Make Your Own Everything

Make it all yourself. Surround your child and yourself with your own intentions, your own choices, and your own lovingly made creations. Self sufficiency can lead to natural living and sustainability.

We have collected resources, some free and most inexpensive, to help you make your own everything.

Cloth Diapers & Covers
Laundry & Diaper Care Cleaners
Cloth Menstrual Pads
Baby Slings
Household Odds and Ends
Dolls
Business
Education
Funeral (no kidding)

Make Your Own Cloth Diapers & Covers

• Free detailed instructions with step-by-step photos to help you make several styles of cloth diapers and diaper covers at DiaperSewing.com.
• More cloth diaper sewing resources from Fuzbaby.

Make Your Own Laundry & Diaper Care Cleaners

• Our own endlessly adaptable baby wipes recipe for your baby's needs.
• More laundry and diaper care resources from Fuzbaby.

Make Your Own Cloth Menstrual Pads & more mama stuff

• Free cloth pad pattern and instructions from Mothers Helping Hands.
• More cloth pad & mama stuff resources from Fuzbaby.

Make Your Own Baby Slings

• Free instructions for both a pouch (no-sew) sling as well as an adjustable sling from Maya Wrap.
• More baby sling resources from Fuzbaby.

Make Your Own Household Odds & Ends

• Herbal insect repellant and flea repellant for dogs from Bella Online, Frugal Living editor.

Make Your Own Dolls

• Free pattern and instructions from Chiharu Kikuchi for a beautifully shaped Sumo Wrestler doll.
• More dollmaking resources from Fuzbaby
  (including dog felt).

Make Your Own Business

Articles from Fuzbaby:

• "Smallering, a New Business Model," by Lori Taylor.
• "Work at Home Parent's Business Plan 101," by Lori Taylor.

Make Your Own Education

• Basic homeschool information from NHEN, National Home Education Network.
• More home education resources from Fuzbaby.

Make Your Own Funeral

Maybe not your OWN but plan your own and consider a home funeral or a green burial for your loved ones. If you already embrace homebirth, homeschool, and home business, it isn't a big leap. It is a growing movement.

• A Family Undertaking is a documentary film on home funerals broadcast on PBS' P.O.V. program. The PBS site includes great funeral resources, including an expert panel to answer specific questions.
• Some of the experts for "A Family Undertaking" run nonprofit organizations advocating your choice in funerals as a consumer. One of these experts is Jerri Lyons of Final Passages, a California nonprofit that provides workshops and information.
• The Funeral Consumers' Alliance has been around to answer your questions since 1963. Includes directory, pamphlets, answers to common questions, and how-to help.
• The Natural Death Center in the UK includes a great list of US and worldwide resources to support dying at home and environmentally-friendly funerals.
• EcoffinUSA has biodegradable coffins. (I like the Willow Eco.) They are even labelled Fair Trade, but they're made in China. I'll tell you what, just go grab some cattails from the pond near my house and weave a quick basket for me. Or, just toss me in the pond.

• Take sustainability to a logical end with a green burial. We have seen this practice become more common in the UK, but the practice seems to be growing in the U.S., too.
• Dozens of major news outlets picked up on a July 1, 2006, Associated Press story on the growing popularity of green burials. William Kates' "'Green' Burials Growing in Popularity" appeared on ABC, CBS, Fox, Yahoo News and many other websites as well as in papers from Washington Post and LA Times to small-town papers.
• The language changes as the news changes. Now you can think about a carbon-neutral death. It is still green burial or woodland burial, and I would like to see the movement grow in the US. BBC article, "Toward a carbon neutral death," March 2, 2007.