My mini’s not so minimalist wardrobe

My mini’s not so minimalist wardrobe
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I did a quick audit. I've just counted 24 dresses, 4 skirts, 4 t-shirts and 3 pairs of shorts in my 4 year old daughter's wardrobe. And that’s not even including the week's worth of clean washing that still needs to be folded and put away. I'm not really sure why I've decided to share this in a blog post because I'm actually pretty mortified by what I've counted…. !

Does this feel excessive? Is it made up almost entirely of fast fashion brands? Do I feel tremendous guilt? Yes, yes and yes! Did I mention she also has 5 pairs of swimmers!? 

I am about as minimalist as they come when it comes to shopping for my kids clothes, and yet this is what I find. To be fair, I'm not the one who has made most of these purchases. Of course I am responsible for a few but this colossal collection is largely gifts from well meaning family and hand-me-downs from generous neighbours. Still…wow. 

To put some context around the resource intensity of the items sitting in my little person's closet; it takes 2,700L of water to make one cotton shirt, from growing the cotton right through to producing the item of clothing. This is equivalent to the average persons drinking water requirements for 2.5 years. So just looking at those 24 little dresses (most of which are cotton), there is potentially over 60,000L of water, which is about 55 years worth of drinking water for one person….this makes me feel so many things…none of which are good. What's more, there is an alarming percentage of the world's population that don't have access to clean drinking water. 

Cotton production requires vast amounts of pesticides. Wastewater and textile dyes from the manufacturing process are often discharged into local water systems which can harm the surrounding environment and further exacerbate communities' lack of access to clean water. Sadly, the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry fall disproportionately on low and middle income countries.  

So I'm clearly not perfect, but what's even more evident is that the current system of fashion production is also far from perfect. There has to be a new and better way to consume clothing more consciously and sustainably. This is the problem that Curious Kind hopes to help solve. 

We're creating a model that changes the way we think about our kids' closets and clothing ownership, but without limiting access to gorgeous clothes for our minis. We want to provide you with kids clothes, done the new way. Its about choosing access over ownership, where you get access to huge range of ethical kids clothes and you simply return them when you want to refresh or size up. Most importantly we want to take the hard work out of sourcing ethical and responsible clothing and make sure that more of these pieces end up in more kid's wardrobes. On top of that, we hope to save you time, money and space in your home. 

So stayed tuned, sign up to our mailing list we're so excited that you're here on this journey with us!

Do you have any favourite ethical or sustainable fashion brands? We'd love to know about them and why you love them, please let us know! 

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