Our Favorite Natural Kid’s Products!

If you’ve ever tried to create a more kid-safe environment with non-toxic and natural products, then you know how challenging that can actually be! For most options, you can’t just run to the closest store and grab any old item off the shelf—there’s a lot more label reading and research involved when you are making such calculated decisions for your kids. For me, I know that reading the recommendations of other moms that I follow or know has really helped continue to hone and curate the list of kiddo items we have and use in our house with Lola, so Elsie and I thought that we’d share all the items that we love with you! I’ll be the first to admit though that I don’t have every single item in the house at “100% natural” level as it’s a lot of items to switch out after a lifetime of using more conventional choices, but we try to switch out things when as we can afford them or try and start with a safer choice when buying an item we don’t already own. Here’s our favorite natural kid’s items so far!

Bath + Body Products: Elsie loves this bubble bath for Nova and this line of shampoo that doubles as a body wash as well. Since Nova has such sensitive skin, they go through a lot of sunscreen each month, so Elsie likes how affordable this natural sunscreen is for the majority of her body, and then they use this on her face and this mist on her scalp. For Lola, we use the same face sunscreen and scalp mist and this on her body. We use this and this shampoo/body wash combos and this lotion (when she will sit still for it, which isn’t often!).

Toys: Elsie and I aim to avoid plastic toys and we both have wooden animals from this brand and Nova’s wooden rainbow stacker is to die for! For babies and small toddlers, we use this brand of natural rubber toys with Lola in the bath and she had mostly teethers like this crinkle ear DIY that you can make with organic materials or wooden teethers like this. We also have several toys from this brand and these wooden stacking shapes are just too beautiful to be toys (but they are!).

Mealtime: If you are looking for non-toxic items to use for mealtime, we really like using food-grade silicone pocket bibs for all of Lola’s meals to catch falling food with a larger organic cotton bib underneath to help protect clothing. Lola just started to learn to use utensils so we are starting her off with these and she thinks it’s pretty fun to try and use them so far! Up until now, we’ve been using a silicone bowl and plate (similar to this) but just switched to this stainless steel plate instead (so cute!). It’s been really hard to find a sippy or straw cup option that works really well, is durable, and isn’t mostly plastic, so I think we are going to try using one of these at home and save options like this for when we go out (this is awesome to have at restaurants and we just keep it rolled up in her diaper bag). We use these a lot to pack on-the-go snacks and meals for small servings of things like crackers or a side dish of her main meal, and I love these for larger items like sandwiches and bigger servings of fruits and veggies.

Bedtime: We use this organic mattress for Lola and these organic cotton sheets (this brand is my favorite!) since she spends so much of her life sleeping on the mattress. I love this organic sleep sack and it’s great that they have a winter and a summer weight as well. They grow out of pajamas so fast when they are little, but I’ve been trying to buy organic cotton pajamas for her as well since she spends so much time in them. Elsie has a mattress for Nova from this brand and an organic waterproof liner over the mattress (we have this one for Lola’s crib).

Elsie makes a quick room spray anytime Nova’s room needs a scent refresh (everyone with kids and a diaper changing station knows what she’s talking about on that one!) by mixing lavender, rosemary, and fir needle oils (10-15 drops of each) into a small amount of grain alcohol and then filling the spray bottle to the top with distilled water (I love doing a similar thing with lavender and grapefruit oils). And speaking of diapers, we use cloth diapers but that’s waaay too long of a conversation for one paragraph, so you can read more about my recommendations here if you’re interested in that (if you’re looking for a non-toxic more ecofriendly disposable though, I recommend these!).

There you go! Like I said, it can be overwhelming to try and switch everything out at once if you realize you’d like to make more natural choices than you have been, but start small, don’t let yourself get overwhelmed and use resources like this to help find better products (it’s not a perfect system but it helps a lot!). It does take extra effort at timse, but those little cuties are worth it if you ask me! xo. Laura

Credits // Author and Photography: Laura Gummerman. Photos edited with A Color Story Desktop.