I do not have any children, however, if I did I would not mind the hand me downs. most of what the girls grow out of now I send to my niece as it is because she is growing into their sizes as my sd's grow out of them. I do not like to throw things away that I have bought or that BM has given us (ex. clothes for the kids) so if they are out grown then I find a home for them with someone that I know has a child that can wear them. If I had children I would keep them so that my child could wear them, to me is saves money. don't get me wrong, new outfits and stuff here and there but already having something makes it easier to me.

Don't really have that situation-as although ss is a year older than my ds-ds is bigger so ss gets his hand me downs. As far as toys-the kids really don't share with the exception of sporting equipment. The other kids have used ss's sporting equipment and I have no problem with that as I think of it as Our family sporting equipment. After ss moved out-bm made him call me and and ask to pack up all the baseball stuff he's ever used. I told him we didnt really have it anymore as he had lost or ruined most of it-but I was a bit peeved that bm wanted it. We have 4 kids (including ss)-we didnt have the money to buy every child a bat, but rather they shared. Sorry going off on a tangent.
If you bought the stuff for your skid-and skid didn't destroy it I would reuse it after it had been disinfected and bleached thoroughly, of course.

My MIL actually had the nerve to tell me to go over to BM's house and get SD6's crib that she had bought for her before being born!!! :O

No.

Hand me downs are inevitable in our home... My BS is 14... SS 9 is the same size almost...so he gets BS's hand me downs. BD is 2...she gets a lot of SS9's old toys/books etc. I don't mind.. that is how I was raised..and kids outgrow things so fast it makes sense. I do however still buy new things!

Hand-me-downs are fine. Trust me, you will appreciate the cost savings! But it's normal to want your child to have 'new' stuff sometimes and there are some things that you will just want to be new for your child rather than used. Don't sweat it now though if you don't have kids...why worry about the future? But as you are getting rid of those toys and clothes that the skid doesn't use anymore, you can decide if they are nice enough to pack away for your own child someday. There is nothing wrong with 'reusing'. How is that any different than going to a yard sale or second-hand store? Sometimes you gotta do what you can to make your money go farther!

Wait. Don't birds construct a new nest every spring?

i.e; " The MIL telling "me" to go to another woman's home and take an old crib out of it and bring it in here?!" Never! :?

Strangely this seems to be a fairly common thing among the psycho half of many blended families.

My SS's SpermGrandMa called my wife not long after out-of-wedlock SpermIdiot spawn #2 was born and demanded that my wife send back the car seat and other things that SpermGrandMa had given to my wife for SS. :jawdrop:

First off the crap was not worth the shipping costs to send it to her, second, who the hell would try to re-po a car seat, etc...... that was a gift to the mother of their first GrandChild? :?

My wife was young and responsive to the SpermClan guilt trip at that time and considered boxing it all up and shipping it to SpermGrandMa. The bill for shipping was going to be over $100.00. NO F'IN WAY was going spend a penny to benefit their idiot asses (though I did by a stamp).

I took Polaroids of all of the crap the hag wanted back, tossed in the back of my truck and dumped it at GoodWill. Then I took a picture of the charitable donation tax receipt I got for it, put all of the pictures in an envelope, had my wife address it to the Hag and sent it to her.

Grrrrr! And I would do the same thing again nearly 15 yrs later. The nerve and ignorance of some people never ceases to amaze me.

SpermHag was piiiissssseeeddddd when she got the pictures. }:)

I would not give the SpermClan the benefit of my Skids hand me downs and I would not take hand me downs from the SpermClan. However, I would have no problem using hand me downs from my Skid to my BKs if the Skid was a resident of my home since my SS lives with me full time I would find this no different than hand me downs between sibs in a non blended family.

That is completely different, Spunki!

Rags- The IL's are as cheap and tacky as they come. This being that they are wealthy too. I think these types can be the most stingy and greedy sometimes though. I certainly was not impressed with their "reasoning" either. "Oh, we spent so, so much on SD6's nursery! We see no harm in you getting "it" from BM's home!"

Seriously? The woman has never spoke to me in two years and the few times she has, she cussed me out in public , so yeah, I'm sure she would love "me" to just come waltzing in her home and steal her daughter's baby stuff. Wow.

I have 3 little ones. Ss is 9 years older than bs4. We don't keep any of ss things here. Everything goes home so we never see it again. But we don't buy his clothes anyway. Now when we did buy ss clothes and he was keeping stuff at our house, years ago, he left some good clothes. And yes thy are out in a box waiting for bs to grow into them! Ss has nice clothes so I wouldn't mind hand me down from him, but it'd never happen. With my girls we got hand me downs from my nieces. And my kids have still gotten new things because of the money we saved by using hand me downs!

I believe in hand-me-downs. Why waste money? Of course, this depends on who paid for them. I have no problem with my DD wearing something that we bought that SD can't wear anymore (if it's in good shape, obviously).

I do have issue with BM trying to give us stuff though. She once gave my DD some clothes. SO tried to say no to them, but she like left them in his hand and walked away. I was going to give them to Goodwill, but DD saw and fell in love. I let her wear them twice. They have gone missing. }:)

My SS is 18 and my bios with DH are 4 and 2. We sold most of SS's hardly used toys and unopened games in a garage sale a few years ago. But I asked DH to keep the legos and the matchbox cars. They were SS's favorite activities when he was young and I wanted my bios to also be able to enjoy them. When SS comes to visit now, he loves to play legos with the bios. It brings back fond memories for him and creates great new memories for the bios.

We are right in the midst of this as I type. This weekend DF and I went through the skid's room (SD5 and SS3 share a room at our house) and purged TONS of toys. We kept a bin of toys that were SS3's and are more "babyish" to keep for our son (I'm 28 weeks pregnant).

We also went through clothes and put away the ones that SS has grown out of. I'll hold on to them until the baby is old enough and see if we still like them. I am very thankful that we have SS3's old toys and clothes that we can recycle, and hope that it will help to save money.

However, for whatever reason, I would be completely uncomfortable taking toys or clothes that were exclusively from BM's house (if she were to offer them up). I guess I'd take them and sort through what I like, but I'd feel awkward about it.

My skids get my kids hand-me-downs. DH's kids and mine are roughly the same age, but his are a lot smaller than mine are. Our oldest daughters share clothes, like any other sisters would. They wanted to be sisters since they were in kindergarten, and love the fact that they can call each other 'sister' now.

So nice to see so many people have been in this situation. When BM found out I was having a baby she refused to give any of SS's old things (crib, changing table, glider, toys, etc...) to us, claiming she may want more kids herself some day. Which was fine by me... I didn't want them. When she realized this and that she didn't have any room for these things in her tiny new home which wasn't being paid for by my DH anymore, she had the movers bring all of it to our house completely unannounced. :? "Uh... what are we supposed to do with all this crap???" So I sold it all on Craig's list and then sent her a thank you note for the beautiful new coach diaper bag I purchased with the profits.

My DH and I don't have kids of our own but my SD5 does get (and LOVES) hand me downs from SD13. When I cant get SD5 to wear anything in her dresser I pull out something old of SD 13's and say "What about this...it use to be SD13's!!" Usually her eyes light up and she wants whatever it is. SD5 LOVES SD13!! If I found out I was PG tomorrow I would save all of SD5's outgrown clothes for my biochild. She has such cute clothes, why waste them? I would still buy new for my biochild but I certainly wouldnt snub the financial savings I would gain due to the hand me downs. My luck my biochild would be a boy....no boys in our family. He would get all new.

My DH and I don't have kids of our own but my SD5 does get (and LOVES) hand me downs from SD13. When I cant get SD5 to wear anything in her dresser I pull out something old of SD 13's and say "What about this...it use to be SD13's!!" Usually her eyes light up and she wants whatever it is. SD5 LOVES SD13!! If I found out I was PG tomorrow I would save all of SD5's outgrown clothes for my biochild. She has such cute clothes, why waste them? I would still buy new for my biochild but I certainly wouldnt snub the financial savings I would gain due to the hand me downs. My luck my biochild would be a boy....no boys in our family. He would get all new.

Our baby has gotten lots of books which used to belong to stepkids. I certainly don't mind having them, but I wanted to buy her her own books too. Then the topic came up with DH about who's going to get the books when the kids are old, to keep them for their own babies etc. And his theory was that the stepkids get them because it belonged to them first. Fine, all the more reason to make sure I buy my kids their own stuff, although they certainly will not have as much as the stepkids had for purely financial reasons (I'm an avid library user). However, SD has mentioned to me that after all the babies are done with the books, we can donate them. Books, it seems, are just something they don't feel that sentimental about, so maybe I might actually get to keep some of our favorites, who knows?

Same stupidity with stuffed toys. SD has been bringing her stuffed toys one by one (she probably has hundreds!) for baby to play with. However, when she wants them back for her bed, baby has to give it up. Right now baby is too small to understand anything, and I am trying my best to not let baby get attached to any stuffed toy belonging to her sister, in order to avoid the trauma of when it gets taken away. Unfortunately, money is tight and I haven't been able to buy my daughter any stuffed toys yet, but she does have the one teddy I got as a gift a long time ago.

I have to add to that MIL has indeed lamented that a lot of the money she spent on the stepkids when they were younger was a waste, but I don't think she would ever ask for anything back. She used to buy stuff for them and BM would throw it out, it was never good enough. Or BM's family would buy another of the same thing and her purchase would get thrown out. She sent lots of stuff, even went to their house one day and found stuff that she sent in the trash and retrieved it without BM and DH even knowing. My baby has inherited playpen, shoes, blankets etc. all purchased by DH's mom and kept at her house for when the grandkids visited her, and I was very thankful to have them, given our tight finances.

Quite frankly, I have no problem getting the stepkids hand-me-downs. It was my DH who worked his ass off to get the money for those things (BM has never worked really hard a day in her life), I have no problem with my kids benefiting from his hard work, especially now that we cannot afford such things.

I am due in April 2012, and my DH keeps saying stuff like "I already have a crib"... I really don't want to use my SS nursery things. I don't mind the clothes and toys so much, but this is my first and probably only baby, and I would like the experience of a new mom nesting for a new baby. Anybody have any words or suggestions?