I have had to be really careful over the past year or so, maternity pay isn’t the greatest as you know, but also the fact that my husband is self employed, there has been extra pressures on the family. When I met little Isla Rae, last May, I instantly thought of all the little dresses and outfits I can get her and wanted to dress her up as soon as she was born. I love dressing Noah up in cool clothes too, he looks so cute sometimes in his outfits and I sometimes dress him up so he looks like Daddy. It’s fun!
So how do I get away with keeping my babies styled in the latest fashions? I have lots of little methods, one being selling clothes that they no longer wear because they have outgrown them and using that money to buy new clothes. I am even recycling the trendy outfits, that I love, so that I can buy the exact same outfit in the next size up. I keep sentimental clothes in a box and they will be kept forever, so when the children are 18, I can embarrass them with their Disney outfits or cute little dresses.
Another one of my favourite pastimes is searching voucher code websites for promotions and offers on my favourite high street stores. When Isla isn’t settling at night time and I am rocking with her in the chair, I have to do something, so I often browse on the MyVoucherCodes app on my iPhone and look for good deals.
One of the most frequent searches I do is next and closely followed by mothercare. I love buying the kids clothes, but it can be an expensive hobby. So I use voucher codes to find out about deals and get a little money off the RRP. This is great as sometimes you can save on delivery costs, so that saves around £7 on average, which is great. Sometimes you find % off certain products, mothercare currently have an offer on myvouchercodes of 20% off sale items for example.
Another way of getting good clothes cheaply that I do is to spend hours and hours on the eBay app and bid on brand new items, which are a little less than the shops themselves. They are usually marked BNWT or BNWOT, this means Brand New With Tags or Brand New Without Tags. So you know you are getting new items, or nearly new.
I have started to use social media a lot more now to get things done and I noticed about 6 months ago that there were a lot of local groups appearing in Facebook. These Facebook groups were specific for the buying/selling baby and small children items, which is exactly what I needed to do. I joined the groups and it works the same as any other Facebook group – you add pictures with descriptions of the items you wish to sell and you just comment on other peoples images to show interest. I have sold a few things this way and also got the children some beautiful second hand clothes – lots of people sell on their Next items and other great high street brands. It’s easy to stay up to date too, because its all in the social media platform – you can even access it on your smartphone!
I would love to hear your comments on little things that you do…
