🔗 The spreadsheet: Stuff you need for a new bebe

Open sourcing things I made for myself as type A new mom, in case its helpful for you

I’d like to start by saying I am no parenting expert. I’m just a person who didn’t know anything about having a baby and then had a baby. I am also a person who likes being prepared. When I got pregnant I did a hell of a lot of research and created things for myself from a variety of advice from different people. Then I took notes throughout the first year on what worked and what didn’t. I’ve had a lot of friends and coworkers who were also new moms ask me for advice so I thought hey, I’ll open source this stuff in case anyone else finds it useful.

In this series:

• Part 1: Stuff you need (you are here)

• Part 2: Birth plan

• Part 3: The first month

One of the best parts of being a mom has been the community of other parents who just want to help each other. My only intention here is to help any other first time parents. So first up, buying stuff.

The Spreadsheet

I was so overwhelmed with all of the stuff you need for babies. Thankfully I have a sister who had a baby before me. And she had a college friend who made a spreadsheet. So, here is the spreadsheet! It has been used, modified and improved by many moms. I modified it and added in my own notes on what worked for me. Duplicate it for yourself and make it your own.

⭐️ Duplicate the spreadsheet here ⭐️

Warning: this spreadsheet is a little overwhelming. Maybe read the rest before opening. Slow down, you have time.

This is the spreadsheet. Make it your own!

How to approach buying stuff

Now you have the spreadsheet. But that is only the start. You probably don’t want to just go buy everything I have on there. After absorbing information you may come to different conclusions. You should! This is just a framework. Here’s what I’d do next.

1. Ask your mom friends

Go find a mom friend who had a baby in the last year, buy her coffee, and talk through this spreadsheet with her category by category, row by row. I put my decision making process in the notes, but it is much better to talk to someone live. Any mom has her own opinions and can also explain each of these items to you. I found that talking to multiple people helped me gather enough differing opinions to form my own idea of what I wanted to buy. I also did this for many of my friends who had babies after me. We duplicated the spreadsheet, they came over, and we talked through it and looked at the things I had.

Doing this also has a side benefit – you start to build your mom community. You are opening a door to have people to text when your boobs are engorged and you don’t know when it will stop or will leave cookies at your door when you’ve been nap trapped for days. Trust me on this.

2. Make a registry

Next you need to start adding things to your registry. At first I thought a registry seemed weird, it felt like a go-fund-me where I was asking people for money. I am a professional working person, and I don’t need anyone to buy me stuff. But I was convinced - people like to buy you stuff. It’s really nice. Let them. You should buy stuff for them too when they’re starting a family. This also builds your community.

I like Babylist for a registry for three reasons. First and most important, they have a 9 month return policy. It has to be unopened / unused, but still. If you are making yourself a registry and someone buys you something say 6 months before you’re going to use it, this is very helpful. You might change your mind on what you need later, or acquire a free version of the thing after someone buys it for you. Their shipping is pretty slow though, so I only used Babylist significantly before the bebe was born. Second - you can add things from any site on the internet with their chrome extension. Third - they send you a 20% off discount a few weeks before your due date for anything else you need.

3. Keep an eye on Facebook Marketplace

You really don’t need to buy all of this stuff new. You quickly realize how fast these bebes outgrow the phase where this stuff is needed. If you buy new, there is a lot of life left in items when your baby is done with them.

If you’re anything like me, you deactivated your Facebook account years ago but it's time to get it back - you need Facebook as a mom. As I was working through my spreadsheet I kept my eye on Marketplace and a buy/sell mom group in my town. It was like a fun game. If I saw the thing I wanted pop up, I knew if I needed it and could check it off my list and then remove it from my registry so someone else wouldn't buy it for me. And if they did, hey that 9 month return policy.

4. Accept people giving you their old stuff

When you tell people you’re pregnant, women in your community start coming out of the woodwork. It is really lovely. A lot of people want to give you stuff. There are different opinions here on accepting. My hot take goes against most advice. Most things I read said, “you don’t have to take everything, just say no!” Yea, sure, but that doesn’t make you any friends. I accepted everything. This also helped me build relationships with other moms. I had reasons to text them, I’d send them pictures if the baby used the thing / wore the thing. I found time to give it back to them (if it was a big thing… most times people didn’t want it back). Of course, you don’t have to go this route but I didn’t have a lot of mom friends before the bebe so I was trying everything. I did organize ruthlessly to avoid clutter.

Organizing all this stuff

There are so many things your baby needs, it feels like a lot of stuff in your house. My approach here is to only keep the things we need for our current phase out and store everything else.

We organized all of our “stuff” in big bins labeled “0-3 months” and “3-6 months,” etc, then sub organized in 5 gallon ziplock bags. So at birth we only had 0-3 month stuff in the house. Anything I had for after that was in a bin. When I got to our 3 month mark, I packed up all of the 0-3 months things and took out the 3-6 month bins. In my garage today you can find bins for the different post birth trimesters, and if you open up the bin you’ll find large 5 gallon ziplock bags labeled “0-3M onsies” or “postpartum”.

This was another trick I got from my sister. She gave me all of her stuff this way, and so I was motivated to give her things back to her (with my stuff added) in a nice organized fashion. Now that she’s pregnant with her second, I’m just scooping up all of the bins. I hope to have more kids too, so she’ll just cart them all back over when it's my turn again.

That’s all

I hope something here was helpful. I truly believe that pulling in information from multiple sources helps you figure out what’s best for you. Also, please remember - there is always Amazon Prime and it comes the next day if you find yourself missing anything you really need. It will all be ok.

I’m also planning on open sourcing my Birth Plan and Month One Workbook. Maybe this is all common sense but I knew nothing when I was having a baby so this was all new to me. Is this useful to you? Veteran moms, anything you disagree with? I’d love to know!

PS: You’re doing great.

Our nursery. No, you don’t need a wallpaper mural, a fiddle leaf fig or a dog.