Save Your Friends’ Money – Create a Secondhand Baby Registry
What is a Secondhand Baby Registry
A secondhand baby registry is just like your average baby registry, but instead of asking for all brand new things for your baby, you ask your friends and family members to try to fulfill the registry by providing items that are used.
This is exactly how my husband and I chose to do our baby registry for our first biological child (I say first bio-child because we are also foster parents and have been for over a year). In this blog post, I will share with you all the details of why, and how we created our secondhand baby registry.
Why Create a Secondhand Baby Registry
- Baby stuff is expensive!
- I don’t like spending lots of money, so why make my friends and family spend a boatload of money for me? Plus, if my family members want to spend a certain amount of money, this will help them stretch their dollar.
- Babies use a lot of the things for less than 1 year of their lives
- I watched other registry videos and everyone was saying that their baby used “such and such” item for like 3 months then grew too big. What a waste to spend full price on that item just to never use it again after a few months.
- All the baby stuff eventually ends up in the landfill
- A secondhand baby registry is also a way that I can help reuse items instead of adding more to landfills
- Tons of baby items are being sold on FB marketplace for pennies to the dollar!
- As I mentioned, babies use items for a very short amount of time that there as soo many people trying to get rid of all their baby stuff that they are practically giving it away for free
- Baby’s don’t need fancy brand new things…
- As a foster mom, I have learned how easy it has been to find items secondhand for free or reduced costs. I figured my child didn’t need all sorts of brand new fancy stuff when I myself and our foster daughters primarily use all second hand items.
- Teaches our child that they don’t need brand new items
- Obviously this is a lesson they won’t be able to understand until they are older. But I can’t wait for the day when I can teach my son to humble himself, save more money, and help reduce his environmental impact by telling him all about how the majority of his baby items (and likely all the stuff through is childhood growing up) were all used rather than being brand new.
What Have Others Said About It?
I will admit, I was a bit nervous about sending out the Secondhand Registry because it is so unheard of. Not only that, but it is kind of inconvenient for other people because it isn’t as easy as popping onto Amazon and hitting the purchase button.
But I went ahead and I did create a secondhand baby registry and I’ve been really pleasantly surprised about how everyone has responded to the idea.
The family members who I have talked to have been extremely supportive of the whole secondhand registry idea. I had one aunt call me raving about how much she loved the idea and how she got most of her daughters’ Christmas presents from a Local Free Stuff Facebook page this past year.
One other thing I have been worried about is what others would think about getting a bunch of used stuff for a brand-new baby. This is our first biological child, as I mentioned my husband and I are also foster parents. And in general, I find that most first-time parents tend to go a bit over the top with what they think they need for their child and that everything has to be the best.
What it really boils down to for me is that I honestly don’t believe that providing my baby with 100% brand new items is what is actually best for him. I’d rather start teaching and modeling frugality, simplicity, contentment, and even earth consciousness by starting out his little life in this way. And honestly, he isn’t going to know the difference! But as he grows up, I will feel proud to tell him that all of his baby stuff was provided by friends and family who came before him.
If you’re worried about what others might think or say about your hand-me-down registry – I say forget them haha. It might be a little more inconvenient for them, but at the end of the day, it isn’t about them. It’s about you and your growing family and what is best for you guys. So I say if you want to create a secondhand baby registry – you go for it!
And to be completely honest, I’d say most of my friends who are parents have been EXTREMELY excited that I am choosing to do our registry this way because it has actually been a blessing for them to offload some of the baby stuff they had lingering in their basements, garages, and storage units. It’s been hard to say no to them sometimes. Because in their good-natured hearts, they want to dump all of it off at our house.
What If People Don’t Want to Participate?
We live out of state from a lot of our family members so having them join in on the secondhand baby registry is a little more challenging. Not only that, but we also have people in town who just don’t have the time or the interest to join the hunt.
For these people, I created a very small registry on BabyList with a few brand-new items as well as a cash fund. We have 2 cash funds going – one simply for our baby’s future educational needs and one that I call the Secondhand Search Fund. That way people can still participate by sending cash our way and I will do the hunting!
At the end of the day, people will get you what they want to get you… Whether you ask for certain things or not! In fact, I’ve already been gifted new baby outfits, decorations, and other random things that I haven’t asked for. Even if you wanted to get an item used, your great aunt Sally may still send you a brand new high chair from Amazon.
What Items I Asked for Brand New
Babylist is a great place to host your baby registry because you can add items from any website. Not only that, but Babylist also offers a handful of tester boxes where they will send you a few popular brand-name items to try with your baby before you invest in a whole set of something for them. For example, they have a Bottle Box that comes with 5 different types of bottles so you can try each one out with your baby to see which one they prefer before buying a whole set. So we have some of those boxes on our registry.
The items we asked for brand new were things like:
- Bottle brushes
- Toilet sprayer kit (for our reusable diapers)
- Digital picture frame
- Medela manual breast pump
- Swaddle blanket from a company that supports foster nonprofits
- Diaper cream
- A robe for me
- Some Pjs for breastfeeding
This was literally the extent of the brand-new items we had on our registry.
How to Create a Secondhand Baby Registry
I created my secondhand baby registry on Google Docs.
In this article by another blogger, she gives an example of how to use Babylist to make your secondhand baby registry.
I also found this website, called Encore Baby Registry, later in my research that helps you put together a hand-me-down baby registry.
How to Organize A Secondhand Baby Registry on Google Docs
Explanation
I started with a little bit of an explanation as to what this is and why we are doing it this way. I also gave a few examples of what I mean by “secondhand” items. The things didn’t necessarily need to come directly from the homes of my friends but could be found at garage sales, thrift stores, or Facebook.
Requirements
Then I added a few requirements for the items we are looking for such as the stuff needing to come from a smoke-free home and to be up to today’s safety standards (aka no cribs from the 80s).
Local Thrift Shops
I also added a few recommendations for places people can look to find these items. We have a lot of secondhand baby and kids stores near us which is awesome.
Out-of-Town Ideas
Not everyone will want to participate in this kind of registry which is totally fine. So I gave people some ideas on how they could participate even if they lived out of town or perhaps just didn’t want to hunt for items.
Here is what that first part looked like:
How to Participate
Before creating the actual list of items, I wrote out a brief description of how to participate in this kind of registry. With an Amazon, Target, BabyList or other online registry you can see what items are purchased after someone makes the purchase. This is really nice so there aren’t too many duplicates of items.
This is a little more difficult with a secondhand baby registry. In order to hopefully reduce the amount of overlapping gift-giving, I asked people to email or text me when they found an item from my list so that I could cross it off. Then when others go to the list they can see which items have already been purchased.
It isn’t a perfect system, but it’s better than being 100% surprised day-of and getting 5 of the same item!
Item List
I categorized all of the items into different categories. More for myself to keep track of what we needed. It also helps to create a bit of organization in general.
As you add things to your baby registry, I would recommend including a brief description of exactly what you are looking for or even names of brands you like or a link to the specific item you would love to find. For example, I really want a Doona car seat/stroller. So for Carseat I put Doona and even added a link to their website with the item so that way if someone comes across one at a thrift store they can snatch it up!
Here is what that part looked like.
What If You Get Multiple of the Same Thing
As I write this article, we have not had our baby shower just yet. Therefore, I haven’t run into this problem. But here is what I plan to do if this does happen.
If the item is from a friend who realizes that they gave me a duplicate of something hopefully they would offer to keep it and get something else. If that isn’t the case, I will first off be gracious for the gift and keep it and…
1) determine if it is something we could use a duplicate of (my in-laws live close by and I’d like to keep some baby stuff at their house for when baby boy is there)
2) try to sell it on Facebook Marketplace in order to get some cash for the item to go buy something different
3) offer it for free to a friend who could use the item
4) donate it to our foster agency
5) donate it to a thrift store
Would You Consider a Secondhand Baby Registry?
I’m curious to know if you might consider setting up a secondhand baby registry for yourself or if this seems like too much work! What would you do differently?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you have questions on how this all worked out for us drop them below as well.
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