Thursday 27 May 2010

Useless Inventions?

Hands up who has bought anything totally useless?

My list would be cotton cellular blankets and newborn baby cardigans. S was born in a heat wave but, as a first time Mum, I followed the 'list' of what I needed to buy. Anecdotally I hear that bath mittens and those whizzy nappy bins that enclose your nappies in plastic don't rate that highly.

Value for money came instead from a sling, it was quite expensive but per use the price was almost infinitesimal. The pram was not expensive but as it was, well, a bit s*** it never really worked for me and I would have been better off spending more time on Mumsnet researching and possibly a little more money on the purchase or maybe I should have bought second hand.

I want your feedback!
What have you bought that you wish you had not? Please leave a comment and I'll collate it into a survey. I am really interested by your thoughts.

6 comments:

Lisa said...

Mine would be a bottle warmer. It was rubbish. It took ages and never quite warmed the milk enough. A jug of hot water is a far quicker and cheaper way of doing it.

Vonnie said...

Christ, where can I start?!

Baby bath - never used it, took them in with me or used the kitchen basin.

Bottle warmer - far too faffy, much easier to use a jug of hot water

Hooded towels - they fit for about 3 months then they're useless

Sangenic nappy bins - like you said, a waste of time and space

Baby swing - Great for the whole 3 hours that the batteries last, then a pure pain in the D-cups AND a huge waste of space

Baby-sized wardrobe etc AND matching nursery furniture in miniature size - Usually ridiculously expensive (I paid about £1000 for mine!) and your child(ren) will grow out of it very quickly.

Freestanding steriliser - Waste of space! If you need a steriliser, get a wee microwave one, otherwise a pot of water on the stove OR your dishwasher do the exact same thing.

'Bucket' style first carseats - seriously rubbish and a waste of plastic & money. Save the money and put it to a reversible seat like the Britax First Class

I could rant about this for hours haha!

The Moiderer said...

I love those nappy bins and have used them since day 1.
This is my list (sorry there are a couple of gadgets on the end!)
http://www.themoiderer.com/blog/2009/12/a-total-waste-of-money.html

mummyfiles said...

Thankfully I didn't buy too many useless items, however the top and tail bowl has NEVER been used, I just used two bowls. Actually that's a lie, I used the same bowl but made sure I did his bum area last!
Bottle warmer was rubbish too, I used the microwave(tut tut).

Luke said...

Hi

The ONE thing we bought and hardly ever used was a nappy changing table. Instead we changed nappies on the floor wherever we were and just used a couple of cheap towels as changing mats.

Anonymous said...

Probably the most useless thing was a manual breast pump (mothercare's own), took forever to get anything and mainly I just got a sore wrist.

The bouncy chair with the vibrate (from mothercare again) was pretty useless, it didn't bounce and my LO didn't like the vibrate at all, could have saved myself some cash and bought a cheap bouncy chair.

After this we got wise and bought most things second hand from the car boot sale or checked out freecycle and probably saved ourselves a fortune.