Welcome to Alice’s eco-friendly Baby Registry! Alice is so excited to celebrate the arrival of her son, Phillip David, and her journey into motherhood. In honor of Mother Earth (and Alice’s love of thrifting, garage sale-ing, and hand-me-downs!) she is asking that the majority of gifts be reused or consumable.

PLEASE READ:

If you don’t have any connections to baby boy hand-me-downs and secondhand shopping isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other ways to support my journey to motherhood. Please scroll to the very bottom of the registry to the Parent Gifts section. Here you will see opportunities gift me a postpartum meal or gift card to Target or Meijer, or to donate to my doula fund and childcare/babysitting fund. But if you are up for it, here are some reasons why, and how-to’s, for second-hand shopping:

– Reusing an item rather than buying it new can reduce its carbon footprint by up to 82%

– Over 21% of municipal waste in the United States is comprised of common baby and kid gear materials

– Not to mention buying preowned items is so much more economical!

There are so many fun ways to find second hand treasures including hand-me-downs, resale stores, thrift stores, consignment shops, garage sales, and online. There’s a great shop in Ypsilanti called Once Upon a Child. Anything in good shape (that’s not too girlie) will suit us fine!

The internet has provided lots of opportunities for the peer-to-peer buying and selling of goods. Check out Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark, Nextdoor.com, ebay, etc.

There are also a number of websites that help users sell preowned items such as goodbuygear.com, dollarhog.net, us.rebelstork.com, storkexchange.com, and toycycle.com.

You’ll see on the registry, I’ve added links of examples of certain items being sold online secondhand. The online world of preowned shopping can move fast, so some of the suggested links I included may have expired (because the item sold since I created the registry in March). Please note that the links are just an EXAMPLE of the item being sold online and I am not necessarily asking for that specific item.

A great possibility are “Open Box” or “NWT”. Open Box products are typically floor models or returns that have been inspected for safety, functionality and cleanliness. NWT means “never worn with tags.” Especially when the seller offers free returns, it’s low risk, more economical, and keeping these things out of the landfill just makes sense!

Extra credit if the item is unwrapped or wrapped in reused paper or gift bags! 🙂

THANK YOU SO MUCH!