Thrift stores like Value Village or the Salvation Army and garage sales are great places to purchase a variety of secondhand items. Don’t forget to also take a look at Facebook Marketplace, as well as online classified sites like Kijiji. If you luck out you can often score some great finds for free!

The Dos & Don’ts of Secondhand Shopping

Toys & Sports Equipment

Used toys and sports equipment are wonderful items to pick up. If they are made of a hard surface, like plastic, that’s even better because they can be easily wiped down and sanitized. Often toys and sporting goods are quickly outgrown, or only used for one season before being discarded, meaning many of them are in good-as-new condition when they find their new homes.

Clothes

Clothes are always a great thing to get secondhand. Let’s face it, kids grow like weeds, and having to buy a whole new wardrobe every few months can really break the bank. You can often find designer labels at a fraction of their original price. Examine the fabric and watch out for any pills, stains, tears, or other damage.

School Supplies & Gear

During back to school season, look for gently used items like backpacks and lunch bags. If you’re lucky, you can sometimes find brand new school and art supplies too!

Furniture & Accessories

You can get used furniture in a lot of different and unique styles. If the colours aren’t totally to your taste, consider painting or staining the items to match your home decor. Look for one of a kind antiques, dressers, tables, chairs, couches, wall art, china, TV consoles, ceiling lights, home accents and lamps.

Books

Books are great items to get used. Many people will read a book once and then they’ll never pick it up again. If you find a book you’re interested in, make sure to flip through the pages to see if it is in good condition. Look out for water damage, rips, crumpled pages, and stains.

Electronics & Tech

Don’t forget the electronics! Things like TVs, watches, cellphones, smart devices, video game consoles, printers, camera equipment, tablets, laptops, and stereos get significantly cheaper as they get older. You can often get a slightly older model that is still in great working order at a fraction of the cost that it would be to buy a new one.

Baby Items

Babies are expensive! Before heading to the store to purchase everything new, try to grab your baby items secondhand first. Items like gently used strollers, play yards, rocking chairs or gliders, exersaucers, and baby monitors are ideal. When getting any used baby items it is important to look up and see if there have been any recalls, or any changes in safety measures and standards.

Avoid items like mattresses, pillows, cribs undergarments, teethers, pacifiers, feeding items (bottles, spoons, sippy cups), breast pumps, diaper pails, and car seats. These items are better to purchase new for safety and sanitary reasons. And the Canadian government has guidelines if you are looking to purchase a car seat secondhand.

Are you an experienced thrifter? Let us know what your favourite items are to purchase secondhand and check out the best secondhand shops and consignment stores in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver.

The post Dos & Don’ts of Secondhand Shopping appeared first on SavvyMom.

And then we found this house.

I didn’t love it at first. It was a practical decision. Detached. Parking. Close to the subway. Close to decent schools and lots of parks. It became the first place I truly wanted to stay. The first place I imagined I’d stay forever. Not because it was grand (it wasn’t) but because it was enough. It was even more than I ever dreamed of. The million dollar family. A handsome husband. A vivacious daughter. A cheeky son. There’d been a bad ’70s reno and the kitchen was once an enclosed porch. Through effort and investment it became the home of my dreams. The life I always wanted yet never dared to wish for.

I thought we’d grow old here. One day we could get the fancy couch that children wouldn’t ruin. I was never going to move. I’d joke that I’d have to be carried out feet first.

Then, my marriage ended.

He moved out. I hoped to stay until the kids were done high school. He wanted to sell as soon as possible. I asked for a year. He wanted to sell as soon as possible. We drafted a separation agreement together that granted me that year. He wanted to sell as soon as possible. Then, I lost my full-time job. He still wanted to sell as soon as possible. Another round of mediation later and almost a year to the date that he moved to the basement, we signed a new agreement. So I ended up getting that year but my hope of healing and getting myself together (and another full-time job) was not realized. I was frozen. Stuck. In many ways I feel like I ended the year worse than when I started.

Turns out you can’t heal in the place that broke you.

What I didn’t expect was how the house became the focus of the negotiations. Or how desperate I became to keep it.

To me, the house was the one thing tethering me and our kids to something solid. One of our teenagers was recovering from a serious illness, and the other was struggling. I believed—maybe irrationally, maybe not—that uprooting them would unravel everything.

I tried. I offered options. I did buy myself that year and it cost me anyway.

Prepping the house for sale felt like how in mafia movies the hits have to dig their own graves. They know what’s going to happen and yet they still dig anyway. However, I love that house so I wanted it to show well. And I needed to get the absolute most money out of it for my future. So despite my being almost entirely paralyzed with grief, the house got painted. It got staged. And it sold in a day for a bully offer that was the number we hoped for.

I felt a little relief. I felt kinda numb. Mostly what I still felt was grief.

What I wanted—what I was grieving—wasn’t just the building or the oak tree on the lawn or the backyard we never landscaped properly. I grieved the life I imagined we’d have inside it. I grieved the woman I was when I first walked through the front door, with a preschooler and a baby… hopeful and full of plans. I grieved the version of our family that sat at our kitchen table in the nook I’d always wanted. I grieved the Christmas trees I strung with lights and decorated with ornaments purchased on our travels. I even grieved all of the hard moments, because they were mine.

I found it impossible to pack. Some friends came to help get me started. I dreaded bumping into people I knew who didn’t know. They’d ask how I was doing and when I opened my mouth to answer I genuinely had no idea what would come out. Sometimes it was, “fine!” Or “good!” Or “hanging in there!” And sometimes it was a trauma dump I was unable to control. Most people were very patient and gracious. How did I feel about moving? I didn’t want to. I wanted to grow old and die in that house. “It’s just a house.” “It will be nice to have a fresh start.”

I didn’t want a fresh start. I didn’t want a new beginning. I wanted the life I had. I wanted the life I worked so hard to achieve to work.

And then I found an apartment.

It’s not just any apartment. It’s wonderful. In a lively neighborhood six houses up from the lake. It has soft natural light and high ceilings. It has three bedrooms. It has two car parking! By some miracle it’s within my budget. By an even greater miracle, I got it.

It was the first post-divorce apartment for the lovely woman moving out. She seemed excited about the next stage of her journey. Her kids are a little older than mine. Her youngest was moving away for school. She told me that moving in and moving on was very healing. It felt meant to be.

I always wanted to move back to this neighbourhood. A friend said I manifested this apartment. I’m not sure I believe in that. If I could manifest anything, I would have saved my marriage. I would have kept my house. (It’s just a house!) I know I will love living here in this apartment and yet I never would have chosen this future.

Still, there are signs that I might be okay.

I see love all around me. Real, grown-up love. At fifty-something. The kind of love where you bring all your scars and stories and still get chosen.

So maybe there’s still time. So maybe I’ll fall in love again. Maybe I won’t. But I have my own space. A new home. One that I chose and one that seemingly chose me.

The ache of leaving my marital home hasn’t left me yet. I walked through the house and saw ghosts. Toddlers and teenagers and the woman (me) who held it all together when everything fell apart.

Moving sucks. I cleared every closet. I packed every item. I cleaned every corner. And I drove to the dump. Several times! And I walked out with my head held high. Not carried. Not broken. Not feet first.

Alive.

I closed the door behind me. It locked for the last time. And I’m trying to remember what I really and truly know but don’t yet fully feel:

It’s just a house.

But my heart is still broken to leave it.

The post It’s Just a House… Selling and Leaving My Marital Home appeared first on SavvyMom.

The answer? It’s difficult to nurture your garden properly while little people are nipping at your heels and latching onto your nipples.

What busy moms need are plants that do one of two useful things: take care of themselves, or amuse the kids. Pint-size gardeners love to watch things grow, and can be motivated to weed and water if sufficiently captivated. They can even grow their own gardens if they enjoy helping out with the backyard.

2 Tips for an Easy Garden that Won’t Die

1. Choose plants that thrive on neglect.

Turns out what’s good for mom is good for the environment too. Xeriscape gardening is about designing your flowerbeds to use very little water, so you can appear virtuous instead of just lazy. Incorporate river stones, landscape rocks, and walkways, then install drought-resistant plants like English lavender, ornamental grasses, and natural wildflowers.

2. Mulch, mulch, mulch.

A well-mulched garden suffers less moisture loss and so gets by on less hose time. Mulch is also a great natural weed-blocker. You can use wood chips, bark, pine needles, or shredded leaves. Or plant easy-care groundcovers like periwinkle, lily-of-the-valley, thyme, or spotted dead nettle (not as menacing as it sounds).

The post Easy Garden Ideas for the Harried Gardener appeared first on SavvyMom.

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting you throw a party complete with cupcakes and blue and green decorations (but hey, that could be fun!). Nope, instead I think there’s a lot of other fun ways you can acknowledge Earth Day as a family.

4 Family-Friendly Ways to Celebrate Earth Day

• Spring is the season for antique and flea markets. Is there anything eco-friendlier than purchasing someone else’s junk that could very well be your next treasure? So, why not visit a market with your family and buy something vintage/new for your home. If you worry your kids won’t be into the idea, here’s how I’ve kept my boys coming to the market with me well into their teens: pitch them as the place to search for long lost valuables and cater the hunt to whatever it is they’re interested in. For example, my sports-loving son always looks for collectible hockey and baseball cards, and my budding filmmaker began a cherished collection of vintage cameras.

• Get your indoor kids outside for the day. Plan a park hop (think of it as the toddler version of a pub crawl) and criss-cross the city hitting up the best parks in town. For extra fun, ask family members to rate the parks (cleanest, best swings, most unique, etc.) and decide which park earns the title of the Best Playground in your town.

• Throw an impromptu street party. See which neighbours are going to be home and plan for an afternoon of outside fun with friends. Organize a friendly game of street hockey, set up a little face painting or craft table, let the kids fill water balloons and blow bubbles and bring the barbecues into the driveway for a neighbourhood feast. Bonus points for those who also get everyone involved in planting something; it could be a new tree, a few flowers for the front porch, and even some herbs for use in the kitchen.

• Let your preschooler decorate a reusable canvas tote that can be their market bag for the season. Have them carry it around when you make a trip to the farmer’s market and let them choose a fruit or vegetable to each week to place inside (this also doubles as a great way to introduce new items to their diet).

Tell us, what do you have planned for Earth Day? How are you celebrating the day with your kids?

The post 4 Family-Friendly Ways to Celebrate Earth Day appeared first on SavvyMom.

If the thought of planting my your own vegetable garden seems a little daunting, there are easy ways to start before working your way up to more difficult fruits and veggies.

Here are five good beginner things to grow if you’re considering DIY gardens with your kids. They can be grown in the ground or in pots which makes them ideal for balconies.

5 Easy Things to Plant with Your Kids

Cucumbers

Plant cucumber seeds after the threat of frost is gone. They are the perfect addition to any salad or crudite plate.

Tomatoes

Plant tomato seedlings when frost has disappeared. This veggie needs something to lean on to stay off the ground so place sticks in soil when planting. Doing it later could damage the roots. As it grows, lightly tie stems to the support.

Mint

Mint may be one of the easiest things to grow. It will come back every year without having to be replanted. In fact, there is a good chance you will have to pull some of the roots as it multiplies and can become invasive. Plant mint seedlings and enjoy this delicious and aromatic herb.

Green Beans

Green beans are a great vegetable for gardening novices. Again, one to be planted when the frost has gone. By mid-summer you will be feasting on crisp beans. They’re great for dunking in herby dips!

Thyme

Plant thyme seedlings after frost has departed. This fresh herb typically will not survive through the winter and will need to be replanted the following spring.

A few tips to success for your DIY gardens:

1. Keep soil moist but not soaked. Over watered plants can end up with rotted roots.
2. Mix in some compost to your soil to create a nutrient rich bed for your produce to grow in.
3. Keep your soil weed free.
4. Lots of love. Plants need to be nurtured.

Although an often overwhelming idea, gardening can be very rewarding. What’s better than digging in to a salad that you grew yourself? If I can do it, trust me, anyone can.

Check out specific planting ideas for Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver.

The post DIY Gardens for Kids: 5 Easy Things to Plant This Spring appeared first on SavvyMom.