Yesterday’s post covered some of the areas you can reduce what you buy for baby. It’s a challenging topic, but very worthwhile. Today’s topic is in many ways one of the easiest:

Reuse

There are just so many things you can reuse with a baby. Their needs are pretty simple, and many baby items can go from child to child to child with no problem at all.

This is particularly true among friends and extended family. You can cut down the cost of having raising a baby as well as the environmental impact if you’re fortunate in available handmedowns.

Baby clothes are the classic, especially in the smaller sizes that tend to be all too prevalent as baby shower gifts. So many outfits get worn once, maybe twice, maybe not at all before baby outgrows them.

If you’re lucky, you have handmedowns, and plenty of them.

CPSIA has made buying used baby items potentially more difficult. No one is quite sure what’s happening there, or what the one year delay really means, if anything. So many statements made have a note at the bottom that they may not be the official position of the CPSC, making it impossible to tell if they mean it or not.

Hopefully things will clear up soon in favor of making it easily possible to reuse appropriate items for children.

Don’t Forget…

Someone else can probably reuse the items your baby used. Keep the cycle going as long as each item is worth reusing.