The ugliness of baby gear

Like most soon-to-be moms, I'm pretty excited to get everything ready for the arrival of our new baby (due date is now less than four months away - eek!). As I've mentioned before (here and here), we have a couple of registries for baby things, but those are as much for my own organization as they are a place for others to select baby gifts.

The trouble is that SO much of the baby stuff is just plain ugly. There are awful patterns and terrible colors. And so much brown. My husband hates brown, and I'm starting to get sick of it too.

Example #1: Nursing covers. I plan to nurse this little one, including possibly in public. They make nursing covers, but so many of them are hideous. Like this one:



That pattern is awful, and others are worse. All I really want is a plain one in some sort of non-brown color. You can get pretty colors with ugly patterns, or you can get plain ones in brown or black. Why not a plain red or blue one? Yes, I could just use a shawl, but the nursing covers have some nice functionality (the neck strap and special shape of them is nice).

Example #2: Car seats. I get that people try to be gender-neutral, but this one is awful. We picked out a car seat (obviously), but even the best-looking ones still aren't that great looking. Why do they all have to have dopey patterns?



Example #3: Laundry hampers. I'd hoped to get a bright-colored laundry hamper (red, for example) to bring more color into our baby room. I've basically given up - they don't exist. The only things that are available are ones like the picture below. While it isn't necessarily ugly, it's more pale colors. Why is it that there are NO bright colors? I've obviously looked in the grown-up sections for bright-colored hampers, too, but I just don't think they exist.



It's a bit of a frustrating process, to say the least. Maybe my standards are too high, but I don't think so. I don't think it's too much to ask for a little variety.

Is it?