Children can be expensive little treasures. You don’t need me to tell you about the wealth of temptations out there which encourage you to spend. Then there’s the small day-to-day things that all add up, like the lattes for your walks around the park.....I therefore present to you some Mummy Zen tips for saving money and still having fun:
- Babysitting swap: for evenings out, but also take it in turns to leave your child with a couple of mums during the day. They can look after their own children plus yours while you go out shopping or to get a haircut etc.
- Coffee mornings and playdates at home: rotate with your friends to share the hosting.
- Creative play: make some toys at home. Cleaned, empty plastic bottles or containers can be filled with beans/rice/pasta to make rattling toys; fill a bottle with water and add some glitter; older children can use things like empty cereal boxes, egg boxes and kitchen towel rolls to make all kinds of spaceships, robots etc.….
- Lend, borrow, swap: if you have mum friends with children a few months behind or ahead of you, you can lend and borrow clothes, toys and baby equipment or organise a toy/clothes swap party.
- Local library: many host free baby/toddler activities like singing and storytime sessions and you can check out all the parenting/weaning/fiction books you want and rent dvds at low cost. Register your baby with their own library card and they get no late fees! Ideal for borrowing story books so you're not re-reading the same old books at home.
- Shop on-line: free or discounted prices, both new and second-hand, here are some websites I like to use which sell all kinds of baby and child items:
www.ilovefreegle.org – get stuff for free & help keep landfills empty
www.beansprog.com
www.ebay.co.uk
www.netmums.com – check out the ‘Nearly New’ board
Do you have any money-saving tips to share?
When I was a child, my mum was part of a "babysitting coop". There were 15 or so mums/friends (most with 2 or 3 children as I recall) who lived nearby and had similar outlooks on mothering. They each had a certain number of hours per month during which they could drop off their kids with another mum or made themselves available to babysit for someone else. All of the children became friends and the give/receive nature of the coop provided free and trustworthy babysitting. I've been researching how to set up my own group:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.geocities.com/babysitting_coop/
http://www.babysittingcoop.com/
http://www.babycenter.com/0_babysitting-co-ops_51.bc
Thanks for sharing this idea Claire and good luck with setting up your own babysitting coop!
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