If you've finished a tissue box, don't toss it just yet — you can create an engaging toy for a baby in your life.
The scoop
Educator and mom Jamie Robinson (@sprouting.little.learners) posted a video of her clever tissue box hack. In the video, she demonstrates how refilling an empty tissue box with thin scarves turns it into an interactive toy for any baby approximately 5 months and up.
"[It] helps baby practice grasping and pulling," she explains, showing her own child happily drawing the scarves out of the box.
The hack couldn't be simpler, with the only necessary materials being the empty box and scarves or fabric.
How it's working
While Jamie is demonstrating the toy with sheer scarves she ordered on Amazon, it's easy to save money and prevent clutter by simply repurposing fabric already in your house.
This is a trick that extends far beyond the tissue box toy. For parents, the volume of necessary child-related purchases is overwhelming; they need wardrobes, toys, and enrichment at every different life stage. But with some clever thinking, it's possible to parent much more cost-effectively by looking to repurpose what you already own instead of buying new.
One stellar example of this is the Buy Nothing Project, which is growing nationwide. In these hyperlocal social media groups — typically formed on Facebook but also in their own app — people give and exchange items they no longer need with members of their community. It's a particularly fruitful place for parents, as each new year (or even month) ushers in a new stream of possessions and makes several more obsolete.
This is also an excellent way to create a more sustainable, waste-free future for your little ones. Baby-related items generate a staggering amount of pollution, from the 30 billion disposable diapers getting tossed every year, per the McGill Office for Science and Society, to the millions of tons of plastic generated by the plastic-intensive toy industry, per Yale Environment Review.
"Baby gear brings the superfluity of so much of what we buy into sharp relief, because even if we do use it, we likely won't need it for that long. And there's just so much of it," author Tatiana Schlossberg wrote on the website Parent Data.
What people are saying
Commenters were enthused and eager to try Jamie's hack, and more parents shared their enthusiasm for repurposed, recycled, and regifted toys.
One person also left a lighthearted comment, writing: "In love with the fact that every time he manages to successfully take out/hold something in his hands, he directly puts it inside his mouth. All babies are [the] same."
One heartfelt post on the Scary Mommy parenting blog praised the community-building aspect of Buy Nothing groups. "I see how many things have changed hands. I imagine kids playing with toys that others have loved, then passing them along again," author Thao Thai wrote. "It's a new kind of inheritance, one that moves not through a single family, but through an entire community."
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