@luke, sorry for the delay in replying! What you suggested worked…once I made sure to include the . in .netlify. 
Should also note that on OSX, adding that line to ~/.bashrc apparently does not work. I only got it to work after adding it to ~/.bash_profile.
Thanks again for all your help! Hopefully it will be useful to others who might have similar issues. Not sure which reply to mark as the solution, as several of them are part of it…