Are you having a baby and cheap, poor, living in a tiny apartment, or just a hater of stuff? The following are my experiences as a minimalist baby gear owner. Feel free to comment with your experiences. Size notes are based on my 90%ile girl and 50%ile boy, who were actually almost identical in size.
Transport:
Car seat: Everyone needs a car seat (well, unless you don't have a car). We had the Graco cradle kind ($70ish) that snaps into a base that lives in the car, but both kids outgrew it in terms of length by about 6 months, so we got one of the ones that faces rear as an infant seat and turns around for a toddler seat (also Graco, $80ish). We could have skipped the cradle kind (the convertible kind works for an infant as small as 5 pounds), but we actually used the cradle part a lot in the house as a seat/bed for daytime parking and naps, replacing the need for a bouncer or swing or pack and play when Casper was little.
Strollers: A jogger is worth it if you actually jog, or will be covering much actual outdoor terrain. Non-joggers just aren't that great unless you're in a mall or someplace with great sidewalks. We had a standard Graco foldable ($70ish) and it was okay, but I did a lot of walking and it was bumpy. We later inherited an old and crappy double jogger, and I liked that much better for walking the kids long distances. A good jogger will fold easily and fit in your trunk, but will be pricey. A $10 umbrella stroller is a fine thing to have for airport travel (although we ended up holding the child and pushing the luggage in the stroller pretty much every time) but tends to be so crappy (and for us, way too low to the ground for comfortable pushing) that it's not a must.
Carriers: I've had a sling ($25) and a baby Bjorn (gift). Didn't use the sling much; it took some getting used to and I never felt really free to move around. I mostly used it in the house, or after the kids outgrew the Bjorn and sat in it on my hip. I got a lot of use out of the Bjorn, commuted with Dillo on my chest up to about 9 months, when he was too tall and too heavy. At that point we switched to a toddler backpack (hand me down), but unless you are using public transport or regularly hiking with your child, by the time they are big enough for a backpack they are damn heavy. Not something I'd use at the mall, for example. If I were buying now, I'd probably just buy an Ergo ($100ish) and have done with it; it seems to combine the best features of sling, Bjorn, and backpack and works for a wide variety of ages and sizes.
Sleeping:
We had a hand me down crib and a hand me down pack n play. We co-slept for long stretches with both kids, so the crib got the most use between 1-2 years. It was useful at that point. My kids have also slept in an infant stroller (nights when tiny tiny), car seat cradle (naps up to about 6 months), our bed (naps and nights), and on a blanket on the floor (naps). I found that when we traveled the kids wanted to be in bed with me, so we didn't use the pack n play then, and we never used it as a playpen. We sometimes used it for naps.
More later.
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