Welcome! This post is about Mother’s Day. If you have a complicated association with motherhood for whatever reason, we see you and are thinking of you. 

When I was around 5 years old, my mom came home from the store with a new pair of overalls. I was so excited. They were Osh Kosh B’Gosh and bright green and just the bees knees. I asked where they came from, and when my mom told me they came from a store, I looked at her with a confused face and asked, “you mean, no one has worn these before??!” I was simply flabbergasted. 

As the youngest of two girls and four extremely tight-knit cousins, I spent my early years wearing a lot of things that had never been worn before. My mom, as progressive as she is, didn’t do this because she read about the issues around textile waste, but just because…why not? She kept clothing in mint condition in some wizardry magical way only (certain) moms know how to do, so the clothing was basically good as new by the time it got to me. It was simply more efficient. For this Mother’s day, I wanted to take a look back at the different generations on how they accidentally lived sustainably, way before it was cool. 

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The Silent Generation (1928-1945)

Let’s start with the OGs. These women didn’t recycle because they cared about the planet. They recycled because they lived through the Depression and a World War, and throwing something away felt morally equivalent to splitting the flag. Nanna didn’t have a “capsule wardrobe” because she subscribed to Goop, she had four dresses because that was plenty and one of them was for church, so technically three. 

Tin cans became storage containers. Bacon grease lived in a jar on the stove for months. They didn’t compost because there were literally zero leftovers. These women sewed, mended, and could make a chicken last a week in ways that would make a Whole Foods shopper weep. Try explaining “food waste” to an 84 year-old today and you might have similar luck explaining six-seven. Sustainability wasn’t a values system, it was just good sense. 

And then, mid-motherhood, something shifted. The 1950s and 60s brought a plastics revolution, and it was genuinely thrilling. Tupperware parties became a cultural moment. TV dinners appeared. Convenience food multiplied on grocery shelves, all of it wrapped in shiny, modern single-use packaging. Crucially, a lot of this was marketed directly at women as freedom, as progress, as finally getting a break from doing everything the hard way. And after childhoods defined by scarcity, the appeal was completely understandable. These women earned a shortcut. 

So the silent generation contains both impulses, the instinctive frugality of necessity and the genuine delight of convenience arriving just in time. They were the pivot point, they just didn’t know what they were pivoting forward. 

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Baby Boomers (1946-1964)

Boomer moms never had to make the choice their mothers did, because by the time they were setting up households, convenience wasn’t a novelty. It was ust life. Plastic packaging wasn’t exciting anymore, it was simply how things came. Processed food wasn’t a great, it was Tuesday. The infrastructure was of disposability was already fully built, and Boomer moms moved into it the way you go on a trip someone else planned. Comfortably, without asking too many questions. 

Early habits die hard. The boomer mom who washed and reused ziplock bags and Ragu sauce jars was still in there, but so was the mom who loved herself some TV dinners on busy nights.  Boomer moms were walking contradictions. Depression-era instincts bumping up against a culture that had decided convenience was a virtue. 

They also raised kids outside without supervision, which, whatever your feelings on that particular parenting style, used zero electricity. 

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Gen X (1965-1980)

Gen X moms are the most accidentally sustainable generation, mostly because nobody was paying attention to them long enough to sell them anything. Latchkey kids became low-consumption adults, it turns out. They walked or biked everywhere as kids because their parents were busy and Uber didn’t exist. They carried that energy into adulthood with a kind of cheerful indifference that younger generations have spent thousands in therapy trying to achieve. 

Gen X women thrifted before it was aesthetic. THey bought second hand because new things cost money they didn’t have, and they weren’t particularly precious about it. A Gen X mom’s house was full if mismatched furniture that had belonged to someone else first, and she would have found the term “curated vintage” genuinely hilarious. It was just a sofa. They also had a remarkably low tolerance for fuss. No elaborate packaging, no seventeen-step routines, no supplements shaped like gummies. A Gen X’s mom’s skincare routine was SPF 15 moisturizer and moving on with her day. 

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Millennials (1981-1996)

And here we are. The generation that turned sustainability into a personality, a podcast, a tote bag, and somehow a source of crippling guilt. Millennial moms are the first generation to be actively, effortfully sustainable, which is admirable but also a lot. We researched the best reusable water bottle for 6 weeks. We have a compost bin and complicated feelings about whether we’re doing it right. We buy organic when we can afford it and then feel bad when we can’t. We spend $500 more a year on diapers because the ones we like are made without bleach. We use the word “intentional” unironically. 

To be fair, millennial moms are the first generation to raise kids with full knowledge of what’s at stake, and that’s a genuinely hard thing to carry. The anxiety is real even when the execution is imperfect. But there’s something deeply funny about a generation that needed the Yuka app and a fourteen-dollar candle to arrive at conclusions their great grandmothers reached by just not wasting things. 

So, here are some Finch followers' favorite hacks their moms did, before they called it “sustainable.” 

“My mom was always mending clothes, knitting everything from sweaters to hats to scarves.” 

“Cloth diapers, because disposable ones were too expensive! And putting water in shampoo and conditioner bottles to get every last drop.” 

“My mom darned my dad’s socks!” 

“With my dad, she erected a traditional pumping windmill on our property.” 

“Chain smoked” (this was a joke, I think, but too funny not to add)

“She made art out of everything: newspaper, cardboard, corks, old jars, whatever she found.” 

“Used jam jars as juice glasses for us”

“Always saved ice cubes that fell on the floor and put them in our plants.”

“Dressed me in boys clothes to avoid clothing waste and lean into hand-me-downs.” 

“My grandma kept every.single.rubberband. On one doorknob.” 

“My mom feeds the deer leftover fruit.” 

“My mom always hung laundry outside.” 

‍Here’s to you, moms, aunts, dog moms, grandmothers, and everyone else celebrating this weekend. We love you! 

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