Posted on 01/04/2009 6:02:37 AM PST by Megben
Trent Hamm at thesimpledollar.com writes in his January 3 entry (excerpted) : "For those of you who haven’t heard the news yet, on February 10, 2009, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act comes into effect. One of the major changes that this program will bring into play is a mandate that everything sold for children 12 and younger will have to be tested for lead and phthalates, and anything that isn’t tested (or that fails) will be considered hazardous and cannot be sold. Read more about the CPSIA at the L.A. Times and some interesting blog commentary from the fashion industry. Where things get interesting is with used products. Consider your local resale and thrift shop. Currently, all of their secondhand children’s clothes will have to be tested for lead and phthalates. Given that many such stores aren’t high-income operations - many are nonprofits - these shops simply cannot afford to do the testing on the children’s clothes on their shelves.
So what happens? Most thrift shops are currently not accepting any children’s clothing at all. Sometime in the next month or so, all thrift shops will have to clear all of their children’s clothing from the shelves … and send them to the landfill. (It’s worth noting that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering a reprieve for products made from natural materials, which would exempt some clothes, but not nearly all clothes"
From reading the whole article, it appears that this will apply to used/new products that are sold at garage sales, thrift stores, ebay, etc. The discussion that follows the blog posts lists going to the sites of the National Bankruptcy Day or the Handmade Toy Alliance Site to write your congressman/woman.
(Excerpt) Read more at thesimpledollar.com ...
I’m glad you posted what you did aboutthe Ingalls. I was going to say something similar, but you got here first.
Re your own medical issues, if you haven’t before, read ‘Spoon River Anthology’ (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters. It is a collection of poems about people buried in a cemetery. How sad to see where young people died of tetanus and other diseases, now preventable.
That’s why bills like this sneak by and when it goes forth people go...”Oh Crap, it wasn’t what I thought they were going to do”
Buzz....Too Late!...Bed Made...Go To Sleep.
We’re all getting better at catching these cockamamie laws and this one sneaked by us....aargh!
Good point. The companies will be forced to follow this idiotic law but who will check out all the flea markets and garage sales? What's to prevent such sellers marking their goods as "collectors' items, not meant to be worn"?
If they think that they can pull one over on garage salers, they have another thing coming.
This whole legislation is a piece of crap.
How do they think the human race survived all these years? This isn’t going to prevent stuff from slipping through. All it’s going to do is result in children’s clothing stores going out of business.
Wintertime has a good point here. Although this isn’t a topic specific to homeschooling per se, it certainly will have the kind of impact she sees on homeschooling families, so......
PING!
Hope I got the right people.
It’s a surviving socialism and libertarian ping
Looks like with my husband’s next paycheck I’ll have to do some serious shopping... We’ve got four children, and the ONLY way I can afford to keep them clothed well with our budget is thrift shops...
This is so absolutely, and incredibly stupid I can’t even come up with an appropriate response...
Honestly, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do now... We certainly cannot afford to buy brand-new clothes off the racks in dept. stores and such.
I will trust that with the Lord at our side our family will find a way to deal with this setback. Looks like I may have to use my sewing machine a LOT more than I do already... And, I’ll have to brush up on my pattern skills or something. Thank God my mother taught me how to sew!
What brainiac decided on the 12 and younger cutoff? And how will this effect my favorite thrift stores? Who’s coming-up with this worthless legislation? Is it the same person who put that stoopid cell phone law in?
Diphtheria. Both Laura and Almanzo had it.
So hand me downs bought on craigslist are now an illegal act.
And here the frugal mom is now an outlaw ... :(
Honestly, this may be a sneaky way to force us all to buy new clothes and kill the second hand market, thus forcing economic “stimulus”.
The best deals are now, right after Christmas as they’re clearing out the racks for summer stuff.
Things like underwear and socks will last a long time.
Speaking of that... Land’s End sells socks for kids that are about indestructible. They don’t pill, don’t fade, don’t get mishapen and shrink after three washes. We’ve had socks from them that have lasted years and they have worn so thin that the threads are showing because the fuzz has worn off them, but no holes yet.
In all honestly, some of the quality of some of their clothes isn’t what it was before they sold out to Sears, but they still have great stuff and at great prices if you look at their overstocks, or can get to one of their *inlet* stores.
bttt
For a good treatise on this read this.
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal.
Thank you for the suggestions, I really appreciate it.
And, thank you SO MUCH for the ping! It would’ve been really hard to deal with going into the thrift stores and finding out about these regulations by realizing there was no more children’s section!
I know Kohl’s has AWESOME clearance sales, so I’ll probably go check out their racks. Looks like I’ll just have to be a little more creative, and plan a little more so I can take advantage of the sales! It would probably help if my youngest stopped growing like a weed (bypassing her older sister), but then again she’ll probably be in Junior’s sizes before too long now! :)
That’s it. I loved those books. Re-read them many times when I was a kid.
Their sheets and bedding are great and long wearing as well.
I broke down and bought some sheets form a nationally known name department store and the fitted sheet wore through in well less than a year of use. Land’s End sheets are great.
And who knows when they’ll go after bedding for kids as well.
That last link is not working.
I don’t know what the symptoms were, only that my grandmother said the doctor referred to them as “blue babies). My mother was RH negative, so at least one of her parents was, but even if my grandmother was RH neg and the baby positive, it wouldn’t explain why this would be gender-specific.
The babies were born between 1910 and 1930. My parents researched their family’s records and could find neither birth, death nor baptism records for any of the boys. They were born in Canada.
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