Baby Gear: What You Need and What You Don't.

[Note: We have closet doors and trim now! Not yet finished but one step closer to finished bedrooms....]

Last month I took one of our (unfinished) closets, filled with bin after bin of baby clothes, and I purged it.
I managed to take 6 (or was it 7?) huge bins and condense them into ONE.

For each size (NB, 0-3 months, 3-6 mo, and 6-12 mo....I'm still sorting through the 12months+ as Pippa is wearing some of it!) I have one tiny, vacuum packed clear plastic bag of my very favorite pieces.

The rest is gone: given to my sister (who is expecting a baby girl any day now!), to friends, donated, or in *the* garage sale pile.

As I sift through the enormous piles of children's clothing we've hung on to for 3+ years, I realize how little of it we actually use. With baby #2, I've been too tired (or lazy?) to search through bins of clothes, turning over drawers and wardrobes every 3 months....Instead, as Pippa shifts sizes, I grab a couple of sleepers and a few outfits from the top the nearest bin marked with the appropriate age, combine them with the gifts we've received, and we make do....with little to none of Winnie's clothing. The clothing we have lugged from old house to new house garage to new house basement and then new house upstairs.

That's right. FOUR times we've moved these bins....and hardly used any of the contents.

So, the bins are gone. Better late than never, I guess.

Even if baby #3 is a possibility, I have the pieces I need, I can borrow from others if necessary, and there is no way of knowing whether or not I'll even have a girl.....good riddance to it, I say!

I've recently noticed a lot of blogs on "essential baby stuff", all recommending loads of different products and paraphernalia.

What I really wish I had had is THIS article from Minimalist mom on Baby Essentials. It's smart and practical and minimalist and would have saved my Jamie's back.

I couldn't have written it better myself.
I love this woman.