People are too attached to their crap.

I just had THE funniest conversation with a wife who's expecting her first baby. She was asking about one of the children's consignment shops we have here. Now, I'll be the first to say, the consignments in this city are straight up garbage. Even so, people frequent them. The one everyone raves about is about the size of Orren's bedroom, and if you want brands that don't come from Wal Mart, you should probably go elsewhere. Even so, like I said, people flock to this place. I've bought a few things there when we were really short on cash and one of the kids hit a growth spurt, and I'll probably sell stuff there when I find out which gender's stuff I need to sell. It might not be a great place, but it's what we've got. When in Rome, right?

Anyhow, this wife totally flipped out over their policy that stuff that doesn't sell in 2 months is sent to an orphanage, and you get nothing for them. OK, first of all, we live spitting distance from Juarez, Mexico, one of the poorest and most violent cities in the world. We SEE what life is like in a third world country. How the hell can you deny your kids' used clothes that didn't sell, to the orphans who have to live in that place? Secondly, holy crap, they're used kids' clothes, not your car or something! I get that everybody wants to get money for stuff if they can, but if it doesn't sell within two months, at a place where people go to buy stuff like that, it's probably not going to sell, and you probably wouldn't have had any better luck on Craigslist, Bookoo, or your driveway on any given Saturday. Then what would you do? If you're like me, you'd donate it to Goodwill, the Junior Enlisted Center, or something like that. So what's the difference between that, and them being given to an orphanage if they don't sell? The outcome is the same from this end. I just fail to see what the big deal is.

This leads me to another point. Some people want entirely too much money for their used stuff. Go to a cloth diaper swap board, and you will see the best example of this ever. Now, I can understand charging a bit for a diaper if it's practically new, or a hard to find print, or an exceedingly popular brand, but I see some things that are just ridiculous. I mean, people who want $30 for a diaper that retails for $35, and isn't even in good condition. I see this all over Craigslist. "Carseat, great condition! Only $80!" News flash: "Great condition" doesn't imply the thing looks like it got stomped by Swamp Thing (which used baby gear often does look like), and charging $80 for a carseat that retails for $100 and is a year old is ridiculous. I wouldn't charge that for ours, which retail for WAY more than that, and are, in fact, in great condition (minus Orren's Radian, which is looking pretty rough lately).

I guess it comes down to if you want to sell the stuff or not. Baby and kid gear is NOT an investment. It does not appreciate in value. If you want something that does, buy a house, or gold bars, or really good stocks. Baby clothes are not considered part of a diverse portfolio.

You know, before the days of consignment shops, people used to just give their hand-me-downs away. Anyone remember that? That was the bomb shizzle. I got a bag of hand-me-downs for Orren, actually. I also recently gave some hand-me-downs of Erin's to a friend who's stationed back east. Consigning baby and kid clothes is a good thing to do as well, though. I was even talking with Thak about this last night. I was saying that as soon as the baby's born, and we know what gender's clothes we can get rid of, I'm going to take a ton of them to the consignment shop, and use the credit to buy Erin's school uniforms next year. (They sell school uniforms there, and we're going to be pretty short on cash when it comes time for back-to-school this year, so it'll help.) It'll also help if the baby's a girl and we can sell off a bunch of boy clothes, which they're always super short on, and get some girl clothes with the credit. It'll help a lot, especially in the sizes below 12 months, because we still have a bunch of clothes left over from Erin in sizes 12 months and up. We're going to be making good use of the consignment shop in the coming months, but at the same time, if the stuff we bring doesn't sell, what can we do? We'd just donate it anyway. What would we do? Hang onto it forever? That's crazy.