Makenzie Boes

Our home is cozy, and our family chooses to buy only what we truly need and use—allowing our space and belongings to grow thoughtfully alongside us as our needs evolve.

Disposable products can be useful and convenient, but regularly having them on our shopping list was really straining our monthly budget. Over the years, we've made a conscious effort to reduce how many disposables we buy, and I'm proud to say we've now cut them out almost entirely by investing in reusable options throughout our home.

My friends and I proudly call ourselves seasoned lazy campers. For more than a decade, we’ve been taking yearly trips to mark life’s milestones, and it’s become one of our favorite traditions. Over the years we’ve gone through a lot of gear, but this list highlights the essentials we always come back to.

These are the books that have become absolute favorites in our home. Perfect for bedtime, playtime, or anytime, they’re a wonderful way to start your baby’s library and spark a love of reading. We feel so lucky that most of these were gifted to us for the holidays!

These are the toys we own, love, and use all the time. They’ve been dropped, chewed on, hauled around the house, and washed more times than I can count—and they’re still going strong. If it’s on this list, it’s because my kids have played with it for years and it’s truly worth having.

Everything we bought this school year for my Pokemon-obsesed boy :) Because if he loves it, he will take care of it and we wont have to dig through the lost and found this year (fingers crossed!). It was more challenging than I thought it would be to find good quality school gear with a Pokemon theme. There seems to be a lot of junk out there that they just slap Pikachu on and call it good.