An elevated hand-me-down process, but WAY more fun for my girls!
Rachael Classi, Founder & CEO of Tiny Earth Toys shares her first experience with Rent a Romper’s toddler clothing subscription.
I have always thought of myself as someone who chooses the sustainable option. For years I commuted by bicycle (even during 4 years of endless rain in the Pacific Northwest), ate a mostly plant-based diet and chose to borrow before I’d buy. But something happened when I had kids. Life was tougher and making eco-conscious decisions became so much harder. I became a mom to a 2 year old and a newborn and I am certain I was sleeping zero. We became the family eating take-out on the reg and prioritizing convenience and anything that could get us 15 more minutes of sleep over basically anything else. It was survival.
It wasn’t until last year (my girls are now 4 and 2) that I felt the space to start making more intentional and planet-friendly decisions. We’ve almost completely eliminated single-use plastic in our home, created some great book rotations with friends to share what we don’t need to own and gotten better about cooking mostly vegetarian for our meals.
So when I heard about clothing rentals for kids, who notoriously outgrow their clothes in 15 minutes, I was intrigued. I hemmed and hawed about it for a few months wondering if it made sense considering we buy clothes for my older daughter and then pass them down to our younger daughter and then pass those down to neighbors. But this summer we found some seasonal gaps in our supply of hand-me-downs coupled with a 2 year old who only wants to be in dresses, diaper-less I might add. If you’re wondering if I have an early potty trained toddler, I do not. She mostly just refuses to keep a diaper on saying “itchy”. Needless to say we have hardwood floors and have removed a lot of rugs.
Back to kids clothing rentals. I met Lauren Gregor, founder of Rent a Romper awhile back as we both work in the circular economy for children’s products and I have been so impressed with her and her company. So I subscribed to a capsule for my younger daughter, added her sizes and preference for dresses and two days later we had a shipment on our front porch. Since my daughter’s birthday is coming up and she’s just learned the concept of presents, she assumed this was a really cool present from someone named Lauren. We let her unbox it. Her immediate reaction was to look through each of the 7 beautiful little dresses saying “wow dresses”. She then started stripping down, flung her diaper off, and shouted “put on, put on, put on”. It’s 7 days later and she’s been decked out each day since. Besides my daughter being thrilled, having the discovery, curation and logistics taken off my plate (it’s crazy simple) feels like someone took an item off the crushing mental checklist I keep in my head at all times.
