The Parent Loop's Guide: Jan 23-25

Can’t believe it’s already been a week since our first book club. It was such a magical night being surrounded by UWS moms who immediately related to the fear of a double (or regular) stroller on the bus or the 96th subway elevator not working. There’s just something special about this group. Huge shoutout to the 8 moms who took a chance to meet other moms, showed up, shared, and learned together. Already looking forward to many more of these cozy, heart-warming nights.

Quick shoutout to the other 6 moms for tearing up the dance floor at the @momsfeelingthemselves party last Saturday. My legs are still sore and I can’t wait to repeat it soon! Loved seeing a new parent looper (hi Marisa!) on Monday at the American Museum of Natural History. So glad you said hi and sorry we had to rush to a potty break.

Snow is on the way this weekend according to my go-to NYC weather source @nymetroweather but I’m still sending some activities your way to help curb all that extra energy.

As always, all events below are free unless otherwise noted. Follow @theparentloopnyc on Instagram for quick updates.

When I first connected with Jessica Granata, founder of Carousel, we bonded over the kind of detail only parents notice after the fact. Right at the start of our call, she glanced down and realized she still had a sticker on her shirt, a reward from her daughter, Olive, for her mom’s good behavior during a dentist appointment she had tagged along to because her husband was traveling. I laughed because that same morning, my husband was also out of town and my toddler had been sitting on the bathroom floor, quietly decorating my pants with Band-Aids while I did my makeup. I noticed a few stragglers on my legs once I was already on the subway to work.

We were both juggling dentist appointments and that familiar feeling of showing up to something routine only to realize there’s always one more step no one warned you about. It was a small, funny moment, but also a perfect snapshot of parenting in New York: logistics stacked on logistics, surprises discovered late, and a constant sense of figuring it out as you go.

That feeling came up again almost immediately when we started talking about kids’ clothes.

Even when you want to do the “right thing,” clothing a growing kid in New York can be exhausting. The seasons swing hard. Storage is limited. Time is tight. And most systems still assume parents have the bandwidth to list items, message strangers, coordinate pickups, and negotiate over a five-dollar pair of leggings.

Carousel grew out of a clear mission to keep kids’ clothes out of landfills and a very practical realization: when Jessica tried to buy cute, quality secondhand clothes for her own child, the system didn’t work. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t designed for real family life.

She’s careful not to overclaim a cultural shift toward secondhand. What she can speak to is something most parents recognize instantly.

“Most people want to be sustainable,” she told me. “But they expect companies to present them with the sustainable choice, which I don’t reproach them for. The system has kind of been rigged against sustainability.”

That framing matters. It pulls the conversation away from guilt and toward design. If secondhand feels hard, it’s not because parents don’t care. It’s because the default options don’t fit the reality of family life.

Jessica’s mission is simple and specific: reduce textile waste and, more precisely, eliminate children’s clothing from the landfill.

“There’s just no reason for children’s clothing to be in the landfill,” she said. “If it’s still good, it should be in circulation. And if it’s at the end of its life, it should be recycled or reused in another way.”

What makes Carousel compelling isn’t just the mission. It’s how she arrived at the solution.

She didn’t start with branding. She started with a pile.

“I worked backwards,” she told me. “I started with a big pile of good clothes that weren’t getting to the right place.”

She saw the same question repeated again and again in local parent groups: What do I do with all this stuff? Not the stained, stretched-out pieces. The good stuff. The barely worn outfits. The gifts that arrived already a size too small. Clothes with value, but not enough value to justify selling one item at a time.

Like most parents, she tried the existing options.

On centralized resale platforms, she was routinely disappointed by the condition compared to the price. On peer-to-peer marketplaces, she ran into the familiar friction: inconsistent listings, awkward coordination, and still no guarantee of quality.

Then there was access. Jessica’s daughter was born during the second year of COVID, and she didn’t even know clothing swaps were a thing at first. She sees more of them now, especially through public schools, but she pointed to a real gap.

“If you’re not in that world, you can’t plug in,” she said. “There’s such an opportunity.”

She also didn’t have family nearby. No built-in village. Hand-me-downs can be incredible, but they’re imperfect as a system. Sometimes the style doesn’t match. Sometimes the condition isn’t great. Sometimes you take things you don’t actually want because the gesture feels generous.

So Jessica went deeper into the system and started digging, almost like a clothing archeologist tracing where kids’ clothes actually end up once they leave a family’s closet or donation bag.

When she began exploring Carousel as a business, she discovered the Goodwill Outlet in Long Island City, where clothing is sold by the pound. She started going on exploratory trips, part research, part sourcing, part reality check.

That’s where she noticed something important. Resellers were competing hard for adult clothing and vintage finds. Kids’ clothes, even in great condition, were often left behind.

That insight helped her answer a question she sometimes hears: are you taking clothes from people who need them?

Her answer is no. Not because need isn’t real, but because the supply of children’s clothing is massive and much of it isn’t being recirculated at all.

“What I wanted to solve,” she said, “was how to create circularity for everyday items.”

She gave a simple example: a Target T-shirt. Grandma bought it. It was worn once. It’s already too small. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces like that, perfectly usable but stuck in limbo. Yet expecting parents or small businesses to tag, list, photograph, and sell each item individually is unrealistic, especially in New York City.

The capsule became her answer.

Instead of turning parents into part-time resellers, Carousel bundles secondhand clothing into curated capsules that make everyday circulation possible.

Just as important, she didn’t want it to feel like a compromise.

“As someone with a marketing background,” she said, “I knew it had to be more than the clothes. The clothes are great, but there are lots of great clothes. You’re buying into the movement.”

That’s also why she insists on delight, not as decoration, but as strategy.

“Why does it have to feel like a schlep?” she said. “Why can’t it be fun?”

She pointed to brands she studies closely, including Loved Before London, a secondhand stuffed animal company that built demand by telling stories and reframing reuse as something joyful and intentional. The product works, but it’s the narrative that changes how people feel about buying secondhand.

She also looks to Tony’s Chocolonely, the chocolate brand that’s explicit about what it’s really selling. It’s not just a candy bar, but a mission to end exploitation in the cocoa industry. The product is accessible, colorful, and familiar, but it’s backed by a clear point of view about how things should work.

Both examples share something important: they don’t ask consumers to work harder or feel guilty. They redesign the experience so choosing better feels obvious.

When people hesitate about secondhand, Jessica offers an analogy that tends to land.

Think about restaurants. Those plates aren’t new. Hotels don’t use new sheets for every guest. Reuse is already baked into daily life. We just resist it in the category where it makes the most sense: clothes designed to be outgrown almost immediately.

When I asked Jessica if there was anything she wanted to share that I hadn’t asked about, she paused, then mentioned something that clearly mattered to her.

She loves how many moms reach out with ideas for Carousel, suggestions for features, products, or services to add. To her, that signals something deeper than feedback. It tells her that parents want this to succeed, to grow, and to become part of how families take care of each other.

What I appreciated most throughout our conversation was her clarity about who she’s building for.

She isn’t trying to convert parents who truly don’t care. She’s focused on the much larger group who already wants to do better and is overwhelmed by the logistics.

“There’s a huge pool of people who already want to do the right thing,” she told me. “They just need the option.”

That idea echoes so much of what I see through The Parent Loop. Parents aren’t asking for perfection. They’re asking for systems that work with real life: tiny closets, fast growth, limited time.

And ideally, systems that still leave room for a little joy.

If you’re curious what this looks like in practice: Carousel offers curated secondhand capsules for babies and young kids, along with options to pass along outgrown clothing through local pickup in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn or a mail-in program. Capsules are currently priced in the mid-$40 range, and gift cards are available for families who want to share the gift of secondhand curation. The goal is simple: keep good kids’ clothes circulating and out of landfills, without adding another to-do to a parent’s list.

P.S. Loved hearing from a parent (yay Kelsey!) that ordered her capsule. Let me know if you’ve ordered one and/or tag The Parent Loop and Carousel on Instagram! I know Jessica and I would love to hear from you.

P.P.S. Keep an eye for my unboxing of my capsule this weekend @theparentloopnyc. Thanks for your patience: post-flu catch-up with both parenting and work has been a very real and slow but fast-paced reset.

Next up in The Loop Edit’s series, Let’s rethink kids’ clothes in New York: An interview with the founders of Little Swaps, a peer-to-peer marketplace for parents.

Because “What should we do?” doesn’t need to be stressful.

The Parent Loop

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