NEW YORK — Stephanie Edwards-Musa got her 13-year-old daughter a PlayStation 2 and clothing from Hollister and Aeropostale for Christmas this year. For her 5-year-old son, it’s a bundle of toys, mostly “Star Wars”-themed. The bill? $45.

Edwards-Musa, a Houston Realtor, found these items used on ThredUp.com, an online toy exchange that launched recently. Parent-to-parent swapping sites like this one, growing in popularity, offer families a way to clear their closets of toys and clothes their children have outgrown in exchange for items cast off by older kids.

“I’ve always been frugal,” she said, “but the PlayStation was my best Friday doorbuster yet.”

Thrifty parents are finding plenty of places to barter on the Web. At the online community SwapMamas.com, hip moms trade goods from baby slings to clarinets without any money changing hands. Swap-seekers place hundreds of listings a day on classifieds service Craigslist.org, while parents just looking for freebies gravitate to the local forums on Freecycle.org.

ThredUp CEO James Reinhart says the site has benefited from middle-income Americans’ heightened frugality; its membership, now at 50,000, has grown steadily since it debuted with clothing only back in April.

The fallout from the recession still has many parents struggling to balance the imperative to spend less with the desire to give their kids the things they want, especially during the holidays.

Even in hard times, “parents still want to do whatever it takes to create magic for their kids on Christmas and give them that pleasure,” said toy analyst Chris Byrne — one reason toy sales have held steady over the past few years while other categories fell.

Americans spend more than $21 billion a year on toys and games, according to market research firm NPD Group, with many of those ending up stuffed in attics and basements.

Of course, many parents unload their kids’ outgrown goods the old-fashioned way: by passing them to friends and family.

Some product-safety groups caution against buying toys secondhand because it’s tough to guarantee the products meet safety standards regarding lead and other chemicals. Also, when a resold toy lacks its original packaging, parents may not recognize whether it’s age-appropriate, said Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Still, the secondhand market for children’s clothes and toys generates $3 billion in sales annually.

To facilitate a swap, ThredUp provides a flat-rate shipping box a parent can fill with giveaways. The donor lists the contents of the box on the site, where the bundles are organized by age and gender. To claim a box, a user pays $5 to ThredUp plus $10.70 for shipping, and ThredUp e-mails the sender a prepaid shipping label. Members rate each other based on the quality of the stuff they receive.