There are many bloggers out there that will tell you their favorite baby registry items. The best teething rings, the most innovative car seat, and the must-have anti-reflux bottles. As a new mom, I found these product reviews extremely helpful in a market that can be very overwhelming.
Unfortunately, most baby products are only useful during those short (but very long) 24 months. I recently took a look around my home and realized these few, very subtle, items that seemed to find themselves useful past their prime.
#4 The Lawn Drying Rack
We LOVED getting this drying rack. It wasn’t on our registry but we sure are glad it was purchased for us. There are so many PARTS that come with bottles: the bottle, the nipples, the caps, the straws? (Dr. Brown’s IYKYK) This drying rack is designed with dozens of low-profile prongs that hold any size item upright. The water drains into a water tray that is super easy to clean (just rinse!) You can also buy the “Twig” that holds smaller items up above the drying rack to maximize space.
We loved this product so much, it hasn’t left our countertop. We use it for travel mugs, tumblers, water bottles, and it is especially handy for all the straws (one prong will fit inside the straw to keep it upright) that inevitably come with them.
We choose to use the Lawn over a towel drying mat simply because the drying mat needs laundered and dried and doesn’t hold items in the best position for drying.
The Lawn and Twig can be purchased on Amazon or Target!
#3 Formula Scoops
Don’t sleep on these little guys. I try to find a use for everything before I throw it away and these were no exception. If you formula feed your little one, save these scoops for other raw ingredients around your home. We keep a scoop in our sugar tub, our coffee container, and flour tub. We keep some in our son’s craft bin for scooping Kinetic Sand (the bane of my existence!)
Before you toss that empty can, grab that little plastic scoop and put it to good use!
#2 Baby Wash Cloths
When our bathtub times started going from delicate and sweet, to trying to wash a baby T-Rex, we had no more use for the piles and piles of baby wash cloths. You know, the small, soft cloths that came in every gift set? The ones with the little baby giraffes and elephants? So cute. Well, we donated most of them but for the others, we put to a new use – cleaning!
There are the BEST cleaning rags for stainless steel, cooktops, and glass! They leave my appliances streak free and they are small enough to not take up so much space in our linen closet. I used to be a paper-towel junkie but that wasn’t very, you know, environmentally friendly of me.
If you have a few lying around, throw them in your cleaning caddy and see the difference.
#1 Diaper Dust
Well, what else did you think we were going to say? I, unfortunately, finalized Diaper Dust when my son was transitioning out of stinky diapers. It absolutely came in handy with pull-ups but this was when I decided I couldn’t just sit on this genius product, I had to let other families know about it. While I was building the business and launching Diaper Dust, I started discovering other ways to use it.
We would sprinkle it over left-overs we had to throw away and expired food if the bag was only half-full. I started sprinkling it in the garbage disposal before vacations and into my sneakers before laundering to get that lingering odor out of the soles.
If I am lucky enough and Diaper Dust is around for another 60 years, I’ll even find myself using it for diapers again.