My Little Girl’s “Big-Girl” Non-Toxic Bed
I’m thrilled to post about the finished big-girl non-toxic bed! My daughter is loving being a big girl. (Plus she doesn’t sleep half on/half off the bed anymore.)
The bedframe itself is the Abbey Trundle Bed from Costco.ca (this model is no longer available, but they have alternatives), made by CafeKid.
I was debating whether to go with solid wood or composite wood, which was a tough choice. Lots of composite wood contains toxic chemicals like formaldehyde that continue to off-gas (which you can read about in my post about bedframes), but I did find a Canadian company, South Shore Furniture, that looks pretty eco-friendly. They manufacture particleboard and MDF from recycled fibers, and are ultra-low in formaldehyde (CARB II standards, California Air Resources Board – the most stringent standards in North America). I knew I wanted something with drawers, or a trundle, for storage space, and South Shore has lots of “mates bed” options (underbed drawers) and bookcase headboards. It’s pretty reasonably-priced as well. However, I thought solid wood would be sturdier if we went with a trundle, and found really positive reviews for CafeKid.
It took a bit of digging to find out more about how CafeKid products are manufactured – it lists non-toxic paint and lacquer on their website, but nothing more specific than that. I finally got a hold of one of their representatives who stated, “We use low VOC paints/lacquers. All of the MDF used is E-zero as prescribed by CARB (California Air Resources Board) Phase 2 regulations, which has no formaldehyde.” Phew! A huge sigh of relief for me! So off I went to order it online from Costco. Because it is solid wood it is definitely heavy. But it’s very nice construction and pretty simple to assemble (my husband was able to do it even with my daughter running back and forth, trying to “help” with her toy tools). Plus it’s sweet and girly.
Because I wanted to avoid toxins in her bedding, I made her a duvet with organic wool and organic cotton, with an organic cotton cover made with Harmony Art’s organic cotton sateen fabric, Fields of Honey -Pink. I got the big standard size pillow from Turn a New Leaf Designs, and made the pillowcase myself. I had some leftover wool batting and organic cotton fabric from making the duvet, so I made a couple of extra little pillows with it, and got some cute organic cotton fabric from Cedar House Fabrics (“A is for Apple”, Monaluna Fox Hollow collection) for the pillowcases.
Finally, I wanted to put some cute buttons on the pillowcases to hold them closed, and was thinking of some natural wood ones. They were hard to find in Canada. There are tons of button stores on Etsy but shipping from the US would have cost more than the buttons themselves. So I finally located a Canadian eco-friendly craft supply store based out of Quebec, Bonjour Handmade, and of course found waaaaay more buttons than I needed. Great selection there, and very reasonable shipping. Here are the lovely natural wood ones I got, on one of her alphabet pillows:
And there you have it! My little girl’s green big-girl bed – done!
What bedding do you have in your bedroom, or your kids’ rooms?
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