I'm a mother of twins, RDA accredited Cloth Diaper Circle Leader, and an RN discussing parenting tips, green living, and products I love!
Tonight is my Mothers of Multiples annual clothing exchange! I wanted to share what we do with you so that you could share this idea with your local club. This works great for any club that allows parents of children of any age. The clothing exchange falls at THE most perfect time of year too! A month before Halloween, so that we can exchange costumes as well! (I’m not quite able to give away last years costumes though. It was the first time I made the kids costumes and I’m too sentimental to share. It was a family costume including Fred, Wilma, Pebbles & Bambam. I know Bambam belongs to Betty & Barney but it worked. My husbands extra large fake feet were a hit at Boo at the Zoo.)
Anyway, back to the clothing exchange. We all bring clothes that our children have grown out of and pile them on tables. Then we find the size our kids need and dig in! What a great way to reduce and reuse! With experience, we have found it is a great idea to bring a suitcase to carry all the clothes in, especially if the location is a walk from you car.
If you want to add another social event to your club’s schedule you could do an adult clothing exchange as well! The icing on the cake to these exchanges is that, even if you don’t get rid of all the out grown clothes, you have your donations ready to go. Our club is hosting the Southern California Mothers of Twins Convention this November and all my remaining clothes will be donated to the charity our convention is sponsoring. I love knowing that our outgrown items will help someone in need.
A friend of mine passed on two resourceful websites that I wanted to share with you! The first is a website for parents of twins with loads of information about pregnancy, caring for twins and twin discounts. It’s called Twin Pregnancy and Beyond. I thought it was pretty helpful. Let me know what you think!
The second site is for the savvy parent as well. It’s called CleanBeeBaby.com. CleanBeeBaby is a mobile service in the Los Angeles area. This business steam cleans your baby gear.
If you have ever owned a stroller, then you know how messy they can get in a very short period of time. Why is this site for the savvy parent? I truly believe in the three Rs. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. One way to Reduce your $pending and Reuse/Recycle is to purchase used baby gear. If you are a first time mom, you might hesitate to reuse anyone else’s baby gear. Those of us with twins, may look a bit more seriously at this option because we have to buy two of many items. Steam cleaning baby gear makes a mom feel SO MUCH BETTER about a secondhand item. It may look good as new but what germs lurk on the item? Steam cleaning gets rid of this worry, saves you money (not buying new), and keeps this baby gear out of a landfill. Brilliant.
Clean up can be quite costly. Paper towels, napkins, and kleenex add up quickly and use plenty of resources. Our family made the switch to cloth napkins (plain white ones found inexpensively at Bed Bath & Beyond), plain white towels and cloth diapers. I use the towels to dry washed fruit and veggies, clean up spills and dry our hands and dishes. I have plenty so that there are always enough for cleanups. If you buy several you can change them out daily for those who like using paper towels to avoid germs in towels. We also use wash cloths the clean up the kids after meals. I use the prefold cloth diapers for cleaning up runny noses and drool. I do a load of laundry on hot at least every other day and throw all these cloth items in that load. Quick and easy, less expensive, and you use less of our earths resources!
