Enablers do your worst - Do I need a spare seat?

After spending way too much time reading about car seats, I have noticed that many of you seem to have spare seats. Can you give me some good reasons why having a spare seat is a good idea? I have a 3 year old and a 6 month old and I can only think of two or three times that I could have used a spare instead of moving one of their seats. Is there anything I am missing? I just plain want more seats because I am now becoming obsessed with them , but I would need some very good reasons to convince DH that I wasn't turning into the crazy car seat collector lady.

And while you're at it, what would be a good spare that would work well for both kids (one seat that either could use)? I would like lock-offs since our other car is super old and I couldn't get the belts to lock.

I would say the mysize / size for me/ headwise and get familiar with a locking clip lol

It's a good adjustable seat

cupcakepirate11 said:

I would say the mysize / size for me/ headwise and get familiar with a locking clip lol

It's a good adjustable seat

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I like that option, but I am afraid of the Graco buckle issues. I was thinking a RA 55 or a TFP...

What vehicle do you have? Sometimes people have locking belts and don't realize it.

Locking clips are pretty easy once you've practiced a bit. I find them easier than some of the lockoffs I've used, so I would evaluate each seat individually rather than being of the mindset "I need lockoffs". For example, I'd rather deal with a locking clip on a RF MyRide than the lockoffs on a RF Truefit.

If someone only has one vehicle, and small children, they may not have much need for spares. But a spare is good for anyone because if anything happens to your seat you have another you can use (puke, pee, someone gets scissors and cuts the harness, etc.). It's also good for when one person drops off and another picks up.

If you have 2 vehicles, it's easy to forget that you put a seat in a vehicle and then your husband is off at work and you need to go out and don't have enough seats. That's why I have multiple boosters. They're easy to forget in a vehicle. Or maybe there are times that you have to give someone else's child a ride. Basically, lots of different reasons depending on your circumstances, but having at least one spare is always a good idea.

Of course when you have 8 kids and 4 vehicles, you end up with a lot of different needs and different situations over the years so the collection grows to the point that you give seats away and loan seats out to make yourself feel better .

I don't have any seats that aren't in a car for my kids (other than an extra backless booster) but they can come in handy occasionally.

How tall/heavy are your kids? I like my TFP but it only rear faces to 35lbs and even though I have never played with a RA 55, Britax seats have short shells.

I only have 1 car seat for 1 kid. I move his car seat a few times a week too, I just can't afford another seat!

Well, my spare Scenera is going to come in handy since I now officially have a My Ride with a messed up buckle. We originally bought it for traveling after I realized, at the last minute, that my Radian was going to be unusable. It's worked well RFing on an airplane all 4 times I've used it and is easy to carry through the airport because it's so light. It was also the only seat I could fit in a three across in my back row (at the time) when we had to take an extra child with us to Florida last summer. Plus, it only cost me $40. I have a love-hate relationship with the seat itself, but I certainly can't deny the fact that it's come in handy many times.

We have 4 kids in seats - 2 harnessed and 2 boosters. The boostered kids each have two boosters - one in my car and one in my husband's car (he takes them to school most mornings). At the moment, I only have 1 spare harnessed seat (the Scenera) but would ideally like to have two in case we need them for emergencies (eg. we get into an accident and their main seats are unusable) or if another person needs to transport one or both of my harnessed kids (eg. my parents or if we need to put them in my husband's car for some reason etc). As a general rule, I like to avoid moving their main seats whenever possible.

At this point, I'm hoping Graco will recall/fix the buckle issue and the My Ride can become my second spare seat.

I have 2 kids and only 1 car, a minivan. We have a spare booster and spare 5 point. The extra 5 point is installed in the back. My DH thinks I am crazy to have extras but they come in handy. My daughter's school does lots of field trips and the parents are responsible for driving. It is much easier to just put a child in the extra seat rather than try and install a new one, especially if the weather is bad. Its also come in handy for playdates and emergencies when I need to give someone a ride home. I have no recommendations for which one as I don't know enough about all the options out there. I will leave that to the experts.

Do you have more than 1 car? I like knowing that if something happened with my car, DH has seats in his car that we can use.

My spare seats in the basement are a TFP, which DS just outgrew, and a GoHybrid which I haven't checked but he may have also outgrown. I hope not because I want to use the Go on vacation again in a couple months! My parents also have a Frontier at their house to use with him.

I have seats in 4 different cars but I don't have any in my house.

I have spares installed in other vehicles for the times when someone is sick and needs picked up from school or daycare. Or in the event we want/need to use a different car. I don't like moving seats from one vehicle to another.

I have 3 kids in seats and currently have 7 seats installed and need to put 1 more back in dh's car. I also 'donated' 4 seats to my kids daycare to insure they were in proper seats. All my other 'spares' where given to my kids for their children (yes, I have grandbabies and babies of my own at the same time! lol).

I have seats in my car, my husbands car and my MIL's car, and I would like to have one more set.....

We mainly have extra seats because they are easier to travel with than our main seats. We didn't so much when they were younger, and actually at one point we only had 3 seats between the 2 kids in our 2 vehicles. But once they were FF I got the GO to make it easier to fly. And the other spare is a NBB that comes in handy for friends or carpooling (and travel).

For spares that aren't used much I prefer cheaper/lighter weight seats. For your kids I'd probably go with PP's suggestion of the Graco. Or something like the Evenflo Triumph (whatever they're calling the current model) that has the slides for the harness straps. Then you don't have to worry about changing the straps no matter which child you're installing it for (and if they both fit RF no need to change anything between kids).