Has the cost of diapers got you down in the dumps???
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| Max is pondering the cost of diapers... |
Diapers and all that relates to them seem to be the most
universally dreaded part of parenthood.
If I am honest with myself, my least favorite parental activity is
changing Max’s diaper. In fact I pretty
much try to do whatever I can to get out of it.
Luckily my husband has embraced this aspect of fatherhood and I can
literally go an entire weekend without changing a single diaper. This is pretty amazing and fortunate for Max
too because I don’t seem to have the diaper changing skills that my husband,
pro-diaper-changing extraordinaire has.
In fact, the other day after wrestling with Max for about 8 minutes, I
managed to get his poopy diaper off and just barely wipe him clean when he
actually escaped and crawled out of his room, all the way down the hall, and
hid under the dining room table where he sat giggling at me. I have to admit that part of the reason he
was able to get so far was because I was debilitated by laughter—his little
butt wiggling under his onsie had me rip roaring with laugher.
Anyway, in our household Alejandro changes the majority of
the diapers and I procure the
diapers and all the other stuff we need.
I am so to speak, the logistics and procurement officer of our household
so I mainly take charge of determining what we need and where to buy it, then I
order it or go pick it up on the correct day so that I can use my wad of
coupons.
So, I have two big tricks that I use/have used to save
big money on diapers and other baby items. Read on!
Diaper and Baby Gear
Mega Saving Method 1:
When Max was first born we used pampers and we saved a
significant amount of money on them because we purchased several boxes of them
on our registry at Babies R Us. We made
this purchase knowing that we could easily exchange them within a year of
purchase without having any problems. When
we made our trip to Babies R Us to use our registry completion discount plus
some other discounts, we made sure to do a few things:
1. We purchased
everything that we knew we were going to end up buying. We also made sure that
we had all of these items on our registry.
This included a several month supply worth of diapers.
2. We researched
competitor prices and made sure to use the price-match guarantee at the register,
especially for big items like our BOB Jogger.
3. We used any
coupons that we had. We didn’t know it
at the time but Babies R Us offers competitor coupons. We could have taken a 20% off coupon from Buy
Buy Baby or Bed Bath and Beyond and used it on our jogger. Oops!
3. We used our
registry completion discount to get 15% off of the entire purchase (including
sale and price-matched items).
4. We opened a credit
card that day to get an additional 15% off of the entire purchase (including
sale and price matched items).
5. We made this big
purchase on a Saturday (Thursday works too) to get an additional 10% off of the
entire purchase. There was a promotion
for using your toys r us credit card on a certain day. Year round, this promotion works on Thursday
but in November they offer this discount on Saturdays too.
6. After our
purchase, we took all the money that we had been putting aside in an envelop
for this purchase. We stuck it in the
bank and paid off the Toys R Us credit card right away. We did not purchase anything unless we had
the money for it in that envelope.
7. As Max grew, we
ended up with extra boxes of diapers of certain sizes. We just took them back to the store and got
the next size that we needed. Easy
peasy.
Here are a few of the
great deals we ended up getting:
$32.04 per 186 ct box of Pampers Swaddlers. For the same price you can buy a 129 ct. box
of Pampers Swaddlers. Be basically got
45% more diapers for our money by planning ahead.
$207.61 for a BOB Revolution SE Jogger. This compares with $459.99 at Buy Buy Baby
(minus 20% because it is silly to not use a coupon in that store).
$58.52 for an additional Chicco car seat base.
$76.49 for a crib mattress original price $99.99.
$52.01 for a Kiinde Feeding set (bottle warmer, disposable bottles,
various nipples, pump attachments, solid food pouch filler, etc.) original
price $99.99.
$12.55 for a 808 count box of pampers sensitive wipes. Original price $23.99.
Overall, we hit the jackpot on this purchase. I even saved the receipt to prove it! And now for my next tip…
Diaper Mega Savings
Method #2
This tip will help you once you find the diaper that you
love and you have an idea of how many you typically need for the week or month. We use Earth’s Best now and we started using
this trick once we had settled on our diaper brand and we knew we would be in
the same size for a while (3’s and 4’s).
Tip number 2 is: Get
an Amazon Mom account through Amazon Prime and use “Subscribe and Save” to buy your
diapers. This will save you up to 20% or
more off the price of diapers. It does
require an amazon prime membership, but I can assure you it is totally worth
it.
This method of buying diapers will save you a lot of time
and money. You won’t have to make the
dreaded diaper run to the store with a baby in tow. You won’t have to go diaper deal hunting,
which frankly is not an easy task.
Buying diapers with coupons can be tricky and amazon mom takes that out
of the equation. You know every month
that you are going to pay a great price for diapers.
We spend about $35 dollars for 140 Earth’s Best diapers
(these are generally more expensive than many brands but they actually fit Max
really well). The list price for this
amount is $79.99. Pampers Swaddlers are
slightly cheaper at about $36 dollars for 162 diapers. And if you like Huggies Snug and Dry, a
192-count box of size 4s runs at about $31.
Places like Babies R Us only use coupons on diapers if they
are diaper coupons or if they are able to apply a total purchase coupon. You have to buy diapers every month but you won’t
come across special deals and coupons on diapers every month. I like that I can use subscribe and save and
save my energy for the sweeter parts of parenthood --- basically anything but
diapers or diapering.
So this is how subscribe and save works. Every month you will have a ship date. Anything that you purchase through subscribe
and save will be automatically shipped to you by that date. When you subscribe for an item, you are
adding it to your automatic ship order.
You determine the frequency of your order based on your needs. For example I am currently a subscriber of
two boxes of earth’s best diapers. I
have it set up so one box is shipped monthly while the other is shipped every
two months. I typically adjust this as
my diaper supply waxes and wanes. Next
month I will be skipping both shipments because I have a massive stash of
diapers right now.
Here are a few things to keep in mind if you are going to use
this tip:
- Keep in mind that you can change your
order. Maybe you order two boxes this
month so you only need one next month.
Change your order.
- You can plan your monthly orders months in
advance if you need to.
- You can add other baby or adult items to your
order. In fact, the more items on your
order the more you save (up to 15%). I
have bought canned baby food, kitchen sponges, Swiffer dusters refills, Vega
One Protein Powder, etc. on subscribe and save.
- Making returns with amazon is not convenient or
cost effective. Only buy diapers this
way if you have found the diaper that fits your baby. When I decided to try Earth’s Best, I spent
more money at a store just so I could try them out before making a bigger
purchase.
- There are also other perks of using amazon prime
and subscribe and save. Explore the
perks and use them. We watch a lot of
amazon prime movies because they are free with a subscription.
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| Max approves of Amazon Subscribe and Save... I think he just likes the boxes. |
Anyway, I hope this post will help you save time and money. If you have any insight about saving money on
diapers or baby gear, please share in the comments. I would really appreciate it!
