Lessons I Have Learned - Consignment Sales & Craigslist

We are very fortunate to have nephews who pass their things along to our son! A steady stream of adorable clothes has been coming into our home since before E arrived in March 2009. He gets so much joy out of knowing that D and/or Z wore different outfits that he has. It makes dressing him so much easier some days! I can say, "Mommy remembers when Z used to wear this! And now you get to wear it today!" or "This shirt was D's. Wanna wear this one?" Oh if it would only remain that easy! :)

From time to time we need to add some PJs or some big orange apparel to the collection of clothing. These items can be a bit pricey, especially the orange items! But Knoxville consignment sales provide the perfect opportunity to pick up awesome big orange clothing items at great prices. A couple of weeks ago, I picked up an adorable hand painted Vols t-shirt for just $2! You read that correctly...it was hand painted and I only paid $2! And just yesterday I picked up some short-sleeved shorts pjs for just $1/pair!

Consignment sales are also a wonderful place to buy toys! We have accumulated quite the collection of Little People toys and 90% of them are from consignment. E loves his Little People, and I hope he will play with them for several years. Many of the sets were picked up for under $10. We grabbed a Craftsman work bench a few weeks back for $7.50. We also picked up a jackhammer for $3 and an air compressor set with an air hammer and paint gun attachment for $7.50. The air compressor set retails for $30. For just $14, I picked up a Bumbo with a tray yesterday for a friend who is expecting her first child. That set would retail new for over $40! I could go on and on.

If you have never tried buying consignment, I highly encourage you to give it a try. With the way kids outgrow toys and clothes, consignment sales can definitely be a great opportunity to save money. You pay a fraction of the cost for a quality item that is usually in like new condition.

But there are times when you are looking for something specific. And since the larger consignment sales only come around twice a year, they may not be the best option for finding what you need. For that there is Craigslist! Although my brother-in-law once referred to Craigslist as Ebay for rednecks, I have found it to be a great source for finding things we have wanted for our son. The latest of those was a wagon. We have been shopping for wagons on and off since he was very small. We had recently become more serious about that search and were seriously considering purchasing one for him for Easter. We had talked to my parents, and they were willing to go in with us on this purchase. And E had received some birthday money as well that we were going to put towards the purchase. During my online searching, I had come across lots of wagons which fell into different categories: dream wagons that just were out of our price range, really cool wagons that were kind of expensive and maybe within our price range, and awesome wagons that we could definitely afford. One of those dream wagons was the Step 2 Choo-Choo Wagon. To buy the base of the wagon would cost over $100. And then if we had a need for more than just 2 cars, we would have had to pay an additional $40 + tax + shipping for each car. Needless to say that wasn't happening. At least not until I decided to search Craigslist to see if I could find a deal on the wagon I had settled on. When I performed the search, there is was! Not just 1 but 2 Step 2 Choo-Choo Wagon! Each had a total of 4 cars meaning that they would retail for over $200 each. The asking price was $110 each, but I noticed they had been listed for a month and the seller had noted that they didn't have storage space for them and needed to move them quickly. So I decided to offer them a little less than their asking price for 1 of the wagons and see what happened. The wagon we had decided to buy would have cost us around $100, so if we could get this one, which was bigger and nicer, for that or less, I would feel like we had really scored. It turns out that the seller was a church daycare about a mile from our house, and they were willing to accept my offer. So E and I took our truck to the church and picked it up! And it has been the source of many smiles. We look forward to taking it on the greenway to the park and packing it in the car for trips to the zoo and other places. As you can see, it has plenty of room for E to bring along some friends.

So if you have been skeptical of Craigslist, take the plunge. Get on there and look around. You never know what you might find and what you could save!