The Hello Goodbye Series: Cotton Talk

If you read this post or this post, you know that we've been making an attempt to reduce that amount of chemicals in our household.  We started in the kitchen by switching from teflon coated pots and pans to cast iron pans and stainless steel pots.  We've made a couple other changes in our kitchen as well, but I wanted to focus this post on bedroom textiles.

After considering that we spend a third of our lives (8 hours/day) in our beds, it seems like a good idea to eliminate any man-made fabrics from our pajamas and bedding.  It only makes sense that nearly covering our entire skin surface in a natural product such as cotton or wool is better than covering ourselves with chemical laden alternatives like nylon and polyester, especially those that contain chemical flame retardants or wrinkle guards.  

We have recently completed our goal of switching our bed sheets to the 100% cotton variety (In most cases organic cotton thanks to Target's reasonably priced organic cotton line that is on sale this week:)!  Also, I was able to print a $5 off coupon a couple weeks ago from Target.com, so I was able to pick up a set of organic cotton twin sheets for $18 this week.).

Also, we've shifted to using cotton pajamas, especially for our kiddos.  The task of tracking down cotton pajamas was easy for Charm who is still in toddler sized clothing.  The majority of his pajamas were 100% cotton already, so he was set.  My task proved much more challenging for Lucky, since the vast majority of retailers only sell polyester or cotton pajamas with flame retardant in them for young girls.  Lucky had 2 pairs of cotton pajamas to start and about 100 pairs of polyester pj's (really about 8).  I did find one pair of pajamas at Gymboree that was 100% cotton a couple weekends ago, and  I did splurge on a set of Hanna Andersson pajamas for each kiddo a few weeks ago, but they were on sale for $30 per set of pajamas.  Budget-wise, I couldn't fill up a pajama drawer (my goal was to have 7 pairs of pj's for each child) with Hanna Andersson pj's, so I got creative and picked up a few simple cotton t-shirts for $6 each at Target, and paired them with a few cotton leggings that my sister gave Lucky last weekend.  (I also picked up a pair at the Gymboree sale a couple weekends ago for $1.50.)

Hello Cotton Pajamas (and Sheets):

Goodbye Polyester PJ's (and sheets):

Lucky and Charm are officially set in the cotton sheet and pajama department, as are Bill and I.  And while we all sometimes wear some man made textiles during the day, at the very least we are in cotton 1/3 of the time, and every little bit helps:)!