To engage in poverty hording ?

[KazenoTaninoNaushika]

We're tidying up the baby's room: all the old baby clothes, every last sock, every toy DC has grown out of, every blanket, muslin, snuggly piece of crap all packed in vacuum bags lest another LO turns up in future. It's a financial thing....we are

My mom and stepdad are extremely well off.
My mom has kept all the easter bunnies I got growing up and uses them as decoration at Easter around the house (this is just an example). She's kept various Christmas decor from when I was little. She has some things in her kitchen she got when she was around 20 years old (she's 63 now). It's frugal to keep stuff like that. Smart wealthy people don't just throw stuff out.

Do you have to have all the stuff in plastic vacuum bags? Maybe the sight of that is making you feel this way. Maybe put them in something else (or some of them)... seagrass baskets from ikea, for example.

GetInTheFuckingSea might be right with the signifiers but I can certainly volunteer that I can't tell whether you bought new or second hand unless it has the label on it or I saw it in a shop last week.

Vacuum bags probably are a good idea if you're storing anywhere that might get damp/dusty/moths.

I think it's a really sensible thing to do, why would you buy a brand new set of clothes for your next DC. A lot of boys stuff like rock tops, character tops, etc, would suit both sexes. You don't have to conform to gender stereotypes.

We just found a load of 3 year clothes for a boy I'm gifting, but TTC has been such a slog, really couldn't face the stress again.

Best of luck though

We earn more than 80k between us, and everything DS has grown out of is packed in storage boxes in the loft, in case we have another one (unlikely but not impossible). Surely if you have the space, it would be madness to chuck/charity shop it rather than store it?

We're also high earners and DD2 mainly wears hand-me downs. The only baby stuff I had to buy when she was born was a double buggy. Why wouldn't you? It seems wasteful to me not too reuse perfectly good clothes and equipment.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Very sensible.

We aren't badly off but we have saved everything. I have 3 DDs so I still have clothes from newborn upto aged 5 now stored in case of more DC. I do think it's important for each child to have a couple of new things though, especially party dresses and coats that are often in photos. Maybe I'm projecting but I don't want the younger DDs to feel they never had anything new.

I did however get rid of a few bulky things like the Jumperoo and Sleepyhead - sold them for £35 and £90 respectively and confident I could get them at that sort of price second hand if needed again.

My DGS1 is today wearing a jumper that I bought for his father. All three of my DSs wore it before I packed it away.

We do it because its environmental, economic and its quite sentimental passing things down the family. I really cannot stand pointless exessive materialistic splurging. I find it very grabby.

Yes kept everything that was still clean and presentable (which was most stuff) Used the same pram for 3 children. For dc3 I expressly told people not to buy any presents as I had absolutely everything, some did buy clothes so I gave them to a friend who was expecting and she was really grateful.

I don't understand people who couldn't put 'used' clothes on a new baby. DD1's coats and other expensive items of clothing are being used by dd3.

We stored all of DS stuff just in case, we only planned on having one child but you never know. When we didn't need it we took it and did a car boot sale so it wasn't wasted. We are £60-70k income bracket.

I spent a time last week at a colleague on a low income who has just spent £900 on a travel system for their 2nd child. Madness I think.

I wish I had the space to store ds's baby things. I have to sell them to make space for his new things

Gosh, didn't expect the thread to be about this! Don't most people do this sensible thing?

My third child is currently wearing a fantastic warm pair of pyjamas. It was first worn by my cousin's son (now 15), then my ds1 (now 13), then my nephew (now 12), then my ds2 (now 8), then my niece (now 8), and will next be passed back to my cousin for her dd. Same pattern applies to a lot of clothes and shoes in our house, and no one is bothered. I don't think it has ever been obvious to anyone else that the clothes have history 😄 It saves money and is less wasteful.

Very sensible. We both earn six figures and did the same in case a second happened.

We were given most of the stuff for ds, all second hand, the only thing I bought new was the bottles and steriliser. I've managed to keep all his prem stuff (just in case), some sentimental items and some toys but we don't have space for more. We've given most of his baby stuff to a very ungrateful sil (she wanted everything, including the stuff we are still using, like all ds bedroom furniture), so we now donate to the hv who gives the stuff to women in shelters.

They're called hand-me-downs, it's obvious and sensible. Surely you didn't think everyone threw out perfectly good stuff and started again on each baby?

It's not poverty hoarding, it's sensible. Most people I know do this.

I kept loads of things for my second dc. My sister has been given so much stuff for her dd that she doesn't have to buy anything.

Sounds just like the sensible thing to do to me. My third cost a fortune as I thought I was finished and had given everything away to good homes when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. The fact that she was a girl after two boys made the clothes thing bearable but I would happily have re-used pram/crib/cot.

This will be too much for some people but our nct group had a big bag of communal pants we all passed round when we were potty training. The kids did it at slightly different times so it saved us buying endless packets of pants just to cover the first few tricky days.

It's also called good house keeping and OP you sound lovely.

If you have piles of newspapers in your living room and can't get into the kitchen for junk you're a hoarder! But what you are doing sounds sensible to me.

I keep everything & dh has had the snip, but i have a new niece . The only exception is car seats; they have a life of about 6-8 years due to the wear of plastic & changes in safety standards.

Yanbu! It's sensible. I can afford new but I buy a lot if mine and my dad clothes second hand just because it's sensible and means I can save more for a rainy day. Plus there's already too much stuff in the world.