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    Cool Idea: Way to Swap Sports Equipment Kids Outgrow

    Hi Readers! Free-Rangers want their kids outside. Sometimes, though, those kids need equipment for their sports and sometimes they outgrow last year’s stuff dismayingly fast. Now comes this  cool article about a mom in California who set up an on-line swap meet, kidsthatride.com, for all that equipment. You swap the stuff your kids have outgrown for the stuff other kids are just growing out of.

    It seems pretty local, but  if the notion interests you, maybe you could start a web site in your  neck of the woods, too. Either way, what a great  idea, right? Let’s hear it for ingenuity! (Just don’t bring that new bat on a bus…) — Lenore

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    14 Comments

    1. Corey on

      This is JUST getting started!?

      I never had a new pair of skates the entire time I grew up. EVERYONE in my small town went to the same store the week before the first class trip to the ice rink. They had a warehouse full of used skates and it cost each kid about $10 to trade in for a bigger pair. This was Canadian money and about *gulp* 25 years ago but still.

      Not to mention that I needed skates to play hockey on the pond across the road I lived on. I had to carry a shovel to clear it if I wanted to play.

      I didn’t even KNOW a kid that had new skates until I was a teenager. Who could be that rich?

    2. Stacy on

      I adore freecycle and Craigslist for things like this. There’s also a chain that sells used sports equipment – Play It Again Sports – they’ve been doing it for 25 years.

    3. Leslie on

      A local church near me in NJ does a kids clothing swap (including some sports stuff like cleats) 2x a year.

    4. MFA Grad on

      We used to do swaps in our neighborhood all the time. My next door neighbor was 3 years younger than me, so she got a lot of my hand-me-downs that were too girly for my kid brother to use (yeah, poor kid, he may have loved my old Thor t-shirt, but he still got teased for wearing his big sister’s old clothes). I adore sites like Freecycle and Craigslist for that reason, and I’ve noticed that as the economy’s tightened, the “recycling” movement’s gotten a lot more prevalent – there are several independent coffee shops in my city neighborhood that have a “leave a book, take a book” policy. Considering how quickly kids outgrow/get bored with clothes/equipment/toys, swap sites for kids stuff seem like a fantastic idea.

    5. Mae Mae on

      This is too weird. Since hockey started a month ago I have been telling everyone that we needed to start something like this. Everyone agreed but we didn’t know how to get it started as it seemed an enormous task. Thank you so much for this. Now we have a jumping off point. Yay!!

    6. Lola on

      Fortunately for me, I belong to a HUGE family. 19 cousins, all living relatively close by. We all have many kids. We have always swapped clothes, bikes, toys… And still are, for our children. There are even some items from back when I was a child.
      At school, the Parents’ Association is starting something like this for text books, uniforms, etc.

    7. Bernadette Noll on

      At my kids’ elementary school the past two years we’ve done a HUGE back to school clothes swap in the gym. This year we had about 300 people come through. People brought whatever they were getting rid of (or nothing if that’s what they had) and took what they needed. We had everything sorted by size and gender (sorted by our fabulous 6th graders). We had sewing stations set up for revamping and hemming, etc. We had 3 silk screeners hard at work embellishing items with images. Everyone had a blast. It cost us NOTHING to put together. And everyone got what they needed and more. It is a great way to not just get what you need, but help kids see there is great satisfaction in reusing. Oh, and one more thing, we held it on tax free shopping day giving a big raspberry to that ridiculous day of government sponsored mass consumption.

    9. Lance Shepherd on

      my 7 year old son is starting his first year in wrestling and i wanted to find him a singlet and a pair of wrestling shoes. I am unemployed due to lay offs in my industry and cannot afford to go out and buy new. his shoe size is 13 to 1, his singlet size, ( i assume ) is a small. A ny help we can get would mean the world, especially to Levi. I have some sports equipment i could trade for the items that Levi needs. Thank you for any consideration and assistance. Lance

    10. kidsthatride on

      Thanks for the note here on your site. KidsThatRide.com has just gone NATIONWIDE!! We have set it up so that you go in by state, then county. I hope this is helpful to everyone!

      I have added some new sports as well as a “Donate Now” & “Clubs” area with some programs that I like.

      Again thank for the support,
      Barbie@kidsthatride.com

      http://www.kidsthatride.com