Mama Gone Green is a blog dedicated to raising happy children and reducing our impact on the Earth. My name is Taryn and I am the mother of 2 young kids and an environmental studies instructor at a community college in Portland, Oregon. Please join me as I journey through life as a mama, teacher, knitter, photographer, gardener, and environmentalist!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Making Room For A Little Lady

 The past couple of weeks have found me doing some serious cleaning and organizing..... reorganizing Finn's closet and filling half of it with baby girl clothes, doing a huge clean-out of the fridge and pantry, purging all sort of unnecessary extras from the garage. I thought that I had already started nesting, which I was actually pretty excited about, as I was dreaming of all of the projects I could accomplish in the now 7 weeks that I have before baby #2 is due to arrive. However, the past couple days I have been feeling quite lazy and unproductive, and I am starting to wonder if my organizing madness was just an attempt at some New Year's resolutions and not at all related to being pregnant. Anyways, if it's not nesting, I hope I start nesting soon. Fitting an entire fourth person into our 880 square foot home (that also has 2 dogs and 3 cats, mind you) will be no easy feat, so I think some serious preparations are in order. And the earlier that we get a move on with this, the better!
I also feel extremely lucky this time for all of the hand-me-downs we have received for this little lady who is going to enter our lives. From about 2 weeks after I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was having a girl as I felt so different from when  was pregnant with Finn (and yes, an ultrasound did confirm my feelings, so I don't think we are in for any surprises...).  I was of course excited about having a girl, but also a little bit nervous about how different it would be. I also had feelings of frustration about needing a whole second set of clothes since we already had a perfectly good little boy's wardrobe boxed up in our garage.
However, as soon as word got out that I was having a girl, I was the recipient of several bags of hand-me-downs from neighbors and mama friends. Friends have offered to lend us the few baby items that we don't have left from Finn (like an electric breast pump!). Amazingly, I think we are going to squeeze by with only needing to get a few size small cloth diapers (we only had about 8 with Finn, and I found myself doing diaper laundry every day for awhile, which is definitely not energy efficient). I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful, generous friends who have not only saved us a lot of money, but have allowed us to reduce our impact by not having to purchase new items. Pin It Now!

7 comments:

  1. We live similarly to you (but in a larger house) :). But clothes wise, we rely 100% on hand me downs and gifted clothes, or Mama made clothes. For the kids that is. When my first was born I wasn't proud enough to ask for hand me downs and I soon became known for that and have had many people pass down clothes. Much needed since we too have kids of both genders. I also consign their old clothes or excess clothes, or clothes that didn't fit well, and I use the credit to fill in the gaps in their wardrobe and for the ocational wood toy steal. :) Do you have a consignment store near you?

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  2. I didn't realize that you were having a girl. Now I have to "hate" you as I am expecting our THIRD BOY. All I ever wanted was to shop for pink! :) Congrats to you!

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  3. I've got some small cloth diapers you can have. There, more money saved! :)

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  4. I am excited for a girl as well!! And yes, Portland has some great consignment shops (although a bit overpriced at times in my opinion)!
    Wintry- thanks so much... I swear, I think everything this little gal wears will have come from you first! We will take good care of it all (well, as good as you can with diapers!)and return them!

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  5. I have some girl stuff for you too. I have been hauling Sophie's baby clothes for 9 years and 3 states. I think I have a few newborn diaper covers too that Sollie grew out of super fast.

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  6. Good luck with your cleaning/purging! It sounds like you're making wonderful progress. I too am going through a bit of a nesting phase. I decided that I needed to sort through every single thing that we own. We're getting close enough to our due date, though, that I need to start putting the house back together. My vision of the birth does not include tripping over everything. :)

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