Secondhand Baby Market

I often feel like I live under a rock. This is especially true in relation to keeping up with the news. I've always been guilty of it but with a baby I am so completely in the dark about current affairs it's quite embarrassing. I just never find time to watch, read or listen to the news. After I finish writing this I will surf the news sites (well maybe :-)).

Generally I do feel pretty "in the know" with sustainability type things though (since that's what I do, isn't it??). Recently, however, I found out about secondhand baby markets from a pregnant friend and couldn't believe that I had NEVER heard of them. It's devastating really since Turtle is now 20 months old. Although I don't need much baby stuff anymore I really wanted to check it out and right this wrong in my life.

I was too busy shopping to take a photo of the market - oops! Image Source

As market day approached I considered bailing on the event since I didn't need that much and life was busy. I'm so glad I went along. Apart from seeing what it was like I also wanted to buy size 2 winter clothes for Turtle.

The markets delivered. We rocked up at 9am and entered the hall. There was a variety of clothes, toys, shoes, bouncers, and general baby "stuff" across the stalls. The first stall I saw was Booty Crawl, whose nappy packs for beginners have been highly recommended to me by cloth nappy users. Apparently they make finding the right MCN style much easier and could have saved me a lot of stress had I known.

Turtle rocking her new purple jeans from the market with a secondhand raincoat I bought off Gumtree.

I bought 2 gorgeous dresses (ok, so one was a summer dress), 2 jumpsuits or onesies, 2 jumpers, 3 pairs of jeans, two very nice long sleeved tops, 4 basic singlets, a pair of flannelette PJs, two pairs of tracksuit pants, gorgeous floral shoes (that Turtle is in love with), and a toy mobile phone. All for the bargain price of $80.

It was a very successful shopping trip. These warm, cosy (cheap, secondhand - woo hoo!!) basics will make life so much easier when we are changing her 2 or 3 times each day. She is constantly covering herself with food, or playing with dirt, or... or... whatever else takes her fancy.

I just wish I had known about the market earlier!

Can you relate? Have you come across anything lately that made you feel like you live under a rock?

Today I'm joining With Some Grace for FYBF!

Buying Secondhand Joy for Christmas

We have been looking to get a push along walker for Turtle to play with.  She is really enjoying standing up at the moment and building her confidence towards walking so we thought she would get some use out of it.  After having no luck borrowing one through the toy library we decided it would be a good Christmas present.  We looked them up on Gumtree, which is a great place to buy cheap secondhand baby things.  It turned out that many other families had the same idea.  We found a couple of nice Vtech walkers that are about $99 new from the baby store.  On Gumtree they ranged from $10 to $40.  I have recently limited my travel distance to collect things on Gumtree to within 20km from our home and so we only looked within this range.

The first three walkers that we enquired about were all $10 to $25 and all of them had been snapped up before we saw their posts.  While Mr Fix It was out salvaging for treasure on Saturday night I decided to check again and saw two walkers had been posted a few hours earlier.  One was a Scout and Friends walker and it was still available.  We managed to get friends to pick it up on their way to our place for lunch on Sunday too so it was a very good shopping experience. The Scout walker was $20 and turned out to be new and still in its box.  Since we are going away for Christmas and won't be taking the walker with us Turtle has been allowed to play with it since we got it.

Turtle is a little excited by her new toy

I am so pleased to have found such a lovely toy for Turtle to play with that was cheap and buying secondhand meant that it wasn't wasted even though the first buyer didn't use it or need it.  I don't see why it is necessary to buy toys brand new when children outgrow them, or get bored with them, so quickly.

I would love to hear about any secondhand presents that you have found for loved ones.  Did you feel like you had made the gift more personal by researching and putting a bit of extra effort into finding something that way?