this mom built a brand (and globetrotting lifestyle) around her childhood memories

How many moms do you know who loved their childhood so much they created a global brand around their memories?
We actually only know of one—Lex Brinton of Walker Family Goods. It all started with 6 kids (circa 1980s) piled in a van, road tripping to all 50 states, each fully equipped with their own, color coordinated duffel. Lex was number 5 of the 6, growing up seeing new places and trying new things with the people she loved most, her family. Now a mother to four, rad little road trippers of her own, along with her husband Loren have created a brand deeply rooted in family, nostalgia and products all about making memories with as much simplicity as possible. She’s magnetic in personality, both super cool and effortlessly beautiful, (we joke she’s one of the few that can talk on social media and actually not be annoying- that’s a true gift!) and she’s a mom who whole heartedly cherishes these days with her kids.

Meet Golden Girl // Lex Brinton

Tell us a little about who makes up your family of 6?

Well, we are the Brintons, but the first common misconception about our family is that our last name is actually Walker (even Arrow will sometimes introduce himself as Arrow Walker and I have to correct him). Walker is my maiden name and the name of our business Walker Family Goods. So, from oldest to youngest, The Brintons are made up of myself (no I am not a cougar, I am simply 2 months older than Loren), a Boise, Idaho native (before it became the great exodus for a lot of Californians), my husband, Loren who I met in Idaho when his band toured through in 2006. Loren was the drummer in a rock band and he likes to tell everyone I was a groupie, although if you’ve ever seen Almost Famous, I wasn’t a groupie… I was a bandaid. In reality, I went to every show that came through Boise at that point in my life and we had a mutual friend who introduced us. 4 years later we got married on the same date that we met, lived in Phoenix for 6 months and then moved to Encinitas, California. We started a videography business on our honeymoon, which kicked off our marriage with a lot of travel from job to job. I gave birth to our oldest, Arrow, in 2013 and then he was whisked away to surgery. He was born with Spina Bifida and has undergone several surgeries and continues a lot of physical therapy to this day. He’s a 50 year old man trapped in a 10 year old’s body and anyone who meets him is either offended or falls in love. Almost three years after Arrow was born, I gave birth to our daughter, Louie. Louie came out of the womb knowing exactly who she is and where she is going. She is insanely observant, nonjudgemental, and easily makes friends with anyone and everyone. After Louie, I experienced a miscarriage that rocked my world. In 2018, we bought a house in Idaho and poured ourselves into the remodeling process to take the sting off of our loss. In 2019 we brought our Valley girl into this world and she has been an utter surprise since the day she was born (starting with her actual gender being a surprise). Everyone in our family agrees that Valley is the funny one. She is equally sweet and tender as she is feral and wild! It’s damn near impossible to parent her and I actually love that about her. After Valley, we experienced 2 more miscarriages and almost hung up the towel on having more children. I was physically and mentally exhausted from our losses that I decided to take a year off and just focus on getting my mind and body as healthy as possible if we were indeed going to try to get pregnant again. Our Avi Moon was born on 12-12 of this year, in the comfort of our own home and it was the most beautiful and sacred bookend to our story of having children. Avi came out of the womb crawling and has been reaching milestones before they should be reached. He is such a big, happy boy that we are all insanely in love with.

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How did Walker Family Goods come to be? What was your 1st product you launched with?

Early on in our marriage, while we were filmmaking, Loren also helped run the action sports side of a watch company. He loved the idea of having his own brand, but was not passionate about the product. We were flying home from a shoot, Arrow in tow, and he said… we should start a family travel brand (that was in 2015). Loren grew up touring with his band for 6 years and I grew up road tripping every summer with my family… travel is what we knew (and know). Traveling with 8 people in one van wasn’t the easiest for my parents growing up, so to help combat the challenge, my mom put us each in charge of our own duffel bags. I took that same duffel bag mentality when starting Walker, except just made it better. We kept the same retro look of my first duffel bag, but added dividers, pockets and a laundry compartment in the end to make the overall construction more functional for adults and fun for kids to pack. When we launched Walker Family Goods in March of 2017, we were in a New York City apartment with a 3 year old Arrow and a 10 month old Louie. Our first product was the States Duffel Bag, to pay homage to my parents and them taking us 6 kids to all 50 states.

You’ve got a full van of 4 kids now, homeschool, a brick and mortar and continuing to design new products for your brand. Do you get tired? How do you reset? What helps you balance it all?!

Just reading this question made me tired. It’s funny, because when you lay everything out like this… work, homeschool, brick and mortar, (I’ll add restaurant to this list, because we’re opening a restaurant in a couple months!), then it does sound very exhausting, but it’s also all we know. I don’t know what it feels like to send my kids off to school. I don’t know what it feels like to have a nanny or to delegate my work to someone else. We run a very small, chaotic ship. Walker is just Loren and I and then we hired his sister on to run our customer service. We were recently talking with a friend of ours who runs a similar brand as ours and he was asking what each of us does. I walked through the list… bag design, inventory and purchase orders, dealing with our factory, overall finances, etc etc etc and he was like “I have at least 20 employees that do all the jobs that just you do.” I know I wouldn’t be able to tackle as much as I tackle without Loren. HE is my reset. He is who helps me balance it all. He cooks for me. He cleans for me. He puts the kids to bed. He takes the kids out to do fun activities every single day (for example, he has the kids at a peach orchard right now so that I could answer these questions). He sends me away to a local hotel probably 3-4 times a year, so that I can just breath. Then once a year he plans extravagant trips for me and my girlfriends and calls them Camp Lex. It is not lost on me that I have a good one.

What does a typical day look like for the Walker Family Goods Clan? From the second you wake up, when & how do you fit in school, work, family time, all of it?!

We are not habitual people, and because of that, our kids can nap anywhere and everywhere, but it also means that our home life never falls into a rhythm. We often times don’t get the kids to bed until 11 (sometimes later) and no one is really rolling out of bed until 9-10am. Loren sleeps with the 3 big kids and I sleep with Avi (since he is a boob monster and just wants to nurse all night long). I usually text Loren at 8am to come and grab Avi, so that I can have 1 hour of uninterrupted sleep. Then we’ll all eat breakfast together, let the chickens out, after which my dad usually stops by our house to bring treats and/or take some of our kids to run errands with him. Arrow will read books while the girls do crafts. If the kids are feeling like doing school, then we do school while Avi is napping and if they aren’t feeling it, then we don’t. I don’t like battling them when it comes to school, that’s not fun or productive for any of us. After school/play time, Loren will usually take all of the kids on a bike ride to the river so that I can work. Once the kids are home, I’ll play with them, read books or walk around the neighborhood while Loren works and then makes dinner. After dinner my parents will usually come over to hang out with us or watch a movie before we put the kids to bed. After they’re asleep, Loren and I will sometimes watch a show together or if he falls asleep, I’ll stay up reading or watching something super uplifting like Love Island.

You had a home birth with your 4th child, Avi, surrounded by all of your kids. What was that experience like for you and for your little ones?

There was this girl who reached out to me through instagram and said that she had previously had 3 hospital births and the last and 4th was at home and that it fixed everything. I don’t know how other to explain our experience than that… after 3 traumatic hospital births and 3 miscarriages, Avi being born at home fixed everything. I have a very long and detailed birth story written out, but to keep things on the briefer side… it was beautiful and fast. The morning of December 12th, my midwife came over to check me and was like uhhhh you should be having contractions… you are 90% effaced and dilated to a 5-6. One really big Italian sandwich and a few walks later, I laid down for a nap at 3:15pm and my water broke. We barely got the tub filled up, birth mix on, before he was born. My sister was there as my doula, Loren was calling my mom and dad to get the kids there, and I was kind of freaking out because I felt like I needed to push already and I was trying to hold off for them to make it. Once I climbed into the tub, Arrow and my mom rushed through the door and I heard Arrow yell “I’m here” and I knew it was time. 3 pushes later and Loren was pulling out a baby boy which Arrow announced “I have a brother.” I was bummed that the girls didn’t make it (they ran in right as Avi was placed on my chest), but to have that moment with just brothers was definitely a God send. 3 hours later, our home was cleaned, everyone was gone, Loren cooked me a steak and potato dinner and we were watching the Suns game on our couch with our 10 lb 6 oz baby boy!

From our view, you have set quite an adventurous, cozy culture for your family. Besides a love for travel, what are some core values you hope to pass down to your kids?

Everything we do and everything we work towards is for our kids, so I hope they can see that and feel that. So, as far as core values go, I hope our kids always know that family comes first. For Loren and I, faith is the foundation of our marriage, so I hope that our children will choose to raise their own children with a Christ centered home. I also hope that they recognize we don’t ever put a high premium on money… experiences trump any sort of materialism. I want our kids to see that if you work hard enough, you can live the lifestyle that you want to life. And along that same thought process… work should never feel like work if you truly love what you are doing and I hope that they always see us loving what we are doing.

“work should never feel like work if you love what you are doing”

When it comes to motherhood, what is your parenting style?

I feel like my parenting style is the product of being raised in the 80s and 90s… kind of loose. I don’t helicopter, I let my kids get hurt. You know in The Office when Michael Scott says “Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both.” That is the kind of mom that I am. There needs to be a small element of fear between children and their parents or else I see kids walk all over their mom and dad. I call our kids out when they are lying. I get mad at them when they hurt themselves or a sibling. If they are being a mean kid, I don’t coddle them… I tell them not to be a mean kid. I allow them to say shit, damn and hell, but not “mine”, “stupid” or “dumb”. I force them to be kind to other kids and to include everyone. I encourage them to try new things and then if they fail, to laugh it off. I listen to them, even if it’s a 20 minute repetitive dream sequence and mostly above all… I love the shit out of them. I love them so so hard and they know.

Are there elements from your childhood or cues from your parents that you try to incorporate into your kid’s childhood?

I mean… I’m raising my kids how I was raised, so all of their parental cues and elements are in effect daily. My mom raised us with a tough love mentality. If we were crying just to cry, then she told us to “buck it up.” She also raised my 4 sisters and I in a home that didn’t focus on weight and beauty. We didn’t own a scale and she always said that we didn’t need makeup to be pretty (which was great, but now I’m like uhhh how do I put on bronzer?). My dad was the fun dad. He would sneak us out of school or leave red bulls and donuts on the front seat of my Volvo when I’d go out to my car during school. Between going to work with my dad or him quizzing me about 60s on 6, it genuinely always felt like he was choosing to hang out with me and not like he had to.

With various ages and now international destinations, what is the hardest part of traveling with kids? And conversely, what is the best part about traveling with kids?

I’ll start with best, because I view the entire concept of traveling with kids as an absolute honor and privilege. We have received a few angry messages from people that think we don’t portray family travel in a real light and I’m always curious how those people view it themselves. You will never hear me shit talk family travel, but maybe that’s because I like my kids and I love to travel. Hardest part is obviously Arrow’s mobility and I try not to dwell on even that too much, because then it spirals me. If we had 4 able bodied children, traveling would be so much easier… but it wouldn’t be the same. Arrow grounds us, he slows us down, and because of that we have deeper conversations and see the world differently than we otherwise would.

We love your messy dressy vibe. Where do you shop and what are some of your favorite staples that make you feel your best when you are in travel mode?

Dressy messy ha! Loren likes to say I dress like a 19 year old boy, but dressing any other way makes me feel like a fraud. My staples are my high top converse, some baggy ass pants (usually men’s dickies) and an oversized band tee or a souvenir shirt from a restaurant that we’ve eaten at during our travels. Other than thrift stores, I like to shop at Free People, Madewell, Abercrombie and Fitch (but only the men’s section), Everlane, Target… really, I’m not above anything. I think you can buy anything from anywhere and make it look good if you really want to.

Any other mom essentials (for your or to have on hand for your kids) you can’t live without?

Not to plug my own brand, but I would say a crossbody of ours (I usually wear the Louie Sling or our Bay Bag) and then inside I’ll carry snacks (I’m one of those annoying “organic/no artificial coloring/sweeteners moms”), diapers, usually some beads and string for Louie to make bracelets, my current read (right now it’s The Summer of Yes) and then an Oliver Jeffers Go Fish game that I’m always playing with the kids.

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What matters most?

My family. Duh.

Go-to road trip snacks

I love a good cheese and cracker assortment, coconut yogurt on a graham cracker with sliced strawberries on top… tastes exactly like cheesecake, lesser evil popcorn, GTs or Fermensch Kombucha, Crisp Apple Olipop, sesame seed cashews, Monkey Brittle, I mean… how much time do you have? I’m kind of a snack queen.

Best pizza you ever had

Most spiritual experience eating pizza = probably Lucali’s in Brooklyn and a close second would be Una Napoletana. Best slice I’ve ever had = hands down the burrata slice from L’industrie (also in Brooklyn).

Favorite City

New York. It just kind of feels like home and at some point in our lives, when it makes sense, we will live there.

Song that instantly makes you happy

Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells is my all time favorite song, but along with being a snack queen, I am kind of a mix tape queen. So, give me an afternoon and I will make you a killer mix tape for your next road trip.

Top 3 Movie Picks

Almost Famous, About Time, and Edward Scissorhands

I can’t live without my …

If this is like a literal question then my answer would be like, umm oxygen? God? Loren and my kids? But if you’re wanting, like an I can’t live without my Stanley cup type of deal (which isn’t me), then I can’t live without seeing new places and trying new things with the people I love.