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Hand-Me-Downs of Horror
Amy Storch of Amalah.com | December 9th, 2008 - 12:14 PM
Who doesn’t love hand-me-downs, right? I love hand-me-downs. I spent my first pregnancy almost exclusively in a friend’s maternity clothing, accepted all of my sister’s maternity clothing before we were even officially thinking of trying for a second baby, and then when those clothes turned out to be off-season for my second summer pregnancy (gah and argh and damn), I was still exceedingly happy to lovingly hand them off to other pregnant friends.
So when the wife of one of my husband’s coworkers asked if I would want any of her son’s baby clothes, I immediately said yes! yes! How kind, how lovely!
She smiled (POSSIBLY EVILY. I SHOULD HAVE PAID ATTENTION.) and said she would send the clothing to the office with her husband. I imagined a few sleepers. Probably some onesies and a lot of unworn hats, since we all end up with about four frillion of those. And I sometimes wonder if any infant outside of Alaska has ever actually worn a newborn-sized snowsuit, or if we’ve all just been handing the same four or five snowsuits around to fellow parents for the last few decades.
But. Then.
Weeks and weeks later, after we’d had the baby and were settled in, my husband called me and said that he had the clothes. “It’s a lot of clothes,” he said. “A LOT.”
Okay! So maybe more than a few sleepers. That’s cool. I have…hmm…I have a little extra room in his closet, I think. Honestly, we really didn’t need any more clothes after all. But! Hand-me-downs! I still am not going to turn down some free hand-me-downs.
My husband came home from work bearing the biggest cardboard box of baby clothes I’ve ever seen. The seams of the box were straining, like it was ready to explode and kill us all with baby bib shrapnel. He put it down in the foyer and then immediately went back out to the car. Where he retrieved the second box. Then there was a garbage bag. And another, and suddenly it was like that scene in the original Miracle on 34th Street where they start bringing in bag after bag of letters to Santa into the courtroom.
I guess I started to look a little pale, because my mother-in-law immediately took over and started taking load after load of the clothing downstairs to be washed. And then we would take each load and attempt to sort it out by size on our dining room table. The teetering piles — a dozen onesies tall if they were an inch! — covered the entire table and several of the chairs and then we had to move on to piling stuff up on the couch. And I realized three things:
1) She had successfully pawned off every single item of clothing that her son had worn during his entire first year of life, including socks, hats, jackets, Baby’s First <Insert Holiday> outfits, and no less than FIVE snowsuits.
2) There were hand-me-downs within hand-me-downs here, as apparently they’d been given every single item of clothing that a nephew had worn during HIS entire first year of life.
3) She is absolutely the closest thing to an evil super genius I have ever met in my life, and possibly my idol.
The clothing had been given without prejudice — quite a bit of it was stained or missing matching items or just plain worn out. My mother-in-law spent hours matching up no less than 40 pairs of tiny baby socks. I just sat there, almost miserably surveying my jackpot, because I simply had no place to put this many clothes, what with our own son’s hand-me-downs and the baby’s already well-stocked closet of new clothes. I sort of maybe felt like I’d been tricked. But then again, oh my WORD, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars’ worth of baby clothes here, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and all that.
In the end, I sorted through all the clothing and put most of it back into garbage bags to be donated to a local organization for pregnant women and mothers in crisis. Everything we kept managed to fit back into a single storage bin for us to consult and dig through whenever Ezra is ready for the next size up in clothing. He’s already worn AND outgrown a few outfits from the haul, all of which were adorable and useful and are now boxed back up in a big empty diaper box…waiting to be handed off to the next pregnant sucker. I mean, lucky recipient.
So beware, real-life-friends-who-may-be-planning-on-having-a-baby, I have learned from the hand-me-down MASTER. Mwa. Ha. Ha.
Can I meet this friend? I want the next 6 boxes please.
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HEH! I totally did that to someone my husband worked with AND I also sent her with a bouncer, a baby papsan, a portable highchair and two extra carseat bases and the car seat and a packnplay. We’d debated listing it on Craigslist, but MAN, unloading it on a poor unsuspecting first time mom was SO much easier. And!!! She thanked me – profusly! Awesome!!!
Sometimes there can be too much of a good thing.
OMG! Nightmare sorting through someone else’s cr&p-I mean, clothing.
I could have used hand-me-downs when it seemed like OVERNIGHT my 8 wk old had outgrown all onesies in 0-3 mo sizes. And all I had were some new short-sleeved onesies that someone had thoughtlessly-I mean thoughtfully gifted us. I had to run out to baby Gap immediately!
One of my girlfriends gave me her son’s hand-me-down hooded bath towel. It was well-used, let me tell you. And that was all she gave me (and I was soliciting hand-me-downs, either). I thought that was weird. But I am still her friend.
I meant to say (if it matters):
(and I was NOT soliciting hand-me-downs, either).
Ahhh, my second wears hand me downs too. She doesn’t care. I don’t care. My bank account certainly does care. And really, isn’t that the one that matters?
But only hand me downs that my other daughter wore. To clarify. For some reason, other people’s handmedowns…hmmm…probably not so much. But it was nice of you to wash them before sending them to Goodwill. They’ll be the only clean things there. (maybe not. maybe I’m just judging based on OUR goodwill, where something cannot be donated unless it has been urinated upon.)
I would have loved hand-me-downs when my son was young (heck, I’d still love them!). He’s the only kid on both sides of the family and none of our friends have kids, so we were totally out of luck. I’m now in the process of getting rid of some of his items (he’s now 8, I’m getting rid of sizes 3-5, makes sense, right?) and am amazed that I can’t find takers for so many like-new items. How can people WANT to spend their money on kids items? Baffles me.
I wore almost exclusively borrowed maternity clothes during my pregnancy and have already foisted them off on others. The only clothes I’ve bought for my son (who is almost 15 months) are socks and two pairs of shoes (I bought the second pair because he grew out of the first pain in a matter of weeks). Everything else he wears are handmedowns from friends or gifts from grandparents. I know someday I will probably have to buy him actual clothes so I’m taking advantage now!
My sister-in-law is that person. Every time I see her I get a new trashbag bursting with the next round of hand-me-downs. You’d think that after 4 years it would taper off, but NOOOOO. I’ve started dreading the sorting, even as I love the actual “don’t have to buy tons of new things” thing.
I have a friend who only (and I mean ONLY) shops for her kid at Goodwill. Which is great, and frugal. When I had a baby about six months after she had one, she asked if I wanted any hand me downs.
I should have known better. Oh, there were some usable things, but most of it…uh. Stains. Rips. Stuff that had gone out of style a decade ago. I am not a fashion slave, but I really didn’t think the seersucker clown print did anything for my infant.
I received a similar haul for my daugther when she was 12 months. Since this is when she started daycare, it was perfectly timed. I filled one dresser with the hand-me-downs to be worn at daycare. This set she could wear painting, eating tomato sauce pasta, and playing in the sandbox. The other set I kept for home where we do a bit less of those things. It worked out perfectly and my husband was able to keep it straight with ease. We called them her play clothes and she loved them. The only time it got tricky is when we went out directly after daycare and I forgot to pack something from the other dresser!
There should be rules about passing down onesies. Those suckers can be down right nasty. Since I am having our first boy, every one of my friends with boys has handed me the dreaded black trash bag of horror. Sure, there is a lot of useful stuff in there, but most of it I wouldn’t even donate.
You are describing my life in this post. 90% of my maternity clothes were given to me by friends and I have now handed them off to my SIL and a friend. My SIL arrived at my house with a MINIVAN full of baby clothes (another evil genius) and then my neighbors, who’d been circulating baby clothes amongst them for YEARS) made the most recent recipient pack them up and bring them to me, in giant spacebags. Two little neighbor girls pulled four giant bags in their Radio Flyer wagon up to my front door while their mother smiled at me from the sidewalk (and cackled in a Mr. Burns kind of way). Needless to say, Goodwill got a nice big donation from me. Oy.
i can count on one hand the clothes we have bought my son new (and if you discount the ones on the sale rack at target for under $5, i only need about 2 fingers). All have been hand-me-downs from a neighbor (who gave us everything her kid wore during the first year in of life) and from a cousin (who passed down everything her boys wore in their second year of life). So my son has a full wardrobe through about size 2T. Everything else was either a gift or came from consignment shops. Of course, he was our first, so we didn’t have the hand-me-downs from the first kid, and welcomed everything anyone wanted to give. With my husband being a grad student and me a stay-at-home mom, we’ll definitely take the over abundance of gifts. The only thing we turned away was a UGA onesie, because I think it’s illegal for a GA Tech student to dress their kid in one…or something like that
I totally did that to my best friend who was pregnant with twins. I gave her everything. And I figured she was having twins so she needed everything. I wonder what she did with all those boxes though considering they live in a one bedroom condo.
My well-meaning aunt just donated some saved baby clothes to me….from her 16 year old daughter! Yes, 16+ year old hand-me-downs. Some are ok, and others are….crunchy. Most of the elastic was shot. They’re getting that stuff back as ‘didn’t fit, but thanks’. tee hee.
I actually get hand me downs from two friends and find them endlessly endlessly awesome, but of course have never had a million boxes delivered while I have a newborn. Ugh! She could have at least WASHED them.
We were totally broke when I got pregnant, unexpectedly, on the pill. The hand me downs we got totally saved us. And the thrift store down the road gets good quality stuff sent up from the States (we’re in Canada) so I can even get Carters and Circo up here. We did get a few stained or ripped or missing-snaps items, but 99% of the hand me downs were perfect. And I just unpacked the last of them yesterday (8 months in). Having the bigger sizes for those overnight growth spurts was invaluable. Now, anyone want the three diaper boxes of stuff he’s outgrown already? (seriously, taking a page from Amy’s book and bringing them down to the Women’s shelter tomorrow).
My sisters have done that to me. I came back from thanksgiving with 1 large tub and 5 large spacesaver bags of baby clothes. I refuesed all the large things like boucers and papa-san things since I’ve already been dumped on by my local friends, so once my crib and dresser get here, I’m all set for baby. Well, all but the organizing of all the baby stuff…..but I’ve got 2 1/2 months to go so….
ha ha! I love it! I got NINE diaper boxes of clothes from my BFF. To be fair, she did warn how much it was first, and I greedily accepted. The large box stack resided in my guest room closet for a long time as I slowly went through each size. I swear my daughter could wear a new outfit every day for about her first 6 months! I gave quite a few of the outfits to good will, and still continue to pass on the good ones.
I think when I pawned off an enormous bag of maternity clothes on my thinner, more stylish friend, she probably felt the same way. These were clothes that had been through at least 3 other pregnant ladies and included the 2 pairs of stretched out yoga pants I wore every day of the last month. I don’t think she wore any of that stuff. I wonder what she did with it all?
I will learn to say NO eventually.
As I had my baby last in our circle of friends, I was given a lot of stuff. Everyone was just so nice and helpful, and even delivered it to my house. Of course I need three carseats and five bases! I mean, I was given so much stuff that at one point I decided to count just the white, 0-3 month onesies I had, and came up with 276. (276!!!) Luckily, all were in beautiful condition, but, if my son wears three different outfits a day for each size phase, he will still never wear each outfit once…. (yes, I have a lot of time on my hands and an obsession with counting all this stuff…..)
Needless to say, I have completely outfitted four other babies, and am working on outfitting another, as my friends are having their second babies and getting their stuff back…;)
While hand me downs can be a god-send, it makes me a little upset that people can’t filter out the “crap” before handing them down. Seriously, how hard is it to take out the stained and crusty clothes before handing the bag to a pregnant woman who’s probably already feeling overwhelmed by “generosity”. Plus: dude, again, how hard is it to bring these bags and boxes of clothes to goodwill yourself instead unloading them on Poor Pregnant Lady?
*end rant*
That said: I’m hanging on to both my son’s and my daughter’s clothes for my BFF in the hopes she gets pregnant soon. However! I DO throw out the stained nastiness before storing.