Nothing was awful. The returns fell mostly into two categories. Stuff I had way way too much of. Almost everyone brought clothes and half the people brought blankets. I already had more newborn clothes than Baby could wear before she outgrew them and I didn't want to store tons of blankets she'd never use. We still kept six or eight of them, and of those, there're only three she really uses: two knitted ones from family for the car and playpen and a thick muslin one I bought at a year for the crib because the others weren't breathable enough. And stuff that type mattered to us but people brought an unmatched one, like bottles. We also got a few huge diaper boxes, but were cloth diapering, so we didn't need them either.

They were nice things, and I really did appreciate them, but the stuff that got returned was never ever going to get used. It would've just sat on a shelf for awhile, then in a storage box in the garage, then eventually in several years when we decide we're done with babies, they would've ended up in a garage sale or passed on to someone we know who's pregnant and needs things. We ended up getting a few hundred back for everything, which went a long way towards buying the missing essentials. I don't think anyone who gave us gifts would be terribly offended that we ended up trading them for changing pad covers and lanolin. I think they'd all have rather have had us make use of their gifts than have them collect dust and be given away unused in five years.

I'm not trying to be ungrateful for the generosity our friends and family showed us, it's just that it was the middle of summer in Florida and I was huge and so hot and spent a couple days trying to get stuff swapped while stressing about getting the rest of the stuff for the nursery. Stuff didn't have to be necessarily exact off the registry. We actually got some things that were similar to what we had listed, but we liked the item they picked even better and totally kept and used it. But it was still a tiny bit annoying to have spent a few hours at and multiple trips to BRU making and editing the registry over and over to make sure there were enough items in a whole variety of price ranges (especially under $15) so everyone would feel comfortable picking from it only to have people just completely ignore it.