How long did you reuse older child's clothes for younger child?

[NordicNobody]

Our DD is due in October and we're hoping to get as much secondary wear out of DS old clothes as possible. They aren't especially "boyish", quite neutral/ unisex. But at what age would you stop feeling ok using hand-me-downs and want your younger child to have they're own clothes? Not that she'll never have anything new to begin with, I'm sure we'll be drowning in cutesy pink newborn baby clothes from family and friends, but I don't want to buy a whole new wardrobe when all DS old stuff is perfectly fine and she'll grow out of it in 2 seconds anyway!

Anything that dosent get ripped or stained gets passed down, admittidly its getting less as they get older esp the shoes. Ds3 has hardly any new clothes, but he loves wearing clothes that used to be his biggest brothers (hero worships him)!

I passed clothes on to all five of my DCs until they were about 12, though DS (second born) had his own non-passed on clothes from about the age when DD1 (his older sister) began to like pink, so maybe when DS was 3. I passed on his fleecy sweatpants and sweatshirts and elastic waist jeans to his three younger sisters, along with DD1's pink stuff. DS wasn't hard on his clothes, and neither were the girls.

They all wore passed down sneakers and winter boots too. Also things like snow bibs, snow mittens and gloves, hats.

Everyone wore the same nice pink baby/toddler snowsuit I bought for DD1. It was lined in smooth fabric so very practical, easy to put little hands and arms into.

All but one was born within four weeks of one another in late spring. The remaining one was born in late summer, but was a big baby so quickly grew into the 6 month stuff. This made passing down easier.

We also got bags of stuff from other families and sent stuff on to them. I really only bought the odd new thing.

DS 1&2 were August kids and DD was April. Frustrating but justified

My 11 year old DS passes down to my 9 year old DS (once he’s got a bag of hand me downs from older cousin), I then reuse what is neutral from 9 year old for my 6 year old DD, and the rest go to my nephew.

I’ve found brands like m&s & next tend to wear and wash well and we get lots of different children’s use out of clothes!

I firmly believe that one of the reasons is washing at 30’ and never using fabric softeners (and only ever using non-bio). The clothes just don’t wear out/fade/bobble like they do with friends and family who wash at 40 and use smelly products.

And it helps that none of the kids are precious about second hand clothes (as they don’t look second hand, so who else would know that that Adidas t-shirt was worn before?)