The ProperHow the club works
A merit badge society for grown women, run in seasons. You pay your dues, you get the season's workbook, and you spend the season earning badges for living your actual life — on purpose.
Dues to badges to patches in the mail
Pay your club dues
Join in the club store and you're a member for the season. Your welcome letter arrives with the season's digital merit badge workbook — every badge you can chase, listed and ready.
$75 per seasonEarn the ones that speak to you
There are hundreds of merit badges each season. You won't earn them all — you'll earn the ones that speak to you. Some are hard, some are easy, and every one is built to stretch you, move you, or make life a little richer.
Honor system, alwaysLog them right here
Your merit tracker lives on this very site: log a badge, add the photo and the story, and watch it stitch onto your own banner in Members Only.
No separate loginsRank up — the mail does the rest
As badges add up you advance in rank and earn titles. Cross certain lines and a real embroidered patch is packed by hand at club HQ and mailed to your door to commemorate the climb.
Real patches by snail mailThe twelve merit badge categories
Every season's badges sort into the same twelve categories — in Whitney's own words, here's what each one is for.
Arts & Crafts
Learn a new craft technique, make something, use your hands, create art.
Beauty
Focus on beauty routines, skin care and hair care, experiment with a new fashion trend, wear something new — be the best dressed.
Health & Fitness
Be a little bit healthier at the end of the season than you were at the start: build an exercise routine, try a new workout class, be active every day, stay current on wellness visits.
Home & Hygge
Make your house the coziest place to be — finish projects, decorate, organize, then enjoy it with intentional moments: puzzles, card games by flickering light, and reading.
Kitchen
Use new ingredients, try new recipes, master dishes and techniques, create new flavors.
Knowledge
Practice a foreign language, learn an instrument, read a historical nonfiction, complete a crossword, take a class.
Mischief
Purely to add nonsensical fun to your life — walk under a full moon, skinny dip, go dancing.
Nature
Every one of these is designed to get you outside and connecting to nature.
Self-Reliance
Be prepared for any situation — ready to help yourself, and ready to help others.
Service
Proper mountain women see a need and help when they can.
Social
Improve relationships, connect with others, practice good etiquette, and keep social engagements to look forward to.
Spiritual
Focus on inner peace and growth, connection to higher meaning, and daily habits that nurture the soul.
Badges are digital, patches are real
The badges you earn live on your banner here on the site — there's no envelope of six hundred patches, and that's what keeps dues at $75. The embroidered patches you DO get in the mail mark the big things: ranks, titles, and each season's limited editions. That's what makes them worth pinning up.
Seasons, not subscriptions
The club runs a season at a time and each season is its own adventure — new badges, new ranks, new patches to chase. When a new season opens, you join again if it speaks to you. Nothing renews behind your back. (Curious where all this came from? Read the club's story.)
Join the club →Got a 7-to-12-year-old? The Junior Mountaineers run on the same idea — real badges, real mail, screen-free.