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What to sell and donate when you’re unsure about having another baby.

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Our basement storage area before getting rid of baby items!

Need to declutter? Tired of saving baby items when you are not sure if you want another baby? Here’s my list for what I kept and what I sold or donated. 

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Does this look like something from an episode of hoarders or what? That’s our basement storage room pre-decluttering.

We’ve got two boys, ages 4 and 2, and we are undecided about whether we want another child at some point. We have been storing ALL of these toys and clothes and items “just in case” and I finally gave up. I decided it was time to declutter. It was absolutely absurd to be keeping all of these items, even though we theoretically had the storage space.

First- if you’re paying for a storage unit to store the items… get rid of it all.

Seriously.

We stored a ton of items when we were trying to sell our condo- until our realtor said, “Don’t forget, you may find that you could have bought those items twice over if you’d just decluttered them instead of storing them.”

And it’s true.

If it’s sentimental, keep it… but donate the things you can buy again.  When we ran the numbers, it was upsetting to see how much we’d spent on a storage unit. And if you sell it used, you can probably just save the money you made to purchase the items used when you need them.

For everyone else who is storing the items in your home, here’s the list of items that I got rid of. You’ll need to tailor this more for your own needs- I didn’t use a stroller much so that’s an item I need to sell, but maybe you used your stroller daily.

Baby Items to Declutter

  • Clothing: We had bins and bins of baby clothes. We have two boys so it’s all boy clothes. I kept the items that my youngest can grow into of course. Otherwise, I gave myself one bin to save ALL of my very favorite clothes in case we have another baby. 
    • I got rid of gender specific items- ie. shirts with phrases that said “all boy” etc. 
    • I organized all of the (clean) clothes I decided not to keep by size. Then I listed them all on Freecycle to give to other moms who needed clothes for their kids. This is a great way to help others and it felt great because everyone was very thankful. We didn’t own super high end clothes… if I did, I might have tried selling them at a consignment sale. 
    • I got rid of most of our bibs… I never used them. Let’s be realistic, if I was too lazy to put them on with my first son, chances are I won’t with a 3rd child. I kept a few of the largest bibs because they’d work for a baby all the way up to toddler. 
    • I kept all of those expensive swaddling wraps because those were amazing and I don’t want to buy them again. I am 100% certain I would use those.
    • I got rid of all of the socks and shoes that my kids had outgrown. If you saw my old post on shoe decluttering, you can recycle the shoes that are too beat up to donate in those yellow bins along the road.
  • Baby wraps and carriers: I had a few. I only used my Ergo carrier. I kept that and got rid of the rest.
  • Toys: If you have two kids, you know that the baby is mostly going to want to play with their older sibling’s toys. I doubt my third child would be much different. Keep a few favorites, donate or sell the rest. Also, there were items my big kids still use- like wooden ABC blocks, our kitchen set, Duplo blocks (they both like any form of Lego), etc.- that I knew a baby would be able to play with. Babies don’t need a ton of toys. 
  • All of the lovies. Neither of my kids used lovies so I had a ton of barely used ones. 
  • Excess baby blankets… I had SO many. I tried to get rid of some of them. Of course, I loved them all so it was hard. I’m holding onto quite a few in hopes I’ll be able to upcycle them into something else. 
  • Bedding sets: Really, did anyone’s kids use the whole set? I feel like most baby bedding sets are a waste of money.
  • Bottles: We breastfed so I have NO idea why we had so many bottles! I apparently thought I was going to be pumping more than we did. Either way, these aren’t sentimental items and you REALLY don’t need as many as you get anyways. Think about how many you use in a day… could you just wash the one and reuse it many times? Yes. We had drop in bottles… there was no reason to keep all of those. You only need one and replace the liners.
  • Items like bouncy chairs, walkers, baby swings, etc. take up a lot of space and are used for such a short period of time. You can sell them, then if you have another baby you can borrow one or buy another used. You won’t end up losing much money in this situation.
  • Car seats: These expire so you may want to get rid of them unless you REALLY think you’ll have another baby before the expiration date. Also, I’m not a fan of carrying an infant seat around. It KILLS my back. If we had a third child, I’d want to carry the baby in our Ergo so I could hold my other sons’ hands. Next child, we will just get another convertible seat. We got rid of our whole infant carrier set.
  • Strollers: This is going to take some thought. Do you use strollers? I still need to declutter mine. It’s ridiculous. I’ve got two jogging strollers- a single and double. I’ve got one umbrella for one child. I’ve got another regular double stroller (sold). They’re in my garage so I forget they need to be decluttered. Given how many times I’ve used these strollers, it’s absolutely absurd that I have them all out there. I really don’t like using a stroller in most circumstances. I’ll probably keep a small umbrella stroller. You can rent strollers many places. I don’t need a stroller most places that I go. But that’s me… I have friends who rely very heavily on their strollers. I used an Ergo carrier or let the kids walk- I’m big on exhausting my children, haha.
  • Many, many baby books: First, I LOVE books. But I found a lot of the books designed for young babies weren’t ones that I was super attached to. We do reading time as a family so I mostly just saved a few gems in the baby book category and got rid of the rest. I saved books like my DIY Board Book and of course everything that was still appropriate for the 2 and 4 year old
  • DVDs: I still need to go through them all, but I don’t see myself showing a baby 12 different Baby Mozart DVDs when my two oldest want to watch Paw Patrol. They can all watch Paw Patrol. Babies don’t care. Mine used to be just as excited watching a football game as they were about any baby DVD. Why did I waste money on these again?
  • We had extra cribs… again, ridiculous. We had a rocking crib that I liked, but really… we didn’t need it. It took up a ton of room. Used furniture is pretty cheap to purchase so next time I can pick it up used if I need to. But realistically, my kids all slept in our room in a cosleeper for a while so I imagine that we’ll just used that. The Arms Reach Cosleeper was small enough for us to keep folded up in the guest room closet shelf. Cribs are just too big to hold onto. 
  • Changing tables: there’s lots of cool upcycle ideas for changing tables, but eh. I sold ours. I didn’t have a pressing need to upcycle it. We can buy another one used if we need  to, but you can also just put a changing pad on most bureaus (with attachments) so it’s no big deal. And many people say they usually changed their kids on the floor or on a bed so storing a changing table is a waste of precious space.
  • Rocking chair: We actually got rid of our glider a while back. It was unnecessary. I strongly preferred a big glider that many people use for a living room. When we moved our boys into a room together, I moved that glider downstairs in our basement for additional seating.

I made quite a bit of money selling some of these items. Yay! 

Items I kept

  • My favorite carrier (Ergo)
  • Sentimental items like hand knit or crocheted blankets… I need to figure out what to do with them, but I didn’t want to get rid of them.
  • A few favorite clothing items: I limited myself to a bin.
  • A few select baby toys that I loved and wouldn’t take up much space. I tried to pick items that were the most entertaining for baby.
  • Any toys my older kids still use- like ABC blocks. They’re made for older babies, but they’re useful later on too. 
  • My favorite books.
  • Arm’s Reach Cosleeper: I debated selling this because they have good resale value, but I opted to keep it because we used ours a lot and they’re small to store when they’re folded up into their carrying bag. I’m guessing the same thing applies to pack and plays.
  • Our glider: I purchased this to replace the rocking chair. It rocks and it would also work in a living room so I can put it in another room if desired. I usually sit with my boys in this chair for reading time so it’s still being used!
What to sell and donate when you're unsure about having another baby. #organization #cleaning

I hope this helps you declutter too. It’s so awesome to see how much room you save once you start getting rid of these items. Did I forget anything good?

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