I think this is a thing where "how did people used to dispose of clothes" is one of many tips of a much bigger "the rise of the atomic family reduced our interconnectedness and our ability to share resources" iceberg.

People talk about using hand-me-downs but it's become a lot less common to have enough people in your life to get or give things to, outside more formal channels like thrift stores that will only accept certain kinds and qualities of goods (for good reasons).

If I had a kid right now I wouldn't really have anyone in my life who could give me outgrown clothes, nor would I have anyone to give them to. My life just isn't built that way and I don't think that's uncommon.

> ...but the speed with which children change size soundly outstrips the lifetime of the average piece of clothing.

So you swap clothing around to other parents who have younger kids, in exchange from clothing from people with older kids?

There's a very solid ecosystem of clothing/shoes/etc moving around our church, and it's quite common to see someone wearing clothes that our kids used to wear, or seeing our kids wearing that was passed down from someone else.

There are certain ages/genders that you find a bit of a gap in (a typical 4 year old boy will destroy their pants before outgrowing them), but... stuff goes around in regular loops. "Kitchen trash bags of good condition clothing" regularly go between cars on Sunday morning or at other gatherings.

I'm sure there are some people who buy new clothing for their kids at ever size and then discard it when it's worn out, but that's just pissing huge amounts of money down the drain for no benefit in the slightest.

Unfortunately many parents pass on really shrill and tasteless clothes made from cheap synthetic fabric. If you care about esthetics and teaching your children about style and materials, trading clothes becomes much more difficult.

Flea markets turned out to be a much better source for fantastic old clothes, but require more time and at least some money.

However, with three children who inherit their older siblings clothes, many pieces don't survive the third iteration of wear and tear.

Over the past few years I've been raising a child, and we bought literally nothing for the first two-three years.

When he was born the government gave us a box of clothes, and accessories, and later neighbours gave us their children's old clothes too.

But I find it fascinating that you talk about teaching children about style. Our child, like almost all the others I've seen, would just wear what they were given. When they reach three/four years old suddenly they have preferences, and I'd love to know where they came from.

Our childs preferences aren't so fixed, a favorite t-shirt today might become ignored next week, but there are some consistent comments and behaviours. He told us a few months ago "I don't want to wear that jacket, it is yellow".

Peer pressure, and conformity, probably play a part to some extent. But the rest? Where does that come from, and does it alway start that early?

(e.g. He wanted to wear nail varnish from ~3 years old. And was sad "The children at daycare said boys can't wear nail-varnish" so I told him we both could, and we painted each others nails for a few weeks until he lost interest.)

It's a question I can't answer. But I guess like most things it's a mix of nature and nurture.

My son's favorite t-shirt right now has a print of Sonic the hedgehog, because that's what he's playing on my Dreamcast.

But other that he prefer's toned down and restricted color combinations. And I often get compliments for well our children are dressed, although it's purely my wife's work.

It's sad that peer pressure starts as early as three years old. My oldest son used to like wearing light pink and dresses at that age, but only at home. Never at kindergarten.

My youngest son, now 2, says he wants to be a girl. Turns out he's envious of his sister wearing dresses. He also paints his nails when my wife forgets to hide her nail color well enough.

We mostly let them decide themselves as long as it's fit for the weather, and they usually do well.

> However, with three children who inherit their older siblings clothes, many pieces don't survive the third iteration of wear and tear.

Wow those cheap synthetics passed down among countless generations at church sure look good then.

You mean they look intact. I'm pretty sure they don't look good.

We tried this, and even tried the whole cloth diapers thing, too. My daughter outgrew her cloth diapers in less than a year. We moved to a new place when she was one and we still don't know enough people to be able to do this sort of swap. Our neighbors have girls near her age, but they just moved here, too, and did a big purge back where they came from.

It's easy to talk about swapping clothes when you have a large community, but if you're new to a place and don't have those connections, you're stuck with goodwill (which has very few toddler clothes where we are) or the big box stores.

I found a bunch of facebook groups for the local area that would often post "box of clothes, free" for various ages.

But also hanging out in children's playparks in the local neighbourhood would introduce children to each other, and other parents to us. That helped find a group of kids the same age, or slightly older, who we would sometimes offload clothes between.

I guess it depends where you are, if those kind of things happen.

For clothe diapers, just use flats. They last forever. There's really no need to size them. They're a lot easier too.

Right, but there tend to be other children who are smaller not far away. It always strikes me as weird how many parents seem to have something against passing on clothes between kids.

I have three kids (two daughters an a son).

The boy is the oldest and we would still "hand-me-down" until they became a bit older and didn't want to wear "boys clothes" anymore.

With three kids, costs add up and so we would get the boy things the girls could wear as well (future planning).

Say he needed new t-shirts and one had a large tractor on it, and the other was just a T-Shirt with nothing on it..

The problem as they age becomes "social norms".

To this day, I continue to push both my daughters to try boys jeans. They constantly complain girls pants lack pockets, yet refuse to even try on boys jeans to see if they work?

The other issue is some kids REFUSE hand-me-downs and too many parents take the easy road, and buy new clothes?

Our youngest had hand-me-downs from both her older brother and older sister and simply didn't care that she was wearing "boys clothes". This really helped our budget.

I know. But I find it actually quite easy to get rid of lightly worn children clothes, and donate them. Mostly informal networks, but a lot of more formal exchanges as well. e.g. also includes car seats, strollers, ...

> And I’ve heard rumors that adults change size quite a bit as well.

Tell me about it. But I was able to trade my nicer stuff (suits, shirts) no problem. Not the junk.

Children's clothing can get worn pretty hard too. Our stuff is definitely not in donation suitable condition by the time it's too small, although I suppose it might be different if we bought more or more expensive items.

children also wear out clothing quicker than adults in my experience, this balances that transition from size to size a bit -- but are you proposing that one throws out their wardrobe when they change locations?

That seems incredibly wasteful to me, especially since clothing doesn't really take much packing room unless your wardrobe is huge or fragile -- and if you have a huge & fragile wardrobe then we get back down to the idea that one should live a bit more sparingly to reduce the need for recycling in the first place.