This week my lovely wife is 22 weeks pregnant. There have been a lot of projects and things going on in the house and we are slowly converting rooms into baby appropriate spaces. Along with this has been a list of items we need to get before FIREbaby pops out. These are purchases that the baby industrial complex will hound you and prey on the unsuspecting adult in unforeseen ways.
The bombardment of things you “need” to buy to keep your baby safe is overwhelming and can be about 5 posts. Today we are just going to talk about the approach we are taking to getting clothing from 0-12 months old.
We live pretty remote from normal civilization. It’s about an hour drive from a city that has places to shop. With that in mind I had some items we needed to take to the thrift store and I also knew I could combine those trips into a baby clothes trip.
I ended up going to three different thrift stores and buying pieces that looked in like new or new condition (some still had the tags). We ended up spending $86.50 across two different stores (one store didn’t have anything worthwhile) We are not finding out the gender of our baby so I was somewhat limited. While I strongly hold the belief that a baby doesn’t care what it wears I still wouldn’t want to put my potential son in a Broncos cheerleader outfit or my potential daughter in a “I’m daddy’s little man” shirt. I stuck to the tried and true, cute animal prints.
For my $86.50 I got:
NB pants – 1
NB onesie – 9
0-3mo onesie – 10
baby sock – 1
3mo onesie – 6
3-6mo onesie – 12
3-6mo pants – 4
3-6mo top – 2
6-12mo onesie – 3
12mo onesie – 1
12mo top – 1
A total of 50 new or like new items of baby clothing for an average cost of $1.73.
Nothing was damaged, nothing was worse than a onesie you see at Target, GAP or any other store. I used those two specifically because in that pile there are items from GAP and Target that had the original tags on them.
In everything in life I’m finding that the sustainable method is usually the most affordable in the long term as well as the best for our planet. Babies don’t care what they wear and these clothes are pretty cute. It’s not like your baby is going to be upset it’s not wearing designer clothing so why are you buying it?
The best part is that when we are done we can either donate these items back to the thrift store or we can sell them in a yard sale for at least what we paid. My goal is for the cost of our babies first year of clothing to be as close to $0 as possible. I think with garage sales (once this COVID shit is over) and thrift stores are going to allow me to do it. Everyone has told us that kids are super expensive and if everyone says something there is a good chance it’s wrong.
Fire Dad 