H is for How I Learned to Love Hand-Me-Downs

Any younger sibling hates the idea of hand-me-downs. I'm not even a younger sibling, but I still got hand-me-downs myself, and it took me a while to embrace them fully.

When I was first pregnant, we got offers for hand-me-downs and I turned them down. I think I wanted everything to be new and special, and I wanted to pick out things for my baby. But now that he's older, I've completely let go of that.

I really learned to embrace hand-me-downs when I started to have so many things myself--new things, great things adorable things, barely worn or not worn at all--that I just wanted to give to new moms. And now that my kid is older, and growing overnight, and now that we live in a place with seasons (we moved from Hawaii to Utah) and need whole seasons of attire, giving and receiving used clothes is just a part of what we do.

Of course, not all hand-me-downs are created equal.

Lots of people think of used clothing as dirty, outdated clothing that the giver just doesn't want anymore, and there's a certain stigma.

I had that a little myself, and I have to say my good friend, who's son is a few months older than mine, shook that right out of me. She handed me a big bag of neatly folded, adorable, stylish baby clothes that her son had just grown out of. She explained that she loved the clothes and kind of hated parting with them, but it made her happy to share them. I was doing her a favor by letting her kid's clothes live on a little longer.

Another friend of mine started selling her kid's gently used clothes on Instagram in cute flat lays and letting people bid on them. I realized that so much of the stigma I had with used clothing was pretty much nonsense.