But where did the crunchy come from?

The salesperson at a natural baby gear store once told me that babywearing is like a gateway drug into cloth diapering. I think that's the case with a lot of element of the crunchy lifestyle: trying one thing leads you into considering another.

I grew up with an occasional garden, my father baked bread as a hobby, and we always used a real (unprotected!) tablecloth and proper dishes on Shabbos. I also used my former cloth diapers as doll blankets. But I never really got interested in making specific attempts to live naturally until I was married and running my own home.


It's literally true for me that babywearing led me to the ridiculous (but awesome) world of cloth diapers. I used to say that I'd love to buy organic products if I could afford them. But I have to admit, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver was what changed my thinking overall. I think I saw an excerpt from it in a magazine or something, and then saw the book itself on display at the library...either way, I got around to reading it, and it definitely influenced me towards eating local and clean, and homesteading/making from scratch.

At this point, a lot of the "green" in my life has to do with having kids. I want them to be clean and comfortable and safe, in the long run as well as at the moment. I want them to eat a variety of non-brown foods. I want them to grow up in a world that isn't the precursor to WALL-E.

Will I end up chucking Bounty in favor of un-paper towels anytime soon? Probably not. But I can see my way to using cloth napkins, at least for Shabbos, at some point in the future. Who knows?