My Second Best Piece of Advice About Having Children
Quite some time ago, I said that my best advice about having children was "Don't have kids during a global pandemic." Upon due consideration, my second best piece is "Don't ever buy a baby toy new if you have a Buy Nothing group in your area." M has been using this mechanism to supply Birdie with all sorts of fun toys for no more than the effort of picking them up.
I should stress that my involvement with this whole process has been minimal because M handles all the work. However, the basic premise for those of you who are not familiar is that people post items in good condition that they no longer want for anyone to take, so long as they promise not to sell it for profit. Most of this is handled through Facebook groups or other such mechanisms.
The groups are meant to cover a small geographical footprint to minimize travel effort. It's often claimed that Lakewood has the highest population density between Chicago and New York City. As such, there are actually two Buy Nothing groups on Facebook for our city, one for the east and one for the west side, even though the total distance spanned is not large. According to M, they will get upset if you post in the wrong one based on your address.
So far M has snagged a bunch of different toys from at least five different givers (from both groups!), including multiple items from right here on our own street. Some were given directly to Birdie, and others await her growth, or in one case, better weather. Purchased new, there's no doubt that these items would have easily gotten into the low hundreds of dollars.
I should make clear that we're also posting some items to give away, lest you think we're only taking and not giving. Most of these have been holdovers from Tulip. Through a weird series of mistakes by the cremation service, we ended up with three different urns for her ashes, so we gave away two of them. We also gave away some dog diapers we never ended up using. We also gave away some early-stage baby gear that we never used for various reasons. Since we have a bunch of stuff in the basement awaiting transit to Goodwill, we may pull out a few items and give them away via this method instead.
I should stress that my involvement with this whole process has been minimal because M handles all the work. However, the basic premise for those of you who are not familiar is that people post items in good condition that they no longer want for anyone to take, so long as they promise not to sell it for profit. Most of this is handled through Facebook groups or other such mechanisms.
The groups are meant to cover a small geographical footprint to minimize travel effort. It's often claimed that Lakewood has the highest population density between Chicago and New York City. As such, there are actually two Buy Nothing groups on Facebook for our city, one for the east and one for the west side, even though the total distance spanned is not large. According to M, they will get upset if you post in the wrong one based on your address.
So far M has snagged a bunch of different toys from at least five different givers (from both groups!), including multiple items from right here on our own street. Some were given directly to Birdie, and others await her growth, or in one case, better weather. Purchased new, there's no doubt that these items would have easily gotten into the low hundreds of dollars.
I should make clear that we're also posting some items to give away, lest you think we're only taking and not giving. Most of these have been holdovers from Tulip. Through a weird series of mistakes by the cremation service, we ended up with three different urns for her ashes, so we gave away two of them. We also gave away some dog diapers we never ended up using. We also gave away some early-stage baby gear that we never used for various reasons. Since we have a bunch of stuff in the basement awaiting transit to Goodwill, we may pull out a few items and give them away via this method instead.