On Buying Clothes - Doug's first post!

Our first consignment store haul!

After our last ultrasound, we realized that Baby will not fit into tiny newborn clothes for very long. Near the hospital we found a wonderful consignment store called Chloe's Closet. We went a little crazy and bought a dozen onesies, shirts, dresses etc. But, because it was consignment we paid hardly anything for it at all!

And we are so very happy to have used clothes. Because our little girl is going to grow so fast, any one thing will fit her for an excruciatingly short amount of time and it is silly to invest so much for such little brief periods. And in this way, we can help ease the consumption of resources that we all contribute to as well as reduce waste when we eventually discard outgrown clothing by selling it back to the consignment store.

Furthermore, there is a significant health advantage to used clothing. Cotton especially is quite difficult to grow commercially and consequently many many harmful chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides, are used in the production of cloth as well as inks and dyes for the final garment. All of this makes new conventional clothing less than ideal and require several washings to make them safe. So used clothes are perfect, as they have already been purged of most of what could cause the most harm to little sensitive skin.

So our recommendation for anybody who'd ever want to buy us clothes for Baby would be to do what we did. We would much prefer used clothes to new ones. There are wonderful consignment stores in most metropolitan areas, and many quite upscale and trendy, without being pretentious or expensive. And go crazy!  The return is much greater so you'd be able to help us more. And there is so much cute stuff out there!

UPDATE: With subsequent consignment store visits, we went slightly overboard with the 3-6 month range, so we are probably good with that size. We'll next need clothes at the 6-9 month size, which is probably the clothes that she'll wear this fall. We are expecting a pretty big baby.