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A seasonal merit badge society for grown women · est. 2020

Earn merit badges for living your actual life.

Growth, adventure, whimsy, and a little wholesome mischief. Every season brings a brand-new session — dozens of merit badges, collectible patches, and thematic ranks designed to help you put your phone down and become a little more interesting.

Sessions run seasonally, four times a year. Join any time.

2,747club members
249,219badges earned
105,647field notes written
3,384badges to chase
How it works

Three steps to your first badge

No experience required. No troop meetings. Just your actual life, lived a little more on purpose.

1

Join the club

Pay your seasonal dues and you're in — a warm welcome, your login, and your digital workbook for the season.

$75 per season
2

Pick your badges

Hundreds of badges each season across 12 categories. You won't earn them all — you'll earn the ones that speak to you.

Something for everyone
3

Earn, rank up, collect

Log badges and watch your banner fill. Climb the ranks — real embroidered patches arrive in your mailbox.

Patches by snail mail
New · the digital banner

Like Mom's bandalo — but always with you

Every badge you earn is stitched onto your own beautiful banner, right on your phone. Tap any badge to relive the photo and the story behind it. At season's end it becomes a keepsake yearbook.

Sign in to Members Only →
A phone showing your embroidered banner — one badge glowing with its campfire memory
The 12 categories

There's a badge for that

Real categories, straight from the club workbook. Every session refreshes them with brand-new badges.

  • Embroidered Arts & Crafts patch — a painter's palette with crossed brushes on amber

    Arts and Crafts

  • Embroidered Beauty patch — a mascara tube and wand stitched in black on camel

    Beauty

  • Embroidered Health & Fitness patch — a bicycle with an open trail map on olive

    Health and Fitness

  • Embroidered Home & Hygge patch — an A-frame cabin with a smoking chimney on cream

    Home and Hygge

  • Embroidered Kitchen patch — a hand-crank pasta machine with golden noodles on brick red

    Kitchen

  • Embroidered Knowledge patch — a graduation cap inside a learning loop on orange

    Knowledge

  • Embroidered Mischief patch — a carnival ferris wheel on burnt orange

    Mischief

  • Embroidered Nature patch — twin snow-capped peaks with a summiteer planting a flag

    Nature

  • Embroidered Self-Reliance patch — a claw hammer with a red and blue handle on ochre

    Self-Reliance

  • Embroidered Service patch — three raised hands with hearts in their palms on pine green

    Service

  • Social patch — two friends arm in arm on brick red

    Social

  • Spiritual patch — a golden open book on chocolate brown

    Spiritual

Detour (Health & Fitness)Weighted Vest (Summer 2026)Homemade Ice cream (Summer 2026)Old Relic (Kitchen)Romanticize the MundaneTourist TrapsFive StarsProject Finisher (Overdrive)Detour (Spiritual)Bump in the RoadAnalog Bag (Summer 2026)Park Your PhoneUnpluggedDaily Scroll LimitNo Road RageGratitude Journal (Summer 2026)Best-Case ScenarioLetter to Your Younger SelfOld Relic (Spiritual)Pit StopQuiet the EngineDay of RestThe Road Back to YouThe Road Less TraveledDetour (Social)PostcrossingPostcards (Summer 2026)Drive-InDetour (Health & Fitness)Weighted Vest (Summer 2026)Homemade Ice cream (Summer 2026)Old Relic (Kitchen)Romanticize the MundaneTourist TrapsFive StarsProject Finisher (Overdrive)Detour (Spiritual)Bump in the RoadAnalog Bag (Summer 2026)Park Your PhoneUnpluggedDaily Scroll LimitNo Road RageGratitude Journal (Summer 2026)Best-Case ScenarioLetter to Your Younger SelfOld Relic (Spiritual)Pit StopQuiet the EngineDay of RestThe Road Back to YouThe Road Less TraveledDetour (Social)PostcrossingPostcards (Summer 2026)Drive-In
Now enrolling

Summer 2026 · The Route 66 Session

  • Hundreds of brand-new merit badges for summer
  • Route 66 ranks — from Chicago to Santa Monica
  • Limited-edition patches mailed at rank milestones
  • The Rendezvous · Alpine, Utah · August 1st
  • Your digital banner, workbook & club newsletter
Join the club$75 · one season, everything included
A packed station wagon leaving Chicago on Route 66 — Rendezvous suitcase and MERIT pennant on the roof, desert and sunset ahead
“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”
Jane Austen · from the club quote board
Our story · est. 2020

It started on a mountain, with my mom.

Back in 2013, my mom and I hiked the mountains near home almost every day. Somewhere on those trails we started dreaming: wouldn't it be fun to earn merit badges for the things we did — and pin them to a bandalo, just like the one she wore as a girl?

In the summer of 2020, when the whole world was baking sourdough and raising chickens, we finally did it. We dreamed up twelve categories, wrote the first badges, and my mom pulled out her old bandalo, made a pattern — and sewed one for every single woman who joined. We mailed thousands of badges that first summer.

Women wrote back. They loved it. Now the club runs all year — winter, spring, summer, and fall — and every season we get to celebrate thousands of women doing wonderful, ordinary, extraordinary things.

Our mission is simple: to celebrate merit.
More specifically — your merit.

Peace & pine trees, Whitney

Whitney at the red club door, holding a MERIT pennant
Whitney at the clubhouse door — pennant in hand, as always.

The Junior Mountaineers

The Junior Mountaineers Club — illustrated moose

Screen-free fun for kids ages 7–12. A reading- and nature-based snail-mail club for boys and girls who like earning merit badges.

Meet the Junior Mountaineers →

The Club Store

Bespoke patches, pennants, camp flags, and club gear — designed exclusively for members, made to be collected.

The club patch, stitched in gold on green woolThe MERIT pennant hung on a sunlit wallThe merit heart patch resting on a wool blanket
Visit the Club Store →