The Top Ten Most Useless Things I Purchased as a Mother (or Stepmother) Dec 27 '09 (Updated Dec 28 '09)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet The Bottom Line If I knew then what I know now, I'd probably blow the money on something stupid today. As a Generation Xer, I am still suffering from the pain of being a latchkey kid.  When my daughter was born, I was sure I'd give her all of the comforts I never had and the list below demonstrates this.  As time goes on though, I find myself recognizing the wisdom in the way I was parented.  A little independence never hurt anyone, and as long as it's coupled with safety and lots of hugs and kisses, it certainly won't hurt my baby girl. I hope that someone might benefit from my folly.  Save your money on the products below and put it into a savings account for more important things, like glasses, college funds, and family memberships to your local children's museum. Baby Wipe Warmer - I was so excited about this product, that I wrote a lengthy review of it on Epinions.com.  My baby's bottom was too good for the harsh, cold reality of baby wipes.  That is until sleeplessness transformed the diaper changing routine from a holy ritual into an obstacle course filled with flailing baby arms and legs, the endless fumbling for ointments in the diaper basket and broken promises.  Somewhere during the desperate navigation of this nightmarish obstacle course, I ripped off and broke the plastic cover that made the warm wipes magically pop up, leading to long streams of perforated but not separated wipes, and the obsenities that rightly accompanied them.  I think my daughter was about four months old when I finally gave up on the thing, feeling betrayed and eager to get rid of diapers altogether. Sanitary Shopping Cart Cover - Wouldn't it be neat if you could protect your child from germs?  It would be, but that's impossible.  This amusing blue shopping cart cover was used once, maybe twice.  The problem lay not in the public humiliation associated with using the thing (look - now there's an overprotective mother!), but rather in my inability to include the cover in my routine.  By the time I thought about it, we were already in the store, reveling in billions and billions of evil germs.   I am convinced that my daughter caught a nasty virus from a shopping cart once in her first year.  I am equally convinced that I could have avoided it by using the sanitizing wipes most grocery stores provide at the entrance - with or without this colorful product. Any Child Proofing Mechanism Made of Plastic - To put it simply, the child is smarter, stronger, savvier than a piece of plastic.  It made me proud of her and what it means to be human in a way.  Though it was fun to make Grandpa spend the afternoon tying up the strings for our blinds, really - a few hair ties and a lot of ingenuity will go a long way in preventing accidents.  The constant rearranging and keeping up with your child is just a part of parenting that even the good folks at Safety 1st can't take away from me. Overly Complicated Diaper Pail (with Accessories!) - I'll admit that I loved this thing for the few months it worked.  It whirred and buzzed and kept my kitchen smelling like fresh-cooked food instead of baby waste.  But alas, the volume of waste took its toll on my overly complicated diaper pail.  The twisting bags were cool, but buying special cartridges was not.  I could have replaced it, but since I have the best SimpleHuman garbage can ever made, it just didn't make sense any more.  This covered us for about 1/20th of our total diapering time to date and that was for the easy, formula-fed times.  I can't fathom dealing with one of these today.  For one thing, her diapers are gigantic.  For another, there's something to be said for keeping any and all incentives for potty training alive. 400 SimpleHuman Trash Bags, Memberships to Costco, Sam's Club, etc. - Buying in bulk was the greatest downfall in my nesting period right before my daughter was born.  While I highly recommend stocking up on any and all disposable items you can before the baby's home from the hospital, I went a little bonkers with this.  I bought memberships everywhere, only to find that driving 20 minutes to scary places where I could only buy items in 30 lb. palates just didn't make sense.  The warehouse stores scared my daughter and scared me once I was a mother and no longer a thrifty single gal dancing through the aisles for a deal.  We'll try these again when my daughter is around 5, but Costco is simply not a place for babies.  By the time you get to the hot dogs, you've lost all the energy you'll need to load and unload the car.   The Most Gorgeous Baby Shoes You've Ever Seen! - Wait until she's a toddler, then watch her heart break as she tries to put on TMGBSYES and finds that her foot is too big.  Showing her pictures of her as a baby wearing TMGBSYES only adds insult to injury.  Putting the shoes on her dolls also won't help, but going on a pretty shoe shopping spree will.  It is at this time that you'll wish you had the money you spent on TMGBSYES. Plaster Kits for Baby's Feet or Hands to Make Frames and Other Keepsakes - Are you kidding me?  I wish I'd had the time or energy to be craftsy when she was small enough for these to make sense, but the inkprints from the hospital are just going to have to do.  I will never give these to my friends who become mothers because I understand the angst they represent.  Good intentions, paving the road to hell, etcetera. Stuffed Creatures of Any Kind - Harborers of sickness.  Might as well buy yourself three weeks off of work.  Keep a few favorites and then one or two extras for indelible accidents in the crib, but avoid the rest unless you are doing the laundry regularly enough to handle a few extra loads per month, which we - invariably - are not. Bibs - Cute, but uncomfortable and destroyed.  The disposable ones were nice until she learned how to rip them off before her stewed yams were even on the highchair tray.  At this price, I much prefer to buy new clothes. Non-Name Brand MP3 Player(s) - Teenagers want iPods.  That's it.  They don't want knockoffs, and they certainly don't want the knockoffs you bought in the basement of a hotel after being a handed a flier on the street.  Think Christmas is taken care of at 1/3 of the price?  Think again.  After the time and energy you spend on foreign instructions converting files so that they can be played on a crappy device with no support or accessories, you'll be crying for an iPod too. But I must end on a positive, more hopeful note.  The most useful things I purchased or inherited included an infant swing, an air purifier, a digital camera with video capability, BabyTalk and a diaper basket that was kept under the bassinet and then used through toddlerhood.  It looked pretty no matter how many random objects it held inside and my daughter loved to rifle through it.  This rifling became something of a morning ritual that sometimes (but only very rarely) makes me fondly reminisce over diapering her.  And we've only just begun when it comes to toys!  I'm looking forward to making lots of mistakes, as long as I get hours upon hours of play in exchange.

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