I met Claudia de la Guerra on the first day of school, in that familiar New York swirl of coffee cups, tiny backpacks, and parents navigating first-day nerves and reluctant goodbyes. As we lingered in the gym to make sure our kids had settled, The Parent Loop, still brand new, came up, and I found myself talking about how hard it can be to share kid gear, secondhand clothes, or even a useful tip without bouncing between social media, group chats, and endless bookmarks.
Claudia smiled and jumped in with, “I co-founded Little Swaps,” a platform she started to help parents buy, sell, and pass along pre-loved kids’ things more easily. It was immediately clear we were circling the same problem from different angles.
When I later sat down with Claudia and her co-founder, Mónica Leesha, the conversation widened quickly. Little Swaps may have started with clothes, but what they are really building is a system designed around the realities of parenting: limited time, limited space, safety concerns, and a deep desire to know that the things we let go of actually end up somewhere meaningful.
Both founders came to this work as parents first. Mónica is a mom of four, spanning nearly every stage of childhood, from a college graduate to toddlers still in diapers. She lived in New York City for more than a decade, including years in Park Slope, before moving to Westchester during COVID. Claudia lives on the Upper West Side and is parenting a toddler and a baby, very much in the thick of city life with young kids.
Their different contexts, city and suburb, first child and fourth, ended up revealing the same friction.
Little Swaps was not born from a pitch deck. It came from frustration.
Mónica described being surrounded by outgrown clothes, toys, and gear that still had so much life in them. She tried the usual routes: Facebook Marketplace, local groups, coordinating pickups. What she found was exhausting. Endless messaging, no-shows, awkward haggling over small-dollar items, and the constant question of whether it was safe to share her home address.
Donating did not feel like a clean solution either. Like many parents, she worried about where things actually go once they leave our hands, whether they are reused, stored indefinitely, or quietly discarded.
Claudia echoed that tension from a city-parent perspective. In a smaller apartment, space matters. So does mental load.
“There’s the space, the money, the time, and the emotional attachment,” she said. “All of it adds up.”
What they kept returning to was this: the systems technically exist, but they are not built for parents. Not for parents juggling drop-off, nap schedules, work, safety concerns, and the constant sense that time is already spoken for.
Little Swaps emerged as an attempt to close that gap.
At its core, the platform is designed to make parent-to-parent exchange feel simple, trusted, and flexible. Parents can sell, buy, swap, or exchange items in ways that fit their lives, whether that means shipping something, meeting another parent locally, or using one of their newer swap spots.
Swap Spots are one of the clearest examples of how Little Swaps thinks about real-world friction. Instead of coordinating porch pickups, negotiating prices, or sharing home addresses, parents purchase items in the app first and then exchange them through trusted local businesses during set hours.
Sellers drop items off when it works for them, buyers get an automatic in-app notification when the item is ready, and each side has a window to complete the exchange. It cuts down on no-shows and back-and-forth, adds a layer of safety many parents crave, and turns what used to be the most frustrating part of local buying and selling into something families can fit into real life.
“We’re busy,” Mónica said. “We don’t have time to waste.”
Just as importantly, the model supports local businesses, many of them mom-owned, by bringing foot traffic into neighborhood spaces that already serve families. Consignment and resale shops are part of this picture too. Little Swaps is intentionally designed as a free, additive platform, one that allows local stores and parents to participate side by side, all working toward the same goal of making secondhand easier and more accessible.
What stood out to me most was how intentionally they do not position Little Swaps as the only answer.
They do not see other parent-led resale businesses as competition. They see them as part of the same shift.
“We don’t see other mom-owned businesses as competitors,” Claudia said. “We see them as an opportunity to build something bigger together.”
That mindset runs through everything they are building. While Little Swaps began as a resale platform, it has evolved into something more community-first. Swaps, education, and connection sit alongside buying and selling. Their long-term vision goes beyond transactions toward infrastructure: tools that make parent-to-parent exchange easier at every level, whether that’s individual families, local businesses, or broader community networks.
Since launching earlier this year, the growth has been quiet but telling. Parents found the platform organically. Within months, families from more than 30 states were posting items.
“That was when it really hit,” Mónica said. “People need this. They’ve been waiting for something that feels built for them.”
When I asked them to define their mission, the answer was refreshingly clear: to make secondhand and parent-to-parent exchange the first thing parents think of, not the backup option.
Not as a moral burden. Not as an extra chore. Just as the obvious place to start.
That idea mirrors so much of what I’ve been seeing across New York. Parents are not resistant to secondhand. They are resistant to systems that demand too much.
They want options that work with small apartments, fast-growing kids, tight schedules, and real concerns about safety and trust. They want to feel good about letting go of things without wondering where they will end up.
Little Swaps does not ask parents to be perfect. It meets them where they are.
That may be the throughline across this series. The future of kids’ clothes is not about choosing one right solution. It is about building enough thoughtful ones that parents do not feel like they are doing it alone.
Little Swaps is stepping into its next chapter this spring, with plans to expand beyond transactions and lean further into community. Want to check it out? Sign up here as a founding member or download the app on your phone, I’ve already spotted a few familiar faces.
And keep an eye out, something very good for UWS tiny closets is coming soon from The Parent Loop and Little Swaps. More to share shortly.
Next week: Wrapping up the series Let’s rethink kids’ clothes in New York and some fun spring cleaning plans! Missed the last interview with Carousel founder, Jessica Granata? Check it out here and my unboxing of their capsule here.
Because good stuff really shouldn’t sit in a closet.
The Parent Loop