Weird title, I know. But I’ve recently found out that I’m pregnant with my first child. It’s an equal mix of anxiety, excitement, and anger at just how consumeristic having a goddamn baby is. So I’m curious how my fellow Solarpunks would handle the introduction of a new small mammal into their world.
My main concern revolves around Amazon and general gifting.
I live in the UK, but I’m from the US originally, and my family and most of my friends are back in the US. Their go-to for sending me anything is Amazon, because you can easily shop in the US and ship to my home in the UK. I’ve had mixed feelings about this for a long time, but now that my entire family is gonna want to Buy Something for Baby I’m especially cautious. I don’t want to tell them not to buy anything (Well I do, but more on that later). But I absolutely do not want to receive anything from Amazon. Environmental, economical, political, and ethical concerns aside, I don’t really trust items from Amazon to hold up like I’d want them to. Might not technically be an issue with baby clothes, since they’ll be worn for a day at most, but anything else I come into possession of needs to be sturdy enough to be safe, and to be able to be reused/passed down/given to other parents in the community when no longer needed.
I found a website called LittleList that’s a UK-based baby registry, which seems to allow people from anywhere to order anything to my door, and they even seem to have an emphasis on more eco friendly brands. My plan as a result is to tell people they can only order off of the LittleList registry, or they can just get a card for my family and/or baby. That said, I’ll take advice for either how to get people to actually listen to this request, or for other, better requests to make.
My other concern with getting gifts (and even buying stuff myself) is I don’t know what I’ll actually need and use, and I’d hate to buy or receive useless stuff just to clutter my house. Also, I’m in Scotland, so the government will send us a box full of baby necessities when baby is born. I hope I can use this little fact to convince people that really, I don’t need anything.
TL:DR; anyone have advice for how to keep people from inundating me and baby with cheap Amazon stuff?
I’m also wondering if there’d be interest in a solarpunk parenting community here, because god knows if I posted this on a generic parenting forum I’d get all kinds of people not getting it, and I know this won’t be the last weird question I have.
I’ve got no advice on the Amazon stuff, but I’ve got some other general points since I’ve got a newborn now:
Buy as little as possible. People are going to gift you stuff, and you don’t need all the toys and doodads. There’s some bare minimums, but otherwise only buy stuff as you figure out you need it or it will make your life more convenient.
Have a registry. I’ve told everyone that my preferred gift is cash or gift certificates to the diaper service, and everyone fucks it off. You might as well target people towards stuff you need/want.
Buy used. 90% the things I’ve purchased myself for my kid is used.
On the flip of that, gift or resale everything you have when it no longer fits.
Cloth diapering. This is a huge environmentla impact. In my city there is a service, so they exchange all the diapers and covers once a week and do all the cleaning for me. I just use them and chick them in a bin. I’ve still got some disposables for edge cases (or when I go through all my cloth ones for the week…), but since the diaper service is already environmentally conscious, they sell some and they’ve already done the mental load of researching best options. I can’t speak to laundering them yourself.
Yessss cloth diapering. I’ve been working on sewing some even (including for years before I was pregnant) because I’m extra and ridiculous. But I haven’t found a local diaper service… might be smart. We don’t have a tumble dryer, so everything line dries, and while sun is good for stains and disinfecting and it will be Summer… it won’t be summer forever, and pulling a frozen nappy off the clothes line will only be funny once. Or twice.
We would just dunk the soiled diaper in the toilet to get the worst of it off and then toss them in the pail. Dump pail in washing machine and add soap. No biggie.