life for a little longer, but what are the chances the person who takes it is going to properly dispose of it when they are done with it?

Probably zero.

So we decided to delay the inevitable and recycle our mattress.

The most annoying part of being a responsible person is that I have to pay for this to occur, but keeping our sad mattress out of the landfill is important to me, so here we are.

The first thing I did was get a handful of quotes from mattress recycling and removal services:

I ended up going with JunkRelief for obvious reasons. It was wonderful for movers to come in and just take all of it away in under 10 minutes. There was no way I was going to be helping anyone get a box spring down a set of winding stairs while pregnant. No way.

All in all, while I am out $145, I don’t feel too bad about it. I am happy it is gone and I am happy it is properly taken care of it.