Marie Kondo, Rental Style

Marie Kondo became famous for her decluttering philosophy a couple of years ago. She told us to look at our items and if they didn’t spark joy that we should get rid of them. I would go a step further than Ms Kondo and ask if something doesn’t spark joy, do we really need to buy it in the first place? Sure, we might need it for a while, but do we need to own it?

At different life stages we have different needs. Anything that is required only for a short term can be rented. It is the ideal solution for students and people on the move – furniture, office and gaming equipment, home gyms. New parents are in another stage of life where they need an awful lot of gear, for a very short term… sometimes just months! The amount of equipment a newborn baby needs is eye watering; the essential items being – pram / cot / car seat, but the list can be extended to highchairs / co-sleepers / walkers / bouncy chair / breast feeding pillows/changing tables. Yet after a year, a whole other set of equipment is required because they baby has outgrown the infant gear. I would admit to having kept my kids’ cutest babygrows, and indeed I still have them, because they remind me of them as babies. When it came to the buggies and cots and isofix bases, I couldn’t wait to get rid of them and get some space in the house back! These objects don’t spark joy, they take up space, and once my kids had   Swapping equipment as your child grows means you'll save space, money and it's eco-friendly! When we first started Stork, the idea of renting baby equipment for more than just a holiday instead of buying it hadn't taken on. But that's changed. Of course, there are some pieces of equipment that are not suitable to rental, but many things that are. When you look at the average family, living in an average sized house and consider the amount of space baby gear takes up, how nice would it be to just hand everything back as soon as you're done with it? That's one of the benefits of baby equipment hire, but there's more...

• It's environmentally friendly, a huge plus. So much baby gear ends up in landfill as it is notoriously difficult to recycle the parts.
• You don't have the same big outlay as you do when you buy everything in one go, you can spread the payments over several months.
• If something breaks, you just get it replaced.
• If you don't like it, you swap it for another option.

So what baby equipment is suitable for hire? Anything that is used for a year or less is how I would answer that, which means almost all things baby!

• Co-sleepers
• Highchairs
• Changing tables
• Baby Baths
• Infant prams / carrycot attachments
• Infant baby seats
• Isofix bases for baby seats
• Trikes and Walkers / Bouncers

Also items that are only used sporadically, such as

• Hiking carriers
• Holiday strollers
• Travel cots

I'd include double buggies here too, if you have children of different sizes, because the older child will grow out of the buggy and want to walk, before the little one, leaving you with one child sitting in a double buggy!

The typical umbrella style stroller has become an eco culprit in recent years. They are cheap to buy, not very well made and very irritating to use. We see tonnes of them abandoned at the airport at the end of a holiday, and airlines and airport managers are left to try and dispose of them. Unfortunately many of the end up in skips.

So before you buy, consider if it's something that is suitable for rental, and if you're not sure, just ask us!

About the author

Olivia started the Stork Rental in 2012 after having a negative experience renting a baby seat from a car rental company on a trip abroad with her family. Since starting the Stork Rental, Olivia has ensured cleanliness, safety and convenience are central to the company's ethos.