7 Things to Buy for Your Baby That You Will Use for Years

25th May 2016

Having a baby costs a lot of money. There are tons of things we think we need especially the first time round, when in reality the main things a baby needs are somewhere to sleep (or not if you are going to co-sleep), milk, and lots love.

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But of course there are always things that will make our lives easier and there are some baby things that you are likely to use for years to come, even once your baby is a toddler and then a child, which actually makes them great value for money.

7 Things to Buy for Your Baby

Here are 7 things that we used for a really long time or are still using now, with our daughter:

Monitor

We have used our baby monitor from when Ava was first born, and we still use it every night now. At the moment she likes to talk to us through it and tell us how scared she is as she tries to delay going to sleep, but it’s still invaluable to us, and has been worth every penny.

Muslins

I have heard the odd person say they never used Muslins, and I just think ‘how?!?’. We used them for everything all the time and I would have them in every room. We used them to put over our shoulder in case she was sick, to wipe things up, as a bib if I had forgotten to take one out with us, to put over the buggy to shade her from the sun, for her to snuggle into and in loads more ways. We used them for years and the one’s I got from John Lewis were brilliant and worked out about the same price as supermarket brands that always seemed really scratchy.

Blankets

Obviously you will use blankets a lot when your child is a baby, even in the summer they can get a bit cool sometimes. You will use them in their pushchair, and maybe as a swaddle when they are sleeping. But we still use one of Ava’s lovely knitted blankets even now in the car in the winter. I just keep it in the car so that is there if she whinges about being cold 😉

Things to Buy for Your Baby

Wipes

We still use baby wipes all the time now; we don’t get through them quite as fast as we used to, but they still get used a lot. I usually have a small packet in my bag to wipe her face and hands when we are eating out, and we use them at home on her bum sometimes (sometimes they also get used for cleaning the house with too…).

Highchair

We used the highchair (the amazing cheap, wipeable one that every parent should own from Ikea) from when Ava was a few months old, and we STILL use it now at four years old. I know a lot of people wouldn’t bother with using a high chair at that age, and we don’t when we are out somewhere, but the way our dining room is laid out means that it just works for us at the moment. At breakfast and lunch she sits at her little Ikea table, but dinnertimes she is in her highchair for now (although I think that will change soon). I think that’s £15 bloody well spent!

Stroller

By stroller I mean a lightweight pushchair that usually has an umbrella fold. Obviously with most of these you can’t use them from newborn, but even though we didn’t get ours until Ava was over one and we were going abroad, we have still got so much use out of it, and you can usually get one quite cheaply.

The last time we used ours was in Spain and Portugal last year, even though we hardly used it at home at the time. But it was a total lifesaver. We did a lot of walking, in a lot of heat with an often very grumpy child, and it would have been a nightmare if we didn’t have our Zeta Vooom pushchair. It was also great for letting her get out of the sun for a bit every so often.

Baby Gate

We got our baby gate around the time Ava started to crawl and still actually use it now. I used it for a long time to stop A from going upstairs without me so she couldn’t fall down them whilst I was in the other room, but now I let her roam freely (!) but we do actually still close the gate at night to stop one of our cats from going upstairs, otherwise she scratches at our door (and no – she can’t jump over it – she’s daft and a bit useless).

The baby gate was such a worthwhile investment, that gave me peace of mind and meant that when Ava was younger I didn’t have to stay in the same room as her all the time.

Soft Sole Shoes

While your baby wouldn’t wear the same shoes for years at a time, it could be worth picking up footwear of the same time as they age. Soft sole baby shoes can be recommended for quite a few reasons. When they’re learning to walk, that’s even more true.

Babies and toddlers receive sensory information through their feet, just as adults will. Floors will feel hot or cold, comfortable or uncomfortable. While most footwear can help minimise any negative sensations, they mightn’t do so as much as you’d want.

Nobody wants their child to be uncomfortable while they’re walking. Picking up the right shoes will be a priority. Alongside making sure that the soles are soft, you should look at a few specific factors. Your child’s shoes should also:

As obvious as some of these may be, they can also be easy to overlook. Children’s shoes will need to be upgraded every few months. With how fast your baby and toddler will grow, that’s not something any parent can avoid. Once you’ve gotten their first few pairs of shoes, however, the process will become much easier.

You’ll naturally worry about the price of your child’s shoes. In this case, it mightn’t be worth going for some of the more expensive options. With how often they’ll have to be replaced, it mightn’t be worth the expense. If you want some of your child’s first shoes to be a memento, however, then it could be recommended to go relatively expensive.


Is there anything that you bought for your baby that you still use now? Or anything that you think was totally worth the money you paid for it?

This is a collaborative post.

2 responses to “7 Things to Buy for Your Baby That You Will Use for Years”

  1. Kim Carberry says:

    My girls are 13 & 8 and I still use baby wipes and still have the stair gate up on a night….Just in case one of my girls get up in the middle of the night in a daze…

  2. Jem says:

    I always find it interesting to see what other people consider to be essentials, or are still using years later. I always tried to keep ‘stuff’ to a minimum so that I wasn’t overly reliant on something in case it broke or was unavailable. So… personally the only one of these that I’d agree with are muslins, although now mine are 6 and 4 they use them in their dress up games more than anything.

    Actually, no, scratch that. We still have a massive bucket of wipes which I regularly use for snotty noses etc, but they’re cloth wipes not the disposables. Probably one of the best purchases I made!

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