Being the only girl in the family, I never really experienced hand-me-downs. I had older girl cousins and occasionally one of my aunts would give some of my cousin's clothes to me. I suspect my mom wasn't a fan of hand-me-downs given that she almost always found something wrong with the clothes and I seldom ended up wearing any of them.
Bryan, being a younger brother, had to wear hand-me-downs. As a result he has a different take on hand-me-downs than I have. I won't put stained or ripped clothes on my kids. So items like that don't get handed down to the next child. Bryan agrees with that take. We differ when it comes to things like socks and underwear. I saw nothing wrong with saving gently used socks and underwear to hand down, but that's where Bryan draws the line. For the most part, I have humored Bryan in his request that Ellie not wear her sister's skivvies with the exception being training underwear. I figure those who cloth diaper reuse the diapers for their next child, and I don't see there being much difference between cloth diapers and cloth training pants.
I like to rile Bryan up from time to time by telling him that I'm going to put outgrown underwear in the hand-me-down pile. Comments like this are usually met with a resounding "NO!" followed by him telling me that we can buy new underwear.
Tonight he was sure to tell me that Zimbabwe placed a ban on second hand undies. I thought it was a joke, but he sent me a link to the story. I was a bit surprised to see that they're not the first country to ban second hand underwear. Who would have guessed?
That's so funny! I never really thought about hand-me-down underwear. I am the oldest and I only have one brother, so there weren't really any hand-me-downs in our family, but I'm definitely planning on hand-me-downs for future children - I guess I'll have to think more on what we'll do about undies!
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