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How do you save money on clothes and shoes for your family?
I'm all for thrift stores and yard sales. When they're littler they're more into comfort, perhaps insisting on certain colors, but somewhere around 13 they start to become more fashion conscious. If you want name brand clothes for kids, hit yard sales or consignment stores in better neighborhoods. Other places are Ross's or Marshall's. Both carry name brands. It's just you never know what they'll have. Another stategy is to buy fewer clothes. If you do laundry twice a week, you just don't need as much. Aim for mix and match. Also have play clothes for rough and tumble wear and "good" clothes for school and church. All these help keep costs down. My sister and I maintained an informal exchange between the cousins. This helped a good deal. A church in our neighborhood has a yearly clothing giveaway. That kind of thing may be an option for you as well. Or you could request needed items on Yahoo's freecycle. I see alot of clothes being given or requested on that site. I had one son who ripped out knees. Double kneed pants were a great investment. It looked like a rather large patch of fusible interfacing attached to the inside knee area. So it might work if you tried that on exisitng pants. Hope these help.