I clothed my boys for $120 for four years of clothes

I'm not typically a talented bargainer buyer or frugal type.  However, I believe my own Craigslist purchase in my whole life was sufficiently awesome to give me some thrift credit for all time.  Over 48 months of clothing a kid for $120. 

When I was pregnant with Trajan, I for some reason decided to post a listing on Craigslist saying I was looking to buy a kid's entire wardrobe from birth through whenever they had.  I got a response of a woman who had five large rubbermaid tubs of clothes and wanted $105 for them, with the tubs.  We went out to pick them up and it turned out they were fantastic (clean, many new items, variety of sizes and weight of materials).  We however got to her house with only twenties.  The woman was willing to take $100, but having seen the stuff, we went ahead and paid $120.

We did not buy Trajan any clothes until he was two other than one outfit one day when we were out and he needed warmer clothes than he was wearing.  With Chiron, we had to get some preemie and newborn things, but most of these were given to us, so I would say we have still spent less than $50 total on top of that original $120.

Why am I bringing this up now? This weekend, I decided to rotate Chiron's clothes.  We originally set up the stuff from zero to six months for him and he's now outgrown all of the sub-three month stuff and some of the smaller three to six month stuff.  While he is still fitting in some 3-6 month, I am going to be out of town a significant amount of time in the next two months, so I decided to take advantage of my last free weekend for awhile and rotate his clothes.

This is about 60% of the stuff from 6 to 12 months:

I brought everything in from the garage where it was stored in plastic bins, washed it and sorted it downstairs before taking it upstairs.  I wish I'd taken an intentional picture of it all.  This was just something I sent to a friend who asked what I was doing.

I waxed nostalgically about a future time when he will  be big enough that I will just gradually change out his clothes rather than all in one fell swoop while I emptied his drawers of 0-6 month stuff, organized them and stored them.

I took the 6-12 month stuff and I divided it between 6-9 warm weather, 9-12 warm weather, 6-12 cool weather and then put stuff for actual cold into plastic bins in his room to be considered if and when we need it.  I made a strategic change this round and decided to put everything up as outfits rather than organize by type (short-sleeve onesies, t-shirts, shorts, etc.).  I'm pretty sure this is what we did with Trajan and I remember it working really well.

I even sucked it up and organized socks.  As children's socks are my archnemesis, this was pretty hard core.  I sorted shoes as well and determined that he is still not big enough to wear a size 2 shoe yet!

You would think I wouldn't be able to dress a kid born 4 months later in the year than his brother with his brother's clothes (the kid we bought them from was a July baby), but there is so much clothing that it is absolutely not going to be a problem. 

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is despite the original kid wearing these, Trajan, a friend's kid, my nephew and Chiron, there are still things in there that have never been worn.

I wonder if I've never gone back to Craigslist because I know there's no way to ever beat my original transaction.