Let me be the first to tell you that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started my baby registry. I looked at different websites and tried to shop by category but had no idea which products were good vs which ones were duds. I knew reviews would be helpful, but I didn’t want to waste hours reading them for every single item in every category. It was just too overwhelming. I narrowed each selection down to 2-3 picks based on price, ease of use and my personal needs (i.e. convenience) and did extra research and asked friends from there.

If you’re a lucky one like me and are among the last of your friend group to have babies, then utilize them!!! It’s free advice and they will shoot it to you straight. There were several items I added to my list because I thought I needed to, only to remove them after hearing from several people that they are worthless and went unused. I really appreciated these tips because I want to use my baby registry to get things my boy will truly need.

Once I had built up a pretty decent list of all the major things I knew I would need, I started in on Pinterest and browsed check lists to make sure I hadn’t left anything off. There are some good ones out there that cover all the key categories. The only area I felt a little lost on were some early development toys. I put a few toys on my baby registry but really feel like that is going to be something I won’t know I need until something happens.

After all the research and checklists my last thing was deciding on how  was going to register. Traditionally, you would go to all these different stores and scan every item or add it to your registry for someone to print out and blah, blah, blah. This working girl doesn’t have time to go to five different baby stores to scan a bunch of stuff. Luckily, my girlfriend told me about Baby List. It’s like pinterest for baby registries and is so easy for mamas to use.

Just create your account, add the baby list button to your internet browser and whenever you are shopping an item you like on any website, just click “Add to Baby List” and it automatically goes to your registry.  With this super handy tool I was able to cut hours of work off building my registry. Another really cool thing about signing up with Baby List is their baby box. Once you create and account and add five items to your registry, they send you a box full of goodies and coupons.

UPDATE:

After going through three baby showers and hearing feedback from several close friends and family I have learned that BabyList isn’t the easiest to use for shoppers. I still believe this is a great way to register for moms, but now know that fulfilling items from the registry is not as user friendly. Sold out items do not fall off and some items are often not available on sites where you think they are coming from. We received several duplicate items because the purchases made didn’t automatically update on the registry. We have several older members of our family that didn’t understand how it worked and were confused by it as well. I am very happy with my experience as a mom but wanted to share an honest review with y’all so you are well informed when you go to register for you little ones. My intent was to keep it simple and have everything in one place for everyone but it ended up being a little more complicated.