Everyday aesthetics and eco-design have a shared interest in exploring our aesthetic relationship with everyday objects. While Yuriko Saito’s aesthetics of care suggests that we approach our material surroundings with the same care that we give to people, design theoreticians Chapman, Walker and Fry want to overcome throwaway culture by endowing objects with personal meaning. This paper examines the differences and commonalities of these theories and, drawing on theories of meanings of objects, concludes that in practice it is very difficult for designers to influence the meaning of objects for their owners. A new branch of cognitive science, enactivism offers a new theory of meaning (sense-making) based on habits and the defining features of the world that habits are engaged in (microworlds). This paper argues that in our consumer culture one way to change an object’s meaning is to change the microworld of shopping from simply buying to buying from a person that made it. This approach has some shared features with the maker movement. In the final sections the paper explores fashion initiatives to make supply chains transparent and looks at an ecologically conscious fashion brand, Alabama Chanin. Alabama Chanin redefines itself as a community of people who love what they make, emphasizes its local history, and shares DIY practices for its designs. Such an approach highlights the opportunities smaller brands have to resist throwaway culture and fast fashion.