CIVIL servants were sent on a shopping spree for home furnishings just days after Humza Yousaf got the keys to Bute House.
Emails reveal staff were sent out to buy child-safe bottles, plates, bowls and bed frames — because he was the first First Minister with a young family.
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More than £2,500 was spent after Mr Yousaf was elected to the top job on March 29.
Other household items included towels, laundry baskets, toothbrush holders, mugs, lamps and waste bins.
And rooms at his official residence were freshened up with new duvets and sheets plus sheets, pillows and covers, mattress protectors, laundry airers, an ironing board and a £119.99 iron “suitable for intensive use”.
Messages show officials had to fork out for the goods because no previous occupant had youngsters aged under 18 who’d stay there.
Mr Yousaf, 38, usually stays at his Dundee home with wife Nadia, 39, plus their daughter Alam, four, and his stepdaughter Maya, 14.
But in April he admitted he had to “child-proof” Bute House for overnight stays with his family.
The Nats chief said side bars were put on Alam’s bed “so she doesn’t roll out”.
The Edinburgh mansion is owned by the National Trust for Scotland and leased to Scottish Ministers. It shut for repair work from April 17 to September 11.
The shopping list includes 130 plastic Ikea boxes bought for “transition logistics and forward storage requirements”.
And in an email from March, a logistics boss asks whether staff had gone to a John Lewis store.
The reply says: “We will buy tomorrow and put on new. Getting sheets this afternoon (ordered online) but for bedding want to ask them their preferences so we don’t waste money.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Bute House is a working building used by the First Minister, Cabinet ministers and civil servants to conduct government business, as well as accommodation for the First Minister and his family.”