Buying your Baby Items

[ifindoubtdoit]

I'm hoping you lot can help me out and I'm hoping I've put this thread in the right place!

If you were buying the items you need for your baby would you prefer to buy them all in one lump or purchasing the bits and pieces individually?

What do most people do?

It’s usually better to buy bits here and there. That’s partly because you will get better deals that way, and it allows you to spread the cost, but also because it’s very unlikely that one particular place will sell all the specific brands or items that you would like. For example John Lewis might sell the pram you want but then only do certain brands of sleeping bags or whatever.

You can do it via Amazon baby wish list but again there are some things that Amazon isn’t great for.

Also I would really really encourage you to consider not buying everything brand new. For a start you will save a fortune. There’s so much baby stuff on FB marketplace and eBay and other places, a lot of it is barely used. I bought a baby bouncer that a lady had paid £40 for, she tried it twice
with her DD for literally a few minutes who hated it and she sold it to me for £5. I also got my older daughters nursery furniture second hand off a local Facebook site, it’s all mamas and papas matching set and would have been around £700 new and I got everything for £30 . If you feel like you are being tight then put the difference in an account for your baby for when they are older. They will thank you!

We bought the pram and the nursery furniture all in one day because it was when the shops had just opened back up after the first lockdown and we wanted to minimise our exposure to the public. Everything else we bought in bits and pieces over several months.

I also agree you don’t need new for everything - clothes bundles on eBay are so reasonable and most of the stuff I’ve bought has barely been worn. Same with things like bouncers - lots of parents buy them and find their babies aren’t keen so sell them on basically as good as new.

I bought it from a variety of places. It saved money as most new items I got from places that had sales on and I also gradually got everything over a few months rather then spend a large amount of money all at once.

I also agree with buying second hand, so much better for the environment and much cheaper.

I got a £750 pram bundle in excellent condition for £80, Tommee Tippee nappy bin for free, so many good quality clothes (M&S, Jojo Maman Bebe, John Lewis) in bundles for free, Chicco Next2me crib for £40. There's a lot of great bargains on FB marketplace

I buy bits here and there from around 30 weeks

I prefer to spread the cost little by little. Most of the bigger things I'll get closer to D-day and we had lots from older kids already.
18wk atm and already started picking up a pack of nappies or wipes in my usual shop so I barely notice the cost.

I started buying a few bits each month from about 20w to spread the cost

I've started buying stuff from 23 weeks. Just be conscious with big things that you will also need to store it too! I had a few people try to panic me about delivery times 🙄 but most stuff I want can be delivered in a few days. I'm going to try to buy smaller bits and bobs like clothes, nappies etc from now and gradually build up a good stock whilst spreading out the cost.

I bought in bits and pieces. I read reviews, did research and then tried to find deals. some things I even bought after. I found the maternity bag came together slowly over months.

Do shops in England allow you to pay off on your items?

Let you pay an initial deposit and then pay off as and when you like?

Individually. I like hunting around for bargains and second hand. It's also a lot of money to pay out in one go so it helps to spread it. I'm wary about taking out credit although I know some people do this for baby items, I would prefer to get a cheaper one that I can afford outright. I've never spent £1000+ on a pram - £200 max. Had one ex display, two reduced in an offer and the rest second hand. Car seats are the one thing I spend more on but even those the max I've spent is about £250.

And "Nursery furniture" is the biggest rip off in the world! £700 for a set? Ikea have lovely cots for hardly anything and you can just buy perfectly normal drawers. Baby clothes look ridiculous hanging in a wardrobe, I always just folded them.

@ifindoubtdoit

Do shops in England allow you to pay off on your items?

Let you pay an initial deposit and then pay off as and when you like?

Depends where you get it from. Mostly online places do similar. But a lot tend to just be weekly payments. Or up to 3 months payments from what ive seen. I've never seen one that let's you pay off as and when you like. It tends to be a set amount every month/week

Thank you all for your help.

I wanted to know if my business would appeal to a wider market than just Ireland.

I have a nursery website (& store) I set up my website fairly recently but it took over a year to get it to this stage.

We first sat down with designers in January 2020.

What I sell and focus on is bundles the point being you get all you need/want and then save as you're buying more than one item.

It was really important to me to offer total interest free payment and I have managed that! You literally log on and pay off as and when you like it's just an initial 20% deposit and once fully paid we ship.

If you use a independent bricks and mortar nursery store they often do that layaway service. We did that and just called them and put £100 or whatever on it each payday, worked for us. Much easier than finding it all on one go and meant when we collected it it was completely paid off rather than a balance sitting on a credit card.

Those stores will often do "bundles" with your chosen pram, bedside cot, baby bath, etc. and with some sort of saving for buying it all together. I wouldn't go with one of those; they often include stuff you wouldn't use or branded items like cot sheets that you can get half the price elsewhere.

I got a nursery furniture set with a cot bed, chest of drawers/change unit and wardrobe from Argos for £400. We use the wardrobe for stuff DD's still to grow into and for hiding crap. I have a plastic tub at the bottom for throwing stuff she's grown out of into and for sorting out when it starts to overflow. It's absolutely not a necessity but if you have the space for it and find a good value set I would repurchase.

Oh that was a good cross post!

I'm actually in NI and where we bought our stuff from is very similar to your business. I didn't think it was just a regional thing but I suppose you don't seen too many mentions of buying from independents on threads about baby kit.

We decided what we wanted to buy new, and what we could buy second hand. Then we started on the second hand stuff right after the 20 week scan. It takes a while to wait for things to come up locally so it's good to get going.

Even if you're rich, there is some stuff that it is totally pointless to buy new. A baby bath comes to mind! Very easy to sterilise. Much better for the environment to reuse an existing item than to cause another big lump of plastic to come into existence...

Don't get much clothing. Just buy a couple of bits in newborn and the next size up. You don't want a whole wardrobe in newborn size and then you deliver a monster baby! Also, people give you clothing. Once baby is born, you can quickly order some more vests/sleepsuits etc in the right size.

The stuff we bought new, we made a list and waited until it was in sales etc where possible.