Cool Idea: Way to Swap Sports Equipment Kids Outgrow

Hi Readers! Free-Rangers want their kids outside. Sometimes, though, those kids need eqipment for their sports and sometimes they outgrow last year’s  stuff dismayingly fast. Now comes this cool zkainfibnt
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

14 Responses to Cool Idea: Way to Swap Sports Equipment Kids Outgrow

  1. Corey October 14, 2009 at 4:46 am #

    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 October 14, 2009 at 4:52 am #

    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 October 14, 2009 at 4:57 am #

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

  4. MFA Grad October 14, 2009 at 5:27 am #

    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 October 14, 2009 at 7:25 pm #

    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 October 14, 2009 at 9:55 pm #

    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 October 14, 2009 at 10:13 pm #

    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.

  8. Bernadette Noll October 14, 2009 at 10:14 pm #

    By the way, if anyone wants to organize their own swap, we’ve got a tutorial on our Future Craft Collective website…
    http://futurecraftcollective.com/events/swap-success

  9. Lance Shepherd October 16, 2009 at 11:49 pm #

    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 December 8, 2009 at 5:20 am #

    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

  11. NavyMats March 7, 2010 at 11:58 pm #

    Hi, could you please post about radical games? I wrote about X-Games..my friend told me that it’s make a bad effect to kids…do u agree with him? thanks.

  12. discount squash rackets June 7, 2010 at 8:34 pm #

    I belong to to a joint family and we are 10 cousins. We all usually swap our clothes, toys, text books, pens from each other. I also swapped thing with my best friends.

  13. Sydney June 9, 2010 at 9:02 am #

    Another great site similar to this is http://www.swapmesports.com

    Pretty neat!

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