And 5 Things on Heavy Repeat.
As the father of two daughters, I know how wonderful welcoming a new baby into the world can feel. But I also know how expensive it can be. Just the sheer number of things that you consider you need, or might need. Or even the things where you think “I would be a great parent if I had, or used, this thing”. There is also the “having this thing would make my job as a parent easier.” So many things to consider when buying things for your kids.
The thing with kids, though, is that there’s no way to know how things will play out. So a lot of the early investment plays out after you start using it with your baby. And you find out through trial and error what works for you and what doesn’t. Obviously, there are some child-specific things that you find don’t work out after buying them that end up collecting dust. Then there are also things you find out are indeed a worthy investment as a parent. So when my second daughter was born my wife and I went back into our inventory and reevaluated what worked with our first.
These are the five things we bought as first time parents and didn’t use the second time. After that are the things we brought back, that ended up on the short list on heavy repeat.
I will say up front, that some of these could absolutely work for you and your family. Everyone’s family is different and you have to find what works for you. This is just my reflection on first vs. second time.
1. Baby Food Maker
This was definitely one of those “wishful thinking” purchases. Before we had kids we had this ideal of making healthy, organic, non-GMO etc food for our kids so we would know where the ingredients came from and there would be no risk of safety recalls or issues with lead in baby foods. So we got a baby food maker and used it a couple of times when my daughter started eating solid foods.
The one that we purchased made the baby food through a combination of steaming the food and then blending it up like a food processor. So the main differentiator from just a regular food processor was the steaming, which made it more soft and able to blend up. So when you think about it, you could just steam things like apples and sweet potatoes then mash them up in a blender. It’s just the combination of these two that makes them seemingly more convenient for parents.
It worked okay. I’m not going to lie. It brought a lot of peace of mind to make my own baby food and my wife used it several times to make our own applesauce, which was well received.
Thoughts and Reflection
But at the end of the day, it felt like cleaning up the baby food maker took longer than making the actual food. Just like with a regular food processor we had to wash the blades and the main body for holding the prepared baby food. It may have been dishwasher safe, but we always just ended up washing it by hand to be safe.
While the idea of being almost like a pioneer homesteader and making your own baby food from scratch is nice in theory, the baby food processor wasn’t worth the money for us. And it didn’t get a reprisal with our second kid.
Why It Didn’t Work For Us
This is because of several key reasons:
- We were just too busy.
- It was easier to just buy organic baby products . This being a frugal blog and all, saying that it was better to just buy organic baby food seems a bit ironic. But the reality is that there are already a lot of convenient and healthy options for mashes and purees targeting babies starting to wean. While they may be more expensive than doing it yourself, when you have kids I’ve found, time is infinitely more valuable than money in some cases. While there is the food recall issue to be concerned about, there are also consumer testing reports available to view online if you want to be doubly sure.
- The window in which your child will be eating mashes before eating real solid foods is maybe a few months. So when looking at the longer window of the child’s growth, the cost didn’t amortize well because the length of use wasn’t that long.
Add to that the picky kid factor. Say for example you use the machine to make sweet potato puree and it turns out your kid turns his nose up at it. It’s easier to do that experimentation through buying multiple flavors of pouches at Target, and finding what your kid will actually eat than trying to do it all yourself.
Final Thoughts On the Baby Food Maker
If you really still want to make your own baby food, there are more manual, albeit, time intensive, options available using a simple pot and a blender, which you may already have on hand.
2. Fancy Diaper Bag
I blame social media for this one. I think now there’s this pervasive need among parents to be the stylish mom or dad, have the Insta vibe and be fashionable even with a baby. So in a way, once you have a kid your trendy hand bag is replaced by a trendy baby go-bag. Not to mention you want to have a good quality bag you will be able to take around with you.
So for our first child we got a fancy leather baby bag. It’s a nice bag. I will admit. The zippers are very nice quality and when we took it out I didn’t worry about rain seeping in.
But from an ergonomic standpoint it was not convenient. There were not enough pockets and the ones that it did have were not big enough. The shoulder straps also seemed more for looks than considered utilitarian. You could definitely feel the weight of all the baby gear weighing on your shoulders.
Thoughts and Reflection
When my second daughter was born, I feel like we disposed of most of the pretense of trendy baby gear and images. This was probably because managing a toddler and a baby is just too freaking insane to care about image. Practicality and comfort reign supreme in that case.
For the second kid we actually used this “free” backpack that we got as a gift from the hospital where my daughter was born. This was actually a much better, albeit not as trendy, bag than the other one. The only downside to this one is that all of the other parents with kids born a year or two within the window of my daughter also got that same bag. So we needed to add a luggage tag for when we leave it at daycare.
Each child has their own go bag and when you are going through the infinite checklist of items for each child, and when the absence of any of those items could spell instant calamity, there is no room for image or social media pop. The bottle warmer is in the pocket, there are backup diapers, there are snacks (one for the ride there, and one for the ride back of course), the older one has backup clothes and has that one pair of sunglasses she will only wear because all of the other sunglasses are “too tight”. Whether or not you have all of these items, that is what matters. So what if the swaddle is stuffed in the side pocket and dangling out the side? It’s there, end of story.
Final Thoughts on the Fancy Diaper Bag
Whatever canvas bag, backpack, drawstring bag, reusable vegetable bag, it doesn’t matter how it looks; it just matters if it works for you and your child logistics system that you’ve had to dial in with military precision over the years.
In my opinion, the baby bag that works best for your family is the one that you design and make yourself. Believe it or not this is easier than it seems. You just need a sewing machine, some basic tools and a list of the things you need for your perfect go-bag.
My wife is a teacher and for her birthday last year I designed the perfect teacher bag for her. Here is the bag that I designed: corduroy with a sturdy strap and plenty of pockets. Looks like a high-end bag you would see on Instagram right? Something like this would cost upwards of $100 when bought from a retail bag shop.
Something like this isn’t out of reach for you if you want to learn how to do it either. Sign up for my machine sewing course and get started sewing this weekend! And it doesn’t end with custom baby bags. Imagine designing and making your own custom baby clothes, quiet books, blankets or camping gear for your kids.
Get started sewing your own stuff here!
3. Wet Wipe Warmer
Full disclosure, this one did get an encore when my second daughter was born. And that is mainly because the first couple of weeks when she was a newborn she hated anything cold. If she cried during the night then it would risk my other daughter, who is a light sleeper, to wake up. Then that would be a whole thing, which we didn’t want to deal with at the time. Then as she got older it was still there on the changing table more out of sheer laziness.
But could we have done without this with either child? Yes. I remember when I told my brother, who has two children older than mine, about this he rolled his eyes and laughed about how excessive it was. It was in that classic “oh you new parents…” way that parents that have older kids sometimes have.
Unless you’re keeping your wipes in the refrigerator, they wont be much colder than room temperature and the warmer won’t make much difference for a two minute diaper change.
Thoughts and Reflection
This is again, like the baby food maker, that has a very short window of utility when looking at the full timetable of your child’s growth. We gave up on using the tissue dispenser style because it never worked, and opted instead to just open the lid every time. The light on this thing is insane too. You don’t realize how bright it is until your are trying to black out your bedroom for the baby and this thing is lighting up the entire room like a night light. We would have to cover it with a towel during the night to cut down the brightness.
Final Thoughts on the Wipe Warmer
Overall, I keep this one more in the “maybe” pile. It’s really up to your discretion as a parent and how sensitive your kid is. But, also like the baby food maker, there are other ways of keeping your wipes warm for your baby that don’t involve a specific tool like this.
4. Lots of Newborn Clothes
The next thing on the list of expensive things we bought for the first child and didn’t with the second is newborn baby clothes. This one is for clothes that are size “newborn”. This one is as actually a tip from my friend. When looking at the total time your child will be the size to fit into a newborn size onesie is only a few months.
There is definitely an appeal to get lots of cute outfits for your baby when they are born. But from a utility standpoint you will not get as much long term utility as you would getting more 3-6 month size outfits. Not to mention the amount of blowouts, and thus outfit changes, raises almost exponentially as your baby reaches this 3 month window.
Now, there are different situations, like if your baby is premature or underweight. But in my experience the time where your baby can fit into a newborn outfit is very short. Then after that it either ends up in the donation pile or saved for the next kid.
Final Thoughts on Newborn Baby Clothes
It’s more worthwhile I’ve found to invest in more clothes in bigger sizes when your kid is more mobile and prone to be more messy.
5. Baby Learning Subscription Boxes
The fifth thing on the list of expensive things we bought for our first child and did not invest in for the second is subscription early education boxes. The biggest worry I feel like for new parents, at least for us, was wanting to give our kids a head start developmentally. Obviously, we don’t have to buy the same box for the second kid since we already have the one for the first. What I mean is that given the option the second time I feel like we could have saved money by not subscribing, or getting the kit items a-la-cart from second hand sites.
Thoughts and Reflection
I feel like these kind of subscription boxes are good for finding toys that are developmentally appropriate for kids. I also feel like the cards and instructions that come with them provide a good gauge for what your child should be capable of at certain times and what milestones you should aim for. My daughter also really liked the story books that came with the kits because they involve stories with real kids rather than illustrated characters.
We did the subscription for about a year after my daughter was born, from birth to around 15 months and ended up with about four or five of their project boxes. The thing that I noticed is that out of the five or so items that would come in the box, my daughter would be engaged in about two of them. Some, like ones that required more fine motor skills, she became more interested in when she got older.
Final Thoughts on the Subscription Early Education Boxes
But in hindsight I would say that if you want to save money on child expenses, then you can skip the subscription. A lot these things, like the fine motor skills ones, you can achieve with dollar store items like pipe cleaners, painters tape and toilet paper rolls. There are probably just as many equivalent projects you can find and make for cheap on Pinterest.
The fabric-based ones you can sew yourself for a lot cheaper. My blog even has several tutorials for equivalent items like this high contrast picture folder.
You Can Sew a Lot of Them Yourself
I’ll digress a little bit here and add that if saving money as a parent is important to you and you don’t know how to machine sew, learning to machine sew can be one of the best ways to save money and teach your kids to be resourceful and creative. I offer a full on-demand introductory course on machine sewing that you can complete in a weekend and get started sewing your own kids toys instead of buying them from an expensive subscription service. Get started by following the link here.
There is also a big second hand market for these kits and the toys in them. So if there is a specific toy you want, chances are you can probably find it cheaper second hand.
Some of the things my daughter liked and reused a lot:
- Kid’s flashlight (this one is not as bright as a regular flashlight so I don’t worry about her shining it in her eyes)
- The books. The ones about kids doing new things like going to the doctor helped her understand what it was and what the doctor was doing.
- The ones with animal matching like wall hangers or figures. But this can be replicated fairly easily by sewing yourself and getting animal figures from the store.
I would recommend trying to find those secondhand because they are not sold individually.
And that is the list of expensive baby products we bought for our first child that didn’t get use with the second.
Three Things We Bought That Get Heavily Reused
There is the list of things we bought for the first child then didn’t with the second child. Then there is the stuff we bought for the first that gets such heavy reuse with the second that we don’t even think about it.
1. Tushbaby Child Hip Carrier
The Tushbaby hip carrier on Amazon
After my daughter was born I realized I needed to take care of my back. My first daughter, before she learned to put herself to sleep, would often require rocking for a long time before she was fully asleep. And this wasn’t gentle rocking in the rocking chair. It was heavy squats and lunges around the living room and kitchen rocking.
Later when she got bigger and started often wanting to ”uppy” I knew I had to take care of my back. I didn’t want to be the dad who couldn’t play with his kids because of chronic back pain.
One of the gifts we got for our baby shower was the Tushbaby carrier. This thing is like a little perch you wear around your waste that looks like a wrestling belt. Once my daughter could sit up and support herself I started using it when we went out.
Thoughts and Reflection
It took a little time to get past feeling silly walking around with my daughter on this little hip dock. But it made a big difference in saving my arms and back when my daughter refused to walk on her own, like halfway through an afternoon walk or at the zoo. And even if it did feel awkward at first, I got over it fast thinking about how I would rather look silly than deal with chronic back pain when I’m older because I let my pride get in the way.
2. Sewing Machine
Full disclosure, I actually bought the sewing machine before my daughter was born. It was a goal of mine to learn and my wife and I learned in 2021, after the initial wave of DIY sewers and sourdough makers settled down.
But once my daughter was born, and some projects before she was born, I doubled down on using the machine. Because there were so many cool things I could make: blankets, bibs, quiet books and stuffies. And this was before Joann’s went out of business so there were a couple of times I was able to go with my daughter and she could pick out what fabric she wanted for her blankets or clothes.
Thoughts and Reflection
The sewing machine, while an expensive initial investment, has seen consistent use as my kids have gotten older. And the investment has definitely paid off.
Again I’ll add a plug. If you’re interested in sewing cool stuff for your kids too and want to learn to machine sew, take my online class. It’s really way simpler than you may think. It only takes a few hours to complete and you can start out on a lifelong journey of clothing repairs, DIY projects, and great ways to teach your kids to be self sufficient when they start with the “gimme’s” and want to buy things they see online or in stores.
Get started sewing your own stuff here!
3.Baby’s Brew Portable Bottle Warmer
This thing we realized we needed the first time we took our first born to a restaurant. About halfway through the meal she got hungry. We pulled out the bottle of milk that we brought.
Now if you’re breastfeeding then you’re covered. But we did bottles and packed breast milk in a cooler bag. We thought maybe we could just do cold milk. Boy did that not work. Later we found this portable warmer and it’s come in handy on the go, in restaurants, on planes (at the time of writing you can take a certain amount of breast milk in your carry-on), and in the car.
With our second kid we realized in a pinch we could use formula too. We could just prep a bottle with water and another with formula and mix it on the spot. But if your kid is like our first and requires milk with just the right temperature then this thing is clutch. Just remember to make sure it’s fully charged before going out with it.
My only gripe with the bottle warmer is that the little bunny ears that cover up the metal warmer part come off and get lost really easily, so be aware of that. There’s also this white rubber gasket that goes inside the warmer part and seals up the bottle when it’s warming. You have to take this out when you wash it. So pay extra attention to where you leave it because if that thing comes out the milk will spill all over when you put the bottle on to heat up.
Wrapping Up
Those are the five expensive things that I bought for my first born that didn’t get an encore with the second: baby food maker, wipe warmer, newborn baby clothes and early education toy subscription.
These are decent products, and things that definitely may work for you and your family. But from a cost-benefit perspective, we realized there are better and more frugal options.
And then are the three things that we bought that got an instant repeat with our second child: Tushbaby, sewing machine and portable bottle warmer. These are things that came with a higher price tag but have paid off through constant and reliable use. What expensive things did you get for your kids that ended up getting shelved?
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