What to Exclude When You’re Expecting

Expectant mothers, especially first-timers, have much to think about. There’s so much planning to do that you may not know where to begin! You’ll probably do a lot of reading of those pregnancy and baby care books that everyone will recommend or pass on to you. You may find yourself submerged in online birth clubs and baby blogs, scouring the internet for those precious gems of wisdom that often are found at 2:00 a.m. (when you can’t sleep because of the little one doing gymnastics in your belly.)

And yes, you’ll learn plenty from those sources and many others, but you may eventually find yourself on baby info overload, especially where “the things you should buy” are concerned. Hey, you have enough to worry about. Your navel’s turning inside out, there’s morning sickness to contend with, and strange things are happening with your boobs. The last thing you need to fret over now is whether or not you really need a $900 stroller because it’s the cutest thing ever, and because you saw Gwyneth Paltrow strolling Apple in one on E! last night.

Look around, and you’ll find plenty of lists out there - things you “need” for baby - from retailers, manufacturers, magazines… and many of them can be quite helpful. But keep in mind that many of those seemingly necessary products were put on that list by marketers who just want your money. I can’t blame them really, as I worked in marketing for years, and it’s nice to make money! What’s not nice is to spend it on things that are wasteful, inefficient or just plain useless.

So with that in mind, here’s a list of things you really don’t need…

Childproofing
“What?!” you ask, “no childproofing - are you nuts?!” I’m still sane as far as I know. And that is due, at least in part, to my having learned to put aside unnecessary worries. Newborns aren’t mobile, so it’s unlikely they’ll be trying to get into household chemicals under the kitchen sink as soon as you bring them home from the hospital. Do yourself a favor, and use your first few months to take care of baby and yourself. You don’t need to bother with childproofing until Baby can get around and get into things. Of course you’ll need to ensure that your nursery is safe, but in the beginning that’s easily accomplished without all the white plastic gadgets. Relax, you have time. (If you are one of those obsessive planners, however, and simply must have the childproofing out of the way before baby comes home - fine, do it if it makes you feel better. I don’t understand you, though. Sometimes I envy you and your organization, but then I also know how your planning will go out the window when baby arrives and sets his own rules… so allow me to snicker about that.)

Wipe warmer
Unless you live in an igloo, wipes aren’t that cold. They’re moist and cool to the touch, which is logical since they’re made for babies’ bottoms. Wipe warmers do more than their namesake implies… they dry the wipes out, too. Nobody wants to try to remove sticky baby poop with a dry wipe, I don’t care how warm it is. And honestly, Baby just wants the poop gone as much as you do. Start him on moist and cool wipes, and he’ll never complain.

Bottle warmer
This thing was the bane of my existence for a about a week when my daughter was first born. Measure the water, fill the container, wait for steam, wait to refill since it didn’t work the first time, etc. Meanwhile, a baby is hungry and letting you and the neighbors know about it.

The books all say not to use the microwave. Most bottles say “do not microwave” right on the bottle, because bottle manufacturers do not want to be sued. This is one area where I was quick to learn that breaking the rules can be a good thing. The danger of the microwave is that it heats unevenly, and you don’t want Baby to get a “hot spot” and burn his tongue. This is where a little science and some common sense can come in handy. Experiment while the baby is napping and thus not screaming for nourishment. Fill a bottle and nuke it for 20 seconds or so. Then in the words of Def Leppard (one for you soccer moms), take the bottle, shake it up. Ahhh… yes, that’s right; if you shake it up, uneven heating can be fixed! What a concept. Of course you need to test it by squirting some on your hand or wrist, and adjust your microwave time accordingly, and of course all microwaves are different, and you should also take into account whether or not the formula was cold or room temperature to start with. This is where the common sense comes in. Just play with it a little until you figure out what works with your microwave and your bottles. (Obviously the construction of the bottles you use should be taken into consideration as well. I wouldn’t nuke a cheap, thin plastic bottle, but the Playtex Vent-Aires and Avents we use have always worked fine.)

Bottle sterilizer
While we’re on bottles, what’s with the sterilizer? Wash them well - by hand or in the dishwasher - and if you want to sterilize, you can do so by nuking them (empty) for 5 minutes or so in the microwave. A separate thing to put them in isn’t necessary.

Diaper Genie
This one’s iffy. I didn’t like having to reach into the Diaper Genie to push the diaper in to where it needed to go. I got over that, and then my daughter started solids, and even though I switched to the next “stage” of refill bags for solid food-eaters, the smell was in no way contained. In fact, there was nothing odor free about the Diaper Genie, nor any other brand or form of diaper pail I have tried. Pee and poop stink, that’s just the way it is. Keep in mind that you have to empty the diaper pails often, and clean and disinfect them as well. Eventually I just got a regular old diaper pail that I can use tall kitchen trash bags in - they’re cheaper than Genie refills, and I have to buy them anyway for the kitchen. I put pee diapers in the pail, and all poopie diapers get tied up in grocery bags and go straight to the trash. Grocery bags are easy to come by, but the little disposal dirty diaper bags work too - you can find a box of 50 or so for a buck at your local dollar store. In the end, diaper pails are somewhat necessary. In my case, I opted for something that didn’t require me to buy branded refills. It doesn’t make neat little linked sausages of the diapers, and it stinks - but they all do, no matter what it says on the package.

Diaper stacker
If you keep diapers in a basket or some other kind of organizer near your changing table or crib, the diaper stacker is just another unnecessary accessory. When it’s empty, you have to fill it, and they’re not that cute. Are they?

Cover for changing table pad
I honestly cannot think of a more useless product. Here’s a cheap piece of terry cloth that’ll cost you 10 bucks, fit the pad poorly and get raggedy after only a few washes… all so you don’t have to look at the plain white changing table pad, and maybe so you can cover it with something that matches your nursery décor. Well, it’ll get poop on it, and that will not only not match your décor, but it also makes for more stinky clean up and laundry. Most changing table pads are covered in a slick material that can be easily wiped down and disinfected. I clean mine with a bit of bleach water, and to me that seems more sanitary anyway… and there’s no worry over when was the last time I washed the changing table pad cover.

While we’re on the subject of changing table stuff, I was told by at least two people while pregnant with my first that a changing table is a waste of space. I read in several magazines that a separate changing table is not a necessity. That may be true if you are comfortable bending over to change Baby in his crib, on the floor, on the bed, or wherever you may do it. In my case, the changing table has been used probably more than any other “baby thing” in my house. It’s great for those of us who have back trouble, and it provides storage space as well.

Strollers
I suppose a stroller is much like buying a car in that you have you own preferences for features and desire for a certain level of luxury. Luxury isn’t much of an option in my case, and functionality is more important. My required features were safety, smooth “ride”, easy to “drive”, and recline function. (Don’t buy any stroller that doesn’t recline. Just don’t! You can thank me later.) I can’t believe there are strollers that cost $400, $700, even $1000 and have to believe that much of that cost has to do with status symbols. If that’s what you’re into, more power to ya - but I tend to think that a kid could benefit much more from that money going into a college fund instead. I have splurged on some baby gear, but I can’t imagine what is some folks’ rent or mortgage payment amount going for a stroller. It better be automatic and come with a nanny for that kind of money!

We started with a Graco travel system, which is really nice, and added a lightweight “umbrella” stroller to the mix later. Eventually my one became two, so we’ve since replaced them all with a tandem double stroller that does its job well and was a whopping $89 at Wal-Mart. It’s not a Bugaboo, but the kids love it, and besides the fact that it takes up a lot of my shopping bag space in the back of the SUV, it works fine for me.

Expensive high chair
When Baby can sit up and is eating solids, of course you will need a high chair or feeding seat of some sort. I started with a mid-range high chair (can you believe these things can go upwards of 200 bucks?!) and ended up with an $18 chair from IKEA. Know why I tossed the more expensive one? I got tired of washing the chair cover… over and over and over. Even worse was the divided tray. Sure, it had an insert that was dishwasher safe, but it was still hard to clean because of the divided areas. And when you think about it, there’s the tray insert and the tray to clean, so that’s double the work. Who needs that?

High chairs are for feeding, and they’re going to get dirty. Babies care about eating, and little else, when they’re in a high chair - so it seems excessive to me to provide more than what they want and need to make happy mealtimes for them and for you.

I now have two IKEA Antilop high chairs and feel that cleaning both of them up is less of hassle than it ever was to clean the one semi-expensive high chair that I had (before my second child was born.) They wipe/wash clean, and there are no extra parts to worry about. Smaller feeding chairs that strap on to big people chairs work well too and are portable which can come in handy.

(Note: the IKEA high chair pictured does not recline. It is probably best to use when Baby can sit unsupported. My son the super baby started in this high chair at 3.5 months, though he didn’t sit fully unsupported for another month. He may be a special case since he held his head up from the day he was born and had full control of it soon thereafter - he has never really liked to sit in anything reclined actually. Use your own judgment… you’ll know when Baby is ready.)

I’m not a doctor or an expert, just a mom like you. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the choices you’ll be faced with as you enter motherhood, just do the best you can for you and your baby - if you find ways of making things easier for you along the way, it just means you’ll have less to worry about, and more precious time to spend with your baby. I hope you’ve found some information that will save you some money, and a headache or two.

signs of pregnancy common pregnancy symptoms

Ralph Lauren River Rock Paint Notes

The Fix Chicks have received lots of mail about Ralph Lauren River Rock paint. In fact, that’s the ONLY Ralph Lauren paint we get email about, even though we feature a room done using their Suede textured paint. See the original article and additional comments here.

We’d like to thank Eric, who wrote in about a River Rock paint application solution that he and his wife, Erin, came up with.

Dear Fix Chicks:

My wife and I found your website after we destroyed our kitchen walls with Ralph Lauren River Rock, we had roller marks all over. Feeling confident with your hints I went over the walls again, still with no luck of having a finish we could both live with. So as a last resort we purchased a Wagner Power Painter and went over the walls yet again touching up the walls we were unhappy with. A third coat turned out great. The living room was next, we were kind of shy about doing the living room, but having invested in 3 gallons of Sandstone we hated not to use it. After the Power Painters’ second coat our living room looks great.

How we did it is we took workable sections and sprayed from left to right trying to coat the wall evenly without streaking and blending the next section. Try to maintain the same distance as you go. It still looked kind of streaky so the second coat we went from top to bottom, bottom to top to blend in the streaks. The first coat was dry by the time I was ready to start the second coat. Both coats took about 3 hours, but the prep time of masking off the room took about 2 hours. Take your time masking off the room and drop cloth the entire room; the paint and sand fleck will be everywhere. For safety wear a painting mask with plenty of ventilation. The living room was a breeze compared to the kitchen and worth the purchase of the paint.

Thanks for sharing Eric! Your shiny, happy Fix Chicks mug is on the way!

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Salt and Pepper: Flavorful Decorating

It’s funny the little things that stick with you. As an art major in college, I was exposed to many ideas and techniques - and a wealth of information. I studied everything from the history of impressionist painting to the “easy” task of properly centering a piece of clay on a pottery wheel (something I never mastered, sadly.)

But the most important thing I learned in college was this: listen to everything your instructor says, because you never know when they’ll float tiny pearls of true wisdom your way. Such was the case with a certain teacher of mine, and many years later, I still heed her advice on many aspects of design. My favorite quip of hers? “Design is bland without a little flavor - always add salt and pepper to taste.”

Nothing promotes interest and provides contrast like a little “salt and pepper.” Black, white and combinations thereof can really add a visual punch to any room. I’m not implying that an entire room should be black (although I’ll be posting pics and an article soon on my new BLACK rec room)…or white. Simply use the two to flavor your decorating, the same way you would use them in the kitchen to spice up your mashed potatoes… a dash can make all the difference between dull and delicious.

Black provides stark contrast to pretty much every other color. If you’re into pastels, don’t be afraid to mingle them with black - some of the coolest color combinations I’ve seen involved black with lighter shades of green, yellow - even pink! If you’re like me and prefer strong, vivid colors (candy apple red, bright orange, etc.), black is a natural choice for a secondary color. No matter the “base” color preferences, bet on black to add contrast and excitement to your room. Picture frames (buy them black or just paint your old ones), lamp bases, rugs and pillows are a fast way to integrate black into an existing color scheme.

White offers contrast with darker colors, but it can also be used to subdue, lighten and brighten areas of your home. It is an excellent choice for trim and moldings, window treatments and accessories.

Using black and white together, you can create a focal point, devise patterns and make things “pop”, or stand out. It can also make for a good diversion tactic, grabbing your visitors’ attention so they notice it more than something in your room that you don’t like - a stinky old, avacado green couch that needs replacing maybe? (Cover that thing, or throw it out already!)

If you’ve had the pale blue and mauve country motif decor for 15 years, don’t go out and buy all new black, contemporary furniture and fixtures - you may find that a bit too drastic. Use your imagination and draw from the designs and styles of others…just add or change what YOU are comfortable with. Get a feel for what you like and what you want to accomplish in the grand scheme of things. Then accessorize or paint gradually, introducing bits of black or white as you go.

Your home, like your food, is a matter of taste. Salt and pepper will add flavor, but the recipe is ultimately up to you. Someone pass the potatoes, please?

~Monica

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The mail-order garden, or not

If you’ve ever shown any remote interest in gardening, you’re probably familiar with the springtime glut of mail-order gardening catalogs and email ads. I did the mail-order thing a decade ago when we put in a totally new yard (at a new house) and I found myself this year doing the same thing once more, since we moved into this house about 18 months ago and didn’t even have grass . . . but over the years, I’ve put together a few tidbits of advice that I find myself passing along (mainly to my husband who kills more plants over a two-year period than I plant) so I figured I might as well post it here. I’ll try to organize them but since I’m not all that well organized myself, I dunno how this is gonna turn out, so bear with me.

About Dirt
Yeah, dirt. No matter how healthy your plant is when you stick it in the ground, if your dirt sucks, your plant will die. It’s worth the effort to either ask long-time residents about the soil in your area (what grows, what doesn’t - this will usually tell you what the soil lacks as far as nutrients), or send off a sample to your county agricultural extension office or even a local community or junior college - sometimes you can have a professional soil analysis done for free. Don’t assume that your dirt is already suitable for the kinds of plants you want. Do a little “digging” to find out if you need to add supplements, then give them ample time to take effect before you break the bank on a full-scale landscape that’s gonna turn yellow in 5 months. Been there, done that, wasn’t funny.

Along the same lines, if you’re going to add soil supplements and/or fertilizer, be sure to do so based on the actual requirements of the plants you intend to occupy that bit of ground. For example, roses require different soil conditions than azaleas. And it’s been my experience (after watching several hundred dollars worth of fruit trees burn up over the last 15 years or so) that when the old guy down the road says to use sheep manure on your apple trees, he doesn’t mean dump it in the hole when you plant the tree . . .

About Nurseries
Local nurseries are also a great place to find out about the soil conditions (or to find out how to get your soil analyzed). Local nurserymen can also debunk “miracle” gardening claims - sure the mail order house will sell me 9 varieties of grapes that will grow in Zone 8 or 9, but in reality, only ONE variety is disease resistent enough to survive more than a year in our disgustingly humid and pest-prone climate. Sometimes the plants at the local nursery are more expensive than the mail-order plants, but they’re also usually LIVE when I get them. Mail-order plants are shipped dormant, we’re talking “nearly at death’s door” dormant in some cases, and without immediate special care, they may not revive. You don’t have to worry about that when you cart home a dozen 1-gallon boxwoods from the local “Pik-a-Plant.” You’ve seen and chosen every plant yourself so if you got a half dead plant, it’s your own fault. The drawback to shopping local nurseries is that they all have the exact same things every single year - they’re businessmen - they have to carry what is guaranteed to grow so you don’t find too many exotic or experimental plants, or even heirloom plants for that matter.

Don’t be afraid to ask your local nursery if they can or will order specific plants for you, if you can’t find what you need. Chances are they can get what you see in any mail order catalog directly from the source.

About Mail Order
The first thing to remember when you DO choose to order plants through the mail is to order early. If you wait till May to order fruit trees, it’s likely they won’t show up till the end of June when it’s really too hot to be planting anything, at least in my neck of the woods. Most mail-order nurseries are located in cooler climates - their planting season is longer than that of someone who lives along the Gulf Coast, for example. For the supplier, June isn’t too late to plant a Stella cherry but for me, it is. Anything that shows up here after June 15th might as well go straight into the compost pile or something because chances are better that it won’t live. Yes, my Stella cherry, which arrived here the first week of July, is now no more than a four-foot tall, $20 stick in a pot.

The second thing to remember about mail order is to be prepared. You better have a place to put all those little “sticks” when they come in if you expect them to revive. Even if you just “heel-in” a small tree, that’s better than leaving it in the shipping plastic for three weeks until you have time to dig a proper hole and plant it.

You might also consider fall planting if you’re planning a mail-order yard. Nursey suppliers aren’t as busy then so your orders are usually processed in a more timely manner. I’m also told that in some cases, it’s better for a plant to go into the ground in the fall, where it will have plenty of time to re-establish a root system before sprouting again the following spring. And in the instance that you order something that can’t be shipped until spring, you got your order in REALLY early!

If you have a mail-order gardening tip, send it my way. Perhaps we’ll try it out and let you know how it works!

~ .\\

© 2001-02
MoodyDesign

Custom cabinets without the cost

When we were bulding our house, one of the favorite topics of conversation was who was going to build our cabinets. These discussions turned into a who’s who session where people complained about or complimented the guy(s) who built their kitchen cabinets. They threw around phrases like crown molding, custom height, european hinges, plate rack, and work surface, all followed by another word - expensive. Some of the folks I talked to spent as much as $10,000 on nothing but kitchen cabinetry, not counting the counter tops. One lady told me that if it came down to choosing between custom kitchen cabinets and my son’s UT tuition, to pick the cabinets.

I don’t want to make enemies of custom cabinet builders all over the country but I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. I have a 14’X16’ kitchen full of custom cabinets that cost about $2300, not counting the Corian counter top. I got exactly the layout I wanted, exactly the color I wanted, exactly the positioning I wanted and I didn’t have to wait on a list for some custom cabinet builder to have time to get to me — and I saved a ton of money. How? Three letters - DIY.

With periodic assistance from my son, who was 17 at the time, I assembled and installed every cabinet in the kitchen and all three bathrooms. We also installed the wine racks, the plate rack, the light fixtures, the floor, the sinks, and the appliances. The only thing in the kitchen we didn’t do ourselves was install the counter top. When people ask who did our kitchen and I tell them I did it, they look at me kind of funny . . . but you should see the expression when I tell them that I got the cabinetry at Home Depot, the appliances at a locally-owned appliance dealer and ordered the flooring sight-unseen over the internet! Yeah, that “Home Depot” cabinetry gets a good laugh from folks who haven’t ever been in my kitchen.

I don’t want to sound like I’m endorsing any particular suppliers or merchants, but I will tell you that if my Home Depot cabinet experience is indicative of what you can expect when you hit the DIY superstores, I think this is the only way to go for a remodel or new construction. There are several “levels” you can buy into - we chose the next-to-bottom level (price-wise) that Home Depot carried at that time - a brand called Mill’s Pride, because they carried the finish I wanted with the “decoration” I wanted. What I got were better cabinets and more versatile arrangement choices than I have ever had in a “home bulder’s” house. For you wood purists out there, most of the DIY superstores carry at least one line of solid wood cabinets if you prefer solids to MDF with veneer.

I was able to customize my layout very easily because the literature offered at the store was very comprehensive. The sizes and dimensions of everything they carry is well-documented. And if you don’t happen to have a background in architecture or floorplans like me, you can have someone at the store design a layout for you to inspect on their computer before you make your final choices. All you need are accurate room measurements.

You can also be creative. You don’t have to choose traditional cabinet designs or layouts. Use your imagination. By using plain shelves or cabinets without doors in combination with the various types of trim, molding, and millwork offered, you can create pieces in your kitchen that look more like furniture than cabinetry. I was questioned by several people - the assistant at the store, my husband, my father-in-law, etc, about my choice of corner cabinetry because the components I chose for one corner wall cabinet set wasn’t the same as the store’s model kitchen. They all thought I had made a mistake but I had seen this “other” use of multi-height cabinets in the Mill’s Pride brochure and liked it, so that’s what I shot for, with a few minor adjustments. In the above photo, that unit on the left by itself is “custom made” by me from four separate pieces. The small trinket shelves on the left edge are one unit attached to one standard cabinet unit stacked on top of a wine rack unit. The plate rack is a module that you can insert into any cabinet of compatible size. Another tall and narrow cabinet that matches the cabinet on the right of the gap was installed to complete this custom wall unit.

We also hung our wall cabinets at a non-standard height to accomodate some misplaced wall switches that we didn’t catch until after it was way too late to do much about them. The additional inch or two actually makes very little difference in the overall scheme of things. It’s easier to use under-the-counter appliances (more space) and everyone else in my family is six feet tall anyway so they don’t really care how high the glasses are . . .

For “work space,” I designed a huge kitchen island built from five separate lower cabinet units. Most of the island is counter-top. We installed a small vegetable sink and left an area to accomodate a short stool. The cabinet units that make up the base of the island offer tons of storage. In fact, we’ve lived in this house for a year and a half now and I still have four empty cabinets. I started collecting kitchen gadgets so I could fill up some of the storage space. Most pre-fab cabinet manufacturer’s offer a selection of narrow cabinets (seen in the center of the island in the above photo) that you can build around for custom units. In this instance, we added two curved shelving units on either side of the center unit. The “torture chamber” light fixtures came from Lowe’s, bought right off the sales floor.

One of the major characteristics of this kitchen is the broken top line - cabinets of varying heights. It provide visual interest and makes it easy to display “mixed” collections atop the cabinets. This look was easy to create because Mill’s Pride, and most other pre-fab cabinet makers, offer wall cabinets in at least two heights. The “black thing” on top of the standard-height corner cabinet is an aged copper pot that I stuck a plastic ivy plant in. Yeah, like I’m gonna get out a ladder to water a real plant every two days. We didn’t like any of the vent hood treatments that any of the pre-fab manufacturers carried so we built our own, which allowed us to include both cabinet and shelving space, and allowed us to leave the pipe exposed for the look we wanted (seen below).

There are still a few finishing touches that we need to add like the top crown molding and the light rails under the cabinets, but for the most part, the kitchen is finished. Because we only spent about a third of what we had estimated for cabinetry throughout the entire house (yeah, the bathrooms got the pre-fab cabs too), we were able to splurge on the counter top and appliances.

We got last-forever Corian counter top and top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances to complete what has to be one of the most unique rooms in our home, at least as far as style goes. Even though we bought most of what’s in there off the floor from the major home improvement retailers, our choices and combinations were rare enough that we ended up with something I know I’ve never seen in anyone else’s house before. When it’s clean, folks who see it say, “wow, you did all this?” which is what I wanted.

~ .\\

Some helpful links for planning your kitchen design or remodel:

Corian Counters

Mill’s Pride Cabinets

Home Depot

Lowe’s

iFloor.com

Frigiaire Appliances

Thermador Appliances

If you’ve got a woodworking project or tips you’d like to share with us, send it The Fix Chicks at tips@thefixchicks.com. If we publish your project or tip, we’ll send you a free Fix Chicks coffee mug just for playing nice!