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!

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!

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!

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!

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.

The Vintage Children’s Books and Microscope

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

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

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

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?

 

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!).

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!

 

 

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.

 

A Maternity Wardrobe: Options to Not Buy New

You know what is not that fun about being pregnant? Needing to create an entirely new wardrobe around your ever-expanding belly.

Well, some people might like that, but I do not.

Luckily, I have been able to craft my maternity wardrobe in a handful of ways that help keep my own personal impact down.

Borrowing From Others

My cousin and her friends have been accumulating maternity clothing for years and through a number of babies. They kept passing the collection back and forth to whoever was pregnant next.

They were happy to loan me their 3 BINS OF CLOTHES! After doing some sorting based on style and size, I picked out a good start of long sleeve shirts, sweaters, and some pants.

A friend who had a baby in 2018 also let me borrow some more clothes from her. Now that I have multiple peoples’ clothes, I had to make a mark on the tag of each to help me remember whose is whose when it is time to give them back.

Buying Secondhand

I love ThredUP normally, so I looked to them for some secondhand maternity styles. I ordered some basics like a few t-shirts, tank tops, a dress, and leggings so far. The dress and leggings still had tags!

Given that there is just one of everything it is important to check every once in a while on their ever-changing availability.

Using What I Already Own

For the most part, I am still working in my regular clothes into my wardrobe. I bought some longer tank tops that I can wear under a lot of my shirts to extend them and I have one of those belly bands to keep my pants up. In the beginning, I employed the hair tie trick with my pants.

Unfortunately, as I get bigger it is harder and harder to incorporate my normal clothes. My shirts and sweaters are not long enough and when I wear my regular pants with the belly band, I live in constant fear that the band has ridden up and 1) my unzipped fly is exposed or 2) my bottom is hanging out!

But Also Buying What I Need

This is not to say I have not bought anything brand new. I did get a couple basics (the tanks I mentioned, 2 long sleeves, tights, jeans) and some workout gear (2 tanks, 2 shirts, and 1 pair of leggings), but I consider my purchases to be pretty minimal so far. We shall see what happens when my belly really starts to get big in the third trimester!

Overall

The absolute worst part about buying maternity clothes (whether secondhand or brand new) is you cannot try them on! I literally have no idea what will fit me and basically, all stores that have maternity lines do not carry them in the store, meaning you have to order multiple styles and sizes just to see what works for your body! To add to that, most physical stores do not accept maternity style returns and require returns to be mailed in only.

It is frustrating and annoying and I totally get why leggings are the primary uniform of the pregnant woman.

An Attempt at Beeswax Wraps

Don’t worry. All my posts won’t be about pregnancy and babies from now on.

I finally found the energy and time to tackle a DIY I have been wanting to do. I own a couple pieces of beeswrap as a replacement for plastic cling wrap, but they have been around for a while and are starting to lose their ability to cling to a surface.

While at a craft fair back in November, there was a booth selling local honey and beeswax products, including a nice brick of beeswax.

So I bought it, thinking I would try my hand at creating my own.

At first, I was going to run over to Michael’s or Jo-Anne Fabrics and pick up some fabric, but then I remembered The WasteShed here in Chicago. They sell repurposed arts and crafts materials! So I headed over there and scrounged through their fabric scrap bin, leaving with a bunch of options for the low, low price of $2.75.

The directions I followed for these beeswax wraps came from Good Housekeeping. I was looking for a tutorial that was easy and did not involve a lot of weird ingredients. For instance, a couple required pine resin and some other stuff you have to find at a specialty store or order. Neah.

So here is what I did:

1.) Wash, Dry, and Iron Your Fabric

Good Housekeeping recommended using 100% cotton, which I was not able to know if I fully achieved since I bought fabric scraps, but I figured I would give it a shot and see what happened.

After washing and drying the fabric pieces, I ended up ironing them because some were pretty crumpled. Otherwise, I would not have done this step, I hate ironing…

2.) Cut Your Fabric

I used pinking shears to keep the ends from fraying, but I am sure you can hem them also. I didn’t really adhere to a specific size and just kind of eyeballed what looked good. You can definitely see that I cannot cut straight either!

3.) Grab A Baking Sheet and Parchment Paper

GH recommends placing the printed side of the fabric down.

4.) Cover Fabric in Beeswax

This is where I started to stray from the GH directions because I did not buy beeswax pellets, which apparently are a thing. I had a brick of beeswax that needed to be grated, which took quite some effort and I would not recommend it.

So I grated and grated and grated for what felt like forever and covered the fabric.

5.) Pop It in The Oven

It only takes about 4 minutes to melt and then you are supposed to brush the wax around on the fabric, but it seemed I did not use enough wax and there wasn’t any to spread. There also were a lot of spots where I could see that the wax was missing, including the edges.

So I tried again.

This time I put my muscles to work and grated a more ample supply of beeswax and made sure to get up close to the edges. This seemed to work better this time around.

6.) Let It Dry

The fabric pieces were pretty cool to the touch once I took them out and tried to brush the wax around. I was able to pick them up and wave them around a bit to initially dry.

Afterwards, I folded the fabric over a wire hanger and hung it on the shower curtain rod to fully dry. This only took a few minutes.

7. Enjoy?

After grating enough wax for three wraps, I was pretty tired, so I decided to give it a break. I am also curious if these will work, so I didn’t want to spend all this time and effort making a bunch and it turns out they didn’t do anything.

They feel right and they look right, but I want to test them out for a bit.

Hopefully, they do the job! I will keep you update.

Have you ever made DIY beeswax wraps? Any recommendations?

Patience

If you know me personally, patient most likely wouldn’t be your adjective of choice to describe me.

But I have been thinking lately about patience and that is mostly because I started a new job that I am very very excited about. I graduated 6 years ago and I have been through 4 jobs since then. Some were good and some were not, but I continued to search, to network, and to interview.

I got rejected A LOT. Since 2012, I have applied for 393 jobs and received 60 first-round interviews. That is a success rate of 15%. It was disheartening and frustrating, but I had to be patient. It was worth the wait.

Patience is also an important trait when dealing with any environmental/waste/green tasks. Our society has pushed instant gratification on us. We use something once and then throw it out. We want something new, we buy it right now and get it shipped to our door the next day.

It seems counterintuitive to go against this, and harder, more difficult, and inconvenient, but it makes a bigger impact.

Take an extra two seconds and collect your kitchen scraps for a compost service.

Search secondhand services for exactly what you are looking for and sell your items on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and ThredUp. Or donate your stuff.

Fix up what you already have whether it is a chair, jeans, or your dress pants,

Collect personal care products and plastic bags, save your beyond repair clothing, take in your running shoes to be recycled, and return wire hangers from the cleaners.

Grow your own vegetables or join a CSA.

Shave with a safety razor.

Take action on things you don’t want like junk mail, mail not addressed you and solicitations.

Choose the slower shipping option.

All of these things take TIME, but I value the outcome more than the time it takes to bring my plastic bags back to the grocery store.

It takes patience to do these things instead of just throwing stuff into the trash can. Sure, that is easier and sure, that is faster.

But properly taking care of what comes in and out of your life is worth the wait.

An Easy Way to Secondhand Shop: thredUP

For the most part, I do a pretty good job of avoiding the temptations of shopping for new clothes. I don’t wander the mall for fun, or go window shopping, and I have unsubscribed from alluring marketing emails.

Sometimes I succumb to my desires and I end up trolling websites, adding things to my cart, feeling bad about it, and then never returning to purchase it.

I try and keep a list of items I am specifically looking for so I don’t get swept away by something trendy and end up impulse shopping.

Back to where I mentioned feeling bad about shopping, this is important. I am fully aware of all of the environmental and social costs associated with purchasing new clothing (water, resources, labor, shipping, etc.), which makes randomly purchasing pieces really hard for me (but just to be clear, I still do purchase new clothing).

Enter thredUP, a humongous repository of secondhand clothes filterable by size, brand, color, you name it! The problem I find with shopping for secondhand clothes in physical stores is sorting through what you are looking for. It takes time and patience.

With thredUP you can search specifically for what you are looking for and also create alerts when say a Madewell cardigan is added. That’s how I ended up with the cardigan on the right.

Two J. Crew cashmere sweaters and a Madewell cardigan for much less $$$

I created my search and then waited for the right one to come along, but since there is only one of each item (usually), you need to act fast! By the time I checked my email alert, someone had already added it to their cart. An item can stay in someone’s cart for a specified amount of time and if it is not purchased it is opened back up. If you really like an item, you can check that you will auto-buy if didn’t end up getting purchased.

It was really easy and I used that feature to get my Madewell cardigan. I also set alerts for certain brands I am fond of, which is how I found the two cashmere J. Crew sweaters on the left. I wanted a cashmere J. Crew sweater but they retail for over $90. This one on thredUP was new with the tags still on for half the price. It is warm, cozy, and I love it.

A handful of my wardrobe has come from thredUP and I intend to add more pieces along the way. My coworker recently stopped by my office and asked if I had used thredUP before and my response was something like, “Yes, I have a bunch of clothes from there, this J. Crew sweater I am wearing is from thredUP! Oh wait, so is this Ralph Lauren skirt! I am wearing an entirely secondhand outfit!”

All in all, I recommend thredUP. I have not used other secondhand shopping sites like Poshmark yet but plan to take a look. I am on the hunt for a white denim jacket!

Do you have a place you love to secondhand shop? Let me know!

This post is not sponsored by thredUP, I just like their site and want to share! 

Double Duty on Wedding Purchases

Getting married is hard.

There are so many decisions, so much research, and so many opinions.

While making decisions on physical purchases, I have been keeping one question in mind:

What purpose will this serve after the wedding is over?

For example:

What purpose will this shirt that says “Future Mrs. X” serve after the wedding is over? 

The answer is none. Please, no one ever buy me this.

What purpose will these gold lanterns we scoured multiple Targets for serve after the wedding is over?

I plan on keeping a few and then selling the rest!

What purpose will these koozie favors serve after the wedding is over?

None because there will be no koozies.

Don’t hate me for hating on the koozies. I have a million of them. They get tossed into a cabinet, and I never use them. So no they serve no purpose for me.

I want my purchases to serve double duty, so I am trying to avoid anything that blatantly says Mr. and Mrs, or is obviously wedding related. I want to wear my wedding shoes again! I want to be able to use the bulk thank you cards I bought on Amazon for any other situation post-wedding!

Some people might say, “But it’s your wedding! You only get married once!”

Yes, and because of that I want to be able to have a regular use for anything from that day, so I can always be reminded of it.

Doesn’t that make more sense?

 

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If you are interested in more, I’ve previously posted about renting versus buying wedding decor and buying wedding decor secondhand.

 

New Homes for Old Pillows Hard to Come By

Being that our household includes two later twenty-somethings who still have a lot of things from college and from our parents, we have acquired some items from family members that have an unidentifiable and questionable age.

While there is nothing wrong with that for pots/pans, or baking sheets, it’s helpful to know how long someone had been sleeping on that pillow you found in the closet at your parents.

I was recently waking up with a sore neck, which I attributed to my pillow. So for Christmas, I was given a new one (#adultstatus).

But now I have an old pillow that I don’t know what to do with.

We already have at least 2 extra pillows lying around for when the occasional guest stays over, and we don’t have the room to be piling up pillows.

I am not going to make it into a dog bed (don’t have a dog), or craft it into throw pillows (no room for those), and donation centers don’t take used pillows.

So what is a person supposed to do?

I wanted the pillow to avoid a landfill end and was intrigued by it keeping a shelter pet nice and cozy. So, I checked almost every Chicago animal shelter’s website to see if they were accepting old pillows.

None of them do, but many took sheets, blankets, towels, and comforters, which is very good to know since we will be getting all new versions of those when K and I get married.

Here are the Chicago animal shelters that take various old textiles, but not pillows:

• PAWS Chicago: flat sheets, blankets, and used towels
• Community Animal Rescue Effort: fleece blankets
• Orphans of the Storm: blankets, comforters, and old towels
• New Leash on Life: blankets, sheets, and towels
• Animal Care League (in Oak Park): gently used towels and blankets but specifically says no pillows, sheets or pillowcases
• Precious Pets Almost Home: blankets and towels
• Famous Fido Rescue: towels

So I have a home for all of that stuff, but not my delipidated pillow. Now what?

Since we don’t have a lot of seating in our place, I am thinking that I might get some fabric and make a nice floor pillow with the stuffing like this one here.

Otherwise, there are plenty of other options for what to do with sad pillows:

• Earth 911: 7 Ways to Reuse and Recycle Old Pillows
• Ask Umbra: What Should I Do With My Nasty Old Pillows?
• Recycle Nation: Creative Uses for Old Pillows

My First Clothing Swap

Have you ever looked at your closet exasperated and just said “UGHHHHHH!!”

Have you ever tried closing your dresser drawers only to have to shove a bunch of stuff down to get them closed?

This happens to me in cycles. I clean out my clothes, donate, and organize, only for several months later having to do it all over again. It is exhausting!

When I saw that the Sugar Beet Food Co-op was hosting a clothing swap, I was immediately on board.

I tore apart my closet and dresser, pulling out everything that barely got worn, or no longer fit right. I had already had a pile of clothes that still were at my parents’ house, including multiple pairs of jeans I will never fit into again (sad day).  With the bags of clothes piled into the back of my car and I headed to Sugar Beet.

Upon arrival, we were instructed to sort our clothing by category onto tables.

After everyone had laid out their pieces, we were then able to browse and pick anything that caught our eye (and was our size). My intention of attending the swap was not to get new clothes, it was more to offload what I had accumulated over the years.

The whole experience was neat because I was able to see other people pick up my articles of clothing and be excited about them. That was much more fulfilling than dropping off a bag of clothes at a donation center. I loved knowing that my pieces were exactly what someone else was looking for. Even so, not everything was picked up, so what was left was donated.

I did leave with one article of clothing though. It was a knit vest and it is so cozy warm that I have worn it for the last two days.

 

The only thing I allowed myself to take home from the swap! 

With my resolution of reducing my clothing purchases this year, hopefully, I won’t need to be attending too many more swaps!