I never buy my kids clothes!

Most of you who know me know that I am Cheap Cheap Cheap.

Actually, I probably shouldn't say that. It makes me sound like a jerk. I would hopefully never screw over someone to save a buck.

But let's just say I get very excited when I can find a deal.

Maybe you could call me a Tightwad?

Anyway, one thing that makes me deliriously happy is that I almost never buy clothes for my children. I have two women that give me hand-me-downs that make up about 80% of my kids' wardrobes, then about 15% (or more) of their remaining clothes are random hand-me-downs and gifts.

I have three kids, all younger than eight. In the past three years I have bought less than ten articles of kids' clothing, total. One of them was a premie outfit for Benjam just because he was too big to fit into any of the baby clothes we had. I also bought a few bathing suits.

And yes, we do use hand-me-downs for socks and underwear and shoes too.

There are many reasons why this is great:

1) The obvious one is money. To illustrate my opening sentence, one time when we got a few bags of hand-me-downs for the girls, I actually did rough calculations in my head of how much all of it would have cost if bought new. Since it was a lot of Carter's and other good brands, the total came to a few hundred. Even if I bought everything at consignment sales, three years of clothes for three kids would cost quite a bit.

2) Shopping for clothes is not a "fun sport" for me, and I certainly have no desire to drag three kids to stores every season, or line up a babysitter every time Benjamin needs a new size.

3) I am maybe more wasteful than I should be in some areas -- for example, we use paper plates and cups at times, and I don't re-use baggies. This kind of makes up for it in my mind.

4) The clothes are more special when we know the people who had them before us.

When it's time to "change out the closets," usually due to weather, we haul the stuff we need down from the attic and pack up the old stuff.

Then, I do something kind of fun: because we are lucky enough to get so much great used stuff, I segregate them into piles: pants, shirts, dresses, jackets, etc. Then I tell the girls to "come into the store and go shopping." I might tell them to pick out five pairs of pants each, etc. What they don't pick, I pass on to someone else.

I know at some point we won't be able to do this as much when the kids get older. But for now, it is a byooooo-tiful thing!