To ask why people have clothes “for nursery”?

[Enthusiasticcarrotgrower]

Both in local social media groups and with friends, people try to give away clothes “for nursery” that in my opinion are really only suitable as dish rags. Holes, stretched completely out of shape, faded to colourless.

Now, I’m all for preloved clothes and reusing things but there has to be a limit? And I don’t see why it’s ok if these things are “for nursery”?

Surely your child is doing the same things at nursery as they do at home: playing outside getting muddy, painting, climbing, learning to eat nicely, learning to wipe their nose, learning to dress themselves etc. If the clothes aren’t good enough for home, why are they good enough for nursery?

I understand setting aside a few nice, maybe new items for “smart” eg special occasions, but surely either clothes are good enough as day to day play clothes or they’re not? Does everyone send their kids to nursery looking like orphan Annie?!

Dd is 28
I still have nightmares about her and black paints!

I absolutely have clothes for nursery - lots of plain tops and trousers that I’m very happy to get covered in paint. I wouldn’t give away anything covered in paint but I do separate clothes into the nursery pile and the weekend pile - things that are a bit nicer and I don’t want returned filthy.

Clothes for nursery or in our case, dd's sen school are a thing

But the clothes you're describing sound awful 😅

Clothes for nursery are joggers, t shirts and sweatshirts. They don't need to be new but still need to be clean and in decent condition without stains, eww

Yanbu, people shouldn't be trying to sell clothes that are only fit for the dump

DD is at school now, but when she was nursery aged, at home, there was a time and a place for messy play. If I've just put her in a nice, new outfit to go out for dinner, I'm not then going to get out the paints or let her loose in her mud kitchen. I'll put her in old clothes if she's going to be rolling around in the mud, and I'll put an apron on when she's painting, or eating spaghetti, whereas at nursery they often forget or one of the kids gets it on their hands and then touches another child, etc., and I would never want a child not getting stuck in because they are worried about their clothes.

Tbh I always dressed her nicely for nursery because she's not that messy of a child and it was Covid when she was born, so she didn't have many special occasions to wear nice clothes to, but you do have to accept that anything they wear is likely to end up completely ruined. If you have the type of child who destroys everything they wear beyond repair immediately then it makes more sense to send them in in old clothes as they're going to come out like orphan Annie anyway.

Giving away clothes which might not look nice but are still totally functional is better for the planet too, rather than buying new just to get wrecked.

What a bizarre response.

I had nursery clothes for my daughter. They were cheap so it didn’t matter if they got wrecked with paint, mud etc, easy to get on and off, and comfortable. If she was doing anything messy at home, we used those clothes too. We just called them play clothes.

I wouldn’t send her all dressed up to nursery, what’s the point in that?

90% of our clothes are for both but I think I just have a scruffy child 😂I can't be faffed with having two sets of clothes. Our nursery doesn't do aprons but everything comes off.

I'm quite happy to state that I did a lot less messy play with the kids (paint, glue, glitter, mud pies, sand pits) than nursery did, one of the advantages of sending kids to nursery in my view. I did buy cheap multi packs of supermarket clothes for nursery on purpose because of the amount of messy play there, though I did buy new ones quite often as there is a limit on how scruffy i'd let the kids get. We did play out and go outside for walks etc lots, but that was a factof 10 less messy than nursery on the whole!

I think I unofficially had nursery and non nursery clothes just because the nursery ones would come home with permanent paint on them! They weren’t rags though, just supermarket t-shirts and leggings most of the time. I similar ones for non nursery clothes.

My children (all 6) have had nursery "uniform". And by that I mean, comfortable plain inexpensive leggings/joggers, supermarket schoolwear type polo shirts and the nursery logo'd jumper or school type jumper in the nursery colours. I don't care if these get wet/muddy/paint stained/coloured on/shat in/lost/taken.
I do care about their other clothes being destroyed by all those things.
I learned very quickly that replacing all the damaged items wasn't cost effective. It also gets them into the habit of dressing for school in a uniform.
When they left nursery, I turned in everything for spares and it was much appreciated.

I completely agree. Once something is stained and you can’t get it out, you can’t dress your child up ‘nicely’ for a party or another occasion where you need them to do what is the point in spending on something nicer. There are other outfits that you can allow your child to get messy in and those have a blanket term - nursery clothes!

My two went to an excellent preschool but it was very child led and seemed to involve them getting completely covered in dirt/paint/sand etc daily and all year round (not just slightly grubby). One of them spent a few months ripping holes in his clothes quite regularly at preschool (the staff were baffled how he managed it. A relative kindly bought lots of very good quality expensive clothes for them when they were little and although she wouldn't have minded I just couldn't face them getting ruined. So I did end up getting bundles of secondhand clothes or cheap supermarket/charity shop stuff to put them in for preschool. If I'd been buying all their clothes I would have just bought majority cheap and cheerful and maybe a few nicer things for special occasions. So it was because we were given all the really lovely things that I ended up needing a second set. Children are also different personalities, mine are still dirt magnets but some of them seem to stay a bit cleaner somehow!

I'm just impressed that so many people evidently have children that will wear what you tell them to! We also had lots of navy joggers (a 'nursery clothes' hand me down from some friends!) but DC wouldn't wear them after about 2.5.

On a different note, I don't like waste either but we end up with lots of shredded clothes that are not suitable to donate. I tend to put the ragged ones into the clothes recycling bank instead of trying to give them away or donate to a charity shop. Some of the clothes banks will recycle the clothes and sort into ones that can be sold, donated to children in need, recycled, or thrown away, so there is a better chance of stuff being useful that way.

We have what I call nursery or "messy" clothes and nicer clothes... I've also bought nice condition nursery clothes from Vinted (e.g. good quality tops with little splashes of paint that won't wash out). Our nursery doesn't use overalls for crafts and the children go outside and crawl around/splash in the mud whatever the weather, so it can be hard to get stains out!

If we do painting etc. at home we use overalls and washable Crayola paint, plus I can quickly whip tops off and soak them if they get dirty, which nursery won't/can't (understandably) do.

We definitely have nursery clothes now. Back when my son was under 2 in the ‘baby’ room not so much but definitely now.

Tends to be cheaper stuff I don’t mind being stained. If I wash and stains don’t come out, I will still send him to nursery in them.

I don’t know what it is about the garden at nursery vs at home but even on a dry day the soil stains at nursery are baked in and won’t come out! One pair of lighter coloured Primark trousers were stained after one wear!

I think it's because at home you can actively make sure your child is wearing something old if you plan to do a messy activity. At nursery the parent doesn't know in advance so plays on the side of less nice stuff.

I pass on my son’s old clothes that are slightly stained, or not worth putting on Vinted to the nursery too - they are always asking for nursery spares incase anyone runs out of clothes!

Within limits, it's unfair to expect nursery staff to police your child's activities to keep them away from the mucky ones or put a lot of effort into ensuring that your child remains clean and tidy (as opposed to simply comfortable). The staff have better things to do. While I don't have "nursery clothes" as such, I wouldn't send anything to nursery that I minded coming home stained or marked. So party dresses and shirts etc. tend to stay home unless they're becoming too small anyway.

Yes, and that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we also do similar things at home.

Maybe. But I would have thought my standards are fairly on the low side when it comes to clothes!

I more care about the shite people are trying to give me!

Children typically do messier things at nursery than at home - paint, play dough, their friends snot/dribble, pen marks, mud, grass stains, water, more toileting accidents. Clothes they can wear without parents worrying about them needing to stay clean or how much they cost means both children and staff can relax and get stuck in with the messy stuff.

When mine were little they went in with the £2 tee shirts and leggings from primark and the expensive stuff was used for home or days out.

Why not just politely decline? This whole post made it sound like you couldn't believe people would have preferred "messy" clothes?

That’s literally what I say in my post? We have nice clothes for doing special things and then every day clothes for the rest of the time? So why specifically “nursery clothes”?

Sorry I don’t understand what you’re getting at with that last sentence?

I think maybe the differences in my perspective are:

• my kids are only at nursery half the time
• we do a lot of messy paint/play dough/ digging in the mud at home as well
• maybe my general standards are fairly low, other than what we wear to do something nice?

Nursery would send home clothes that had been sitting in plastic bags for hours with paint, food and poo on them.