Reuse or Hand-me-downs

[Robin]

#3376

We have 5 young girls that could have been quite expensive to keep in clothes (especially the one who liked to suck on their sleeves and shirt collars or to wipe their dirty hands and face on their shirts).  Luckily we have very generous family and friends that have passed on clothes, shoes, boots, toys, movies and books as their children have out-grown them. 
I keep a couple bin fulls in the basement for clothes that will eventually fit my oldest child in the next couple years and the rest just continues through each child because the next child grows into it just as the older child grows out of it.
We do run into a lot of stained, stretched or broken/worn out clothes as time goes on (mostly stained) so we started using the clothes to repair other ones.  We’ve taken sleeves from one shirt to put sleeves on some sleeveless shirts we were getting rid of, or the edge of one shirt to replace the triangle insert for a low collar/neckline, or buttons on one shirt to fix another.  Elastic has helped as well to make shorter skirts fit the younger child and thus be longer (my girls just don’t sit polite long enough in a skirt to wear anything shorter at all… tom boys that forget that they are in a skirt).
Plus when our girls outgrow things we pass on what we can (whatever has survived) to friends and just keep the cycle going.
We have been very grateful for their generosity and the huge savings we have had over the years receiving hand-me-downs and so the least we feel we can do is to pass it on.  I’m big on savings/FREE more so… so I’m happy to help others in that area as well and to know that someone else has that frugal attitude as well to make their dollars stretch farther.
If you don’t have anyone to hand your treasures down to, check out freecycle.org (or other recycling sites).  It’s available in alot of areas worldwide.  Just be sure to give something first before you ask for anything (I believe that’s a rule with every group).  Happy Reusing! :)

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