Soon to be and Freshly New Mums, old or young, do love to prattle on about New Stuff for Baby. It’s our version of hunting through the hedges for interesting sticks and bits of fluff to make nests with, only a hell of a lot more expensive.

Or is it? Ah Hah!

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed finding sweet little outfits and toys and dangly mobiles that play incongruous classical pieces and get caught up in the curtains and burn out their motors. I loved talking about all these things but I did have to hold my tongue during: “Where did you get your pram/cot/ Baby’s first BMW?…” kind of conversations and Not blurt out: “Skip!” when others were having a lovely chat about the merits of a £2,000 “Travel System” and that eternal debate: Mamas and Papas or Mothercare?

(I went into Mamas and Papas once. Not sure whether it was to torture myself with guilt that I couldn’t afford a £100 cot bed set. (No really, that is the kind of price and that does not include the cot bed. That’s ust the covers!) or just to have a good pompous scoff over the amount of money people were prepared to chuck away on the stuff.)

(It was the latter come to think of it. No one is more scathing about high prices than the penniless).

Anyhow. Here’s something I wrote at the time for the NCT magazine and since it’s already done, I might as well just bung it on here for now:

How to set up your baby for (nearly) free!

By Vicki Hill, York NCT

Friends and Freecycle – two of the most valuable assets a new Mum can have, in my opinion. Between them I have got almost everything my baby needs, and quite a lot he doesn’t, for very nearly nothing.

Now I must point out straight away that I do understand buying stuff for a new baby is an emotive thing. It satisfies a primeval and hormone-driven nesting urge and is also all part of the fun and anticipation of the new arrival. I do know many mothers who would not dream of using something second hand, and many who spend a fortune on designer baby clothes, hand-crafted cribs, crazily-priced prams and those gorgeous Danish-style wooden high chair things which cost more than my whole dining room put together. Honestly, I am not knocking this at all. For me however, working in a low paid job for a charity at the time, all these lovely things were completely off limits and I can truthfully say I have found it much more satisfying to see just how far I can go on a limited budget.

It began when baby Albie was a bump, with the pram. Probably one of the first things new mums think of when those two lovely lines appear on the pregnancy test. We were offered one straight away – and this is how convoluted things can get: we got it from friends of my boss’s wife during a chance conversation in a supermarket. We called it the Bananarama Pram, It was brightly coloured, moved about all the time and had a distinctly eighties feel to it. It was also in pristine condition and the kindly donors delivered it to my door, and showed me how to put it all together. Although we have now swapped the pram for a bicycle seat, I used it for many months and loved it. Shortly I shall start asking around to see if anyone with a bump would like it, though it will be a wrench to see it go.

I am still yet to use a snippy little buggy that we got from Freecycle however. Only because I am not sure what it is really for. The benefit of getting that, was when the owner e mailed to tell me they had really enjoyed watching through the window when I collected it, as I tried to stuff it into my bike basket and manoeuvre my huge stomach under the handlebars at the same time. So there you go. Free buggy for the small price of some free entertainment. Once again everyone’s a winner.

So, total savings on a pram and buggy: £400? Am I being conservative?

The next set of essentials came from an even more interesting source. (Warning: this will alarm the uncoverted!) Cycling along a street on my way to work one day, the bump and I spotted a big pile of stuff outside a garage door. It comprised of: a baby bath, a car seat, a bag of baby bottles and some cuddly toys. All looked in good condition and as luck would have it, a man came out of the garage door as I was drooling over this potential haul. “Are these going to be thrown away?” I asked. (It is important to check these things to avoid potential criminal proceedings). They were indeed, his girlfriend was having a clear out and they were grateful to me for taking them all away. How good was that! (I must of course put in a heap of disclaimers here. Car seats must be brand new and using second hand baby bottles is probably suspect. I’ll just say that as we are car-free, we knew we would only use the car seat once – to bring baby home from hospital – and I sterilised the hell out of the bottles and never ended up using them anyway. The baby bath and toys got boiled.)

I even did the ultimate Freebie Mum thing once and retrieved a nursery blind covered in zoo pictures from a skip. Still trying to work out a use for it, but that is not the point!

Total savings: £100?

By this time another lovely thing had started to happen. Friends, friends of friends, complete strangers all started to ask if I wanted bags of clothes they no longer needed. We also got several bags from Freecycle. I said yes to everything and really enjoyed going through it all. You will find some is stained and unusable (I use these for dusters or rag-rugging) – most of it will need a wash to freshen up, some will be too small/too big/absolutely not your style and can be passed on to another friend or charity shop right away – and there will be some wonderful clothes. Albie has been seen in everything from French designer outfits to organic Baby Gap and beautiful hand made jumpers I don’t even think have been worn. It is honestly only now that he is nearly a year old that I am starting to buy the odd bit of more specialised clothing – like rain suits for going out on the cycle – that we need. And I still have two huge bin bags of stuff set aside for him as he grows.
The same applies to toys. We quickly realised there was no point in buying any toy new. We have been given lovely things from Freecycle and friends and picked up others at charity shops and NCT fairs – all working, all clean and very often with the batteries still in which completely cancels out the couple of quid you pay for them.

Total savings on clothes and toys: From birth to one? I don’t know, you tell me. £500?

As well as Friends and Freecycle (and skip ratting) I also managed to knock up some essentials myself. I am very proud of Albie’s cot sheets and baby duvet, as yet unused as we co-sleep, which I made up by trimming a king size duvet we were given to turn it into a double we could use, and using the excess bit for a baby-sized one. I cut up an old cotton throw to make a cover and simply halved and hemmed some redundant sheets for the cot and was seriously proud of the end results.

What else. Nappies. This was really amazing and heart warming, Again, a chance conversation with a work colleague resulted in his wife presenting me with three large bags of beautifully washed re-usables with all the liners, inserts and a bag to hold it all and a nappy bin too – oh and a big pile of muslins and a hand written note explaining how to use it them all with lots of best wishes for the birth. They didn’t want even want them back, just asked they go to someone else who might benefit from them.

Total Savings on baby bedding, a complete set of reusables and all the extras etc: £300?

I don’t think you can just sit back and wait to be offered all this stuff – though that does work sometimes. I made a big effort when I was pregnant to chat to everyone I knew who had kids. I was desperate for advice and knew I would need their support later on. I also mentioned that if they knew anyone who was getting rid of anything I would be pleased to help them out! So you do need to be a bit proactive and also happy to give things a good clean. You also need to be very polite but very honest if you are offered something you really don’t need or want – although the best way to deal with that is to find someone who does and get it passed on to them.

I should also mention something about baby presents. Apart from the car seat that they make you have before they will let you out of the maternity ward and baby’s first sleepsuit and nappies of course, which we got free as you know. I hadn’t even thought about the presents. On top of everything else I have mentioned here, we got given: our baby changing bag and all the accessories, a baby medical kit including invaluable digital thermometer, toys, more toys and lots of other things I have already forgotten.

But it is still the free stuff that has been the most useful and pleasurable. Once again, if you are sniffy about second hand this won’t work for you. But if you enjoy getting something for nothing and like me, rather like the fact it has already been enjoyed by another new baby before yours, why not take up the challenge to Set up Baby for Free (nearly) like me?

P.S: I make that a total saving of at least £1,300.

P.S.S: Does anyone want to get rid of a gorgeous Danish-style High Chair?!

 

See Mean Old Mum for regular money saving tips!