More on Stuff

One thing I was kind of dreading about having kids was the inevitable pile-up of ugly crap in the house. And yep, we're there. Baby stuff just isn't attractive, and it takes up a lot of room. What I didn't realize before I got pregnant was that not all baby stuff is ugly. Take, for instance, this bouncy seat:

The coco rocker. Retails for $199, on sale from $375. There's no way we're paying $400 for two baby rockers, so instead we have something that looks like this:
Ugly, huh. We got it for $35. We actually have 4 bouncers, one was a hand-me-down, one we bought for $35, and two we bought used for $8 each. And with twins all 4 come in handy. It's nice to have one in the bathroom, for instance, for stashing a kid while I take a shower.

Then there are some beautiful bassinets. For instance, this one:
Isn't that lovely? How nice to see a bassinet that doesn't look like a wedding dress from the 80's. But for $395, it's not exactly practical. So instead, we went with this:Ugly as sin, but it was $60 and had the added bonus of being able to fit two babies.

Recently I was thinking about high chairs. Here, too, designers have made their mark:

Boy does that look cool. A noticeable departure from the white plastic / blue plaid highchair of yesterday. But at $500 a pop, I don't think we'll be getting two of them. $1000 for something so temporary just doesn't make sense, and we probably don't have room for them anyway.

It's the same story in every category. Cribs, dressers, gliders, strollers, anything you can think of -- there are affordable yet hideous options, and there are attractive options with ridiculous prices. In the non-baby world, cheaper design knock-offs have become mainstream: we've got Room and Board, CB2, West Elm, even IKEA for the very cheap yet sort of hip option. There's an analogous market in baby stuff just begging to be created.