Coming from a large family, I’ve always been comfortable with hand-me-downs. It just makes good sense, especially when it comes to baby gear. Unfortunately, all of our family and said gear is 3,000 miles east. Meanwhile, most of our LA friends are either waiting to start their families or have littles that are Luke’s same age range. We were blessed with multiple baby showers and incredibly generous friends and family, but I knew for the long haul, I’d need to find a way to snag some gear on the cheap.

We’ve had massive luck finding furniture and the like on Craigslist, but I’ve found the baby gear to be wildly competitive. Plus, lugging Lucas around in LA traffic to pick up one piece here and another piece there is far from practical.

When we heard about the LA Kids Consignment sales, I was wary. There are huge variables with things like that. Plus I kept envisioning the  bridal sale scene from Friends. (Friends – Monica’s Wedding Dress).

We’ve been to two sales now and found great deals about both. The organizers rent out a huge space for the weekend and there’s beyond scores of kids gear. The first sale we went to, Luke was just 8 weeks old and I wasn’t yet adept at taking him out solo let alone shopping so it was more of a scouting mission, even though we got some good deals.

Last weekend we drove about a half hour north of the city to the Santa Clarita Valley for another sale. We hit the jackpot. I went in with a list of “nice to have” items we were scouting for and we found almost everything we wanted. Luke’s now the proud owner of a jumparoo, a music table, a big dump truck, four new sets of pjs — including two Christmas-themed pairs, new sippy cups, safety equipment, board books and (my personal favorite) a baby bow tie. Not bad for $100.

I can’t wait to hit up more of these sales — and to sell back some of the gear we don’t have space to store.