New York Couple Recommends Simple Steps to an Affordable Green Nursery

When Sofia Chabot and her husband began planning for their first child, they wanted to make their entire home greener. By learning as much as they could and planning ahead, the Queens, NY, couple have created a healthy nursery to welcome their baby—and a healthier home as well.

Education Is Key
When my husband and I started thinking about having a child, we began to read books on child development and what you should and should not eat when you are pregnant. We now eat only organic food. And because I am chemically sensitive, we use only green cleaning products, most of which we make ourselves using the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition’s recipes for safer cleaners.

Simple Steps for a Greener Home
We felt that it was important to try to make our entire home green, because once the baby gets older he will be crawling and walking all over the house. Many experts recommend remodeling as far ahead as possible before delivery, ideally before the mother is pregnant. We began our renovations four months before we found out I was pregnant.

We started by removing the carpet covering our living room, bedroom, staircase and the future nursery. (Carpet typically teems with dust mites, bacteria, and chemical toxins—all of which our baby would be inhaling when he was old enough to crawl.) When we lifted the carpet, we were pleasantly surprised to find a solid oak floor in very good condition. We called almost 10 flooring refinishers to find one that would use a water-based finish, which we wanted because oil finishes emit more toxic fumes. Even though I was not yet pregnant, we stayed out of the house for one day, with all the windows open to air out the refinished floors. Around the same time, my husband and his father repainted the walls in the nursery with a big brand’s low-VOC paint. We didn’t know at the time about paints made by smaller manufacturers, like Bioshield.

The Search for Green Baby Products
In September of 2005 we became pregnant. We began to search for green baby products. We purchased a 100 percent pure rubber baby mattress and a wool moisture pad from the Organic Mattress Store in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. We also purchased a solid oak crib and a baby dresser and changing station with a nontoxic finish from Babies “R” Us.

Planning ahead allowed us to shop around, so we were able to get healthier products at reasonable prices by comparing multiple stores and taking advantage of sales. Also, when you’re shopping for organic clothes and other green products in New York, shopping around is a necessity because many stores have just a few organic items in stock.

The most difficult item to find was the pad for the changing table. All the pads we saw in the stores near us (Babies “R” Us and BuyBuy Baby) were covered in vinyl. Luckily, we located a store called the Organic Nest that had organic changing pads.

We also purchased PVC-free baby toys, and a natural cotton curtain from Bed, Bath and Beyond. We have been purchasing organic baby clothes and bedding for our baby’s crib from Ecobaby and Gaiam.com.

We feel good about the green improvements we’ve made to our home.  The nontoxic materials we’ve used in our nursery help make it a safe and healthy environment for our new baby.