Field Notes

Monday, July 20, 2026

By RUBY CHU · July 12, 2026
It Was Never Really About the Wipes

 

There is a warehouse somewhere, probably several dozen actually, full of bags shaped like marshmallows. Quilted, pastel, embroidered with a small animal doing something whimsical. They are called diaper bags, and they are designed to be seen from across a park, the way a hazard vest is designed to be seen from across a highway.

 

*New parent. Tired and confused. Approach with caution. Contains wipes.*


I want to be upfront about something before you read any further: we are a brand. We sell things. There is a checkout page on this website and I would, genuinely, like you to use it. I'm not going to pretend this journal exists for any reason other than that I have opinions and a place to put them now.

But our beginning was a bit different, so bear with me.

I spent four years, 127 days, and roughly six hours deciding whether to launch MarluMob at all. That's not a cute founder number I made up for effect. I had the samples. I had a purchase order from the manufacturer sitting there, waiting for one signature. And I kept not signing it, because the world did not seem to need another parenting brand.

 

You can’t open your phone without something being sold to you. Every commercial engine on earth has decided that new parents, these creatures that are sleep-deprived, anxious, freshly rearranged as people, are an excellent target because we'll buy anything that promises to make it slightly easier.

 

The one thing nobody sells you is a little privacy inside your own head.

So the question I kept asking during those four years wasn't ‘can I make a better diaper bag?’ It was: why does it have to be a diaper bag at all?


Why not a mom bag, or a dad bag, or a bag with a lifestyle attached? Why can't it just be a bag, the same category of object as every other bag you've ever owned, that happens to be carrying things for a very small person? The contents are for the newborn. The bag is for you. Those are two different facts, and I don't understand why the industry keeps collapsing them into one quilted, labelled, 18-month object.


Because that's the other thing: the lifespan. Most diaper bags are fast fashion with a changing pad. They are designed for a small window, cutely called the diaper years, and after that they go to the back of a closet, then a donation bin, then wherever donation-bin bags actually go, which we all quietly suspect is a landfill.

 

We built ours to last twenty years. Diapers, then snacks, then soccer cleats, then your laptop when the kids don't need you to carry anything anymore. It doesn't retire when the child stops needing wipes, because it was never really about the wipes.


I swear this isn't a rant about how everyone else sucks and we've cracked it. Plenty of parents love a bag that announces itself, and honestly, good for them. The little embroidered animals are having a great time.

 

But it's 2026, and some of us would like a little anonymity in what is already the most publicly observed era in human history. A bag that lets you walk into a meeting, a park, a flight, a café, as yourself. Someone who carries their stuff around like every other person on earth, some of whom happen to have a baby.


That's the whole idea.

 

It took me four years to sign for it.

 

The bag, mercifully, works faster than I do.