Stockpiling diapers ahead of time

[NotaGrandmaYet]

What are some tips for getting diapers for .10/each (what I've been told is a good price when you aren't desperate)? I have been looking and looking for about 3 months and rarely find anything close to that :0(

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Wow, that's quite a breakdown on diaper pricing.

I'm trying to figure that out. So, if a package of diapers has 56 diapers inside, that would be $5.60 before tax. I see diapers priced around $8.99 minus a $3 Q comes out to $5.99 then tax.

What about bigger diaper sizes that only have 26 in the pack? That's $2.60 per pack with the same price of $8.99 minus $3Q. That's $5.99 again before tax for only 26 diapers......EEK!

Maybe I am missing the point here and that this is online pricing at 10cents per diaper. I've never bought diapers on-line.

[amylynne01]

You want to combine store promos with coupons and sales. For example, if CVS has diapers on sale for $8.99 with a $2 ECB back, the pack is now $6.99. Then use your $3 q, and it's $3.99. I often buy diapers at Rite Aid with their store loyalty program and will not pay more than $3-$4 per jumbo (but I'm really aiming for much lower than that). It does take a while to get to the point where you're consistently paying less than $0.15 a diaper. Avoid the large boxes because the jumbos are almost always the better deal per diaper. Or switch to cloth.

Check out Amazon for Luvs. They're regularly around $0.15 a diaper, and they're shipped directly to your door for free. If the kiddo you're buying for can wear anything, then look at all brands, not just the one you're used to buying. Last year, a local grocery store had their jumbos on sale for 2/$10, and they had store coupons for $2 off each pack.

[foggierbard9]

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Wow, that's quite a breakdown on diaper pricing.

I'm trying to figure that out. So, if a package of diapers has 56 diapers inside, that would be $5.60 before tax. I see diapers priced around $8.99 minus a $3 Q comes out to $5.99 then tax.

What about bigger diaper sizes that only have 26 in the pack? That's $2.60 per pack with the same price of $8.99 minus $3Q. That's $5.99 again before tax for only 26 diapers......EEK!

Maybe I am missing the point here and that this is online pricing at 10cents per diaper. I've never bought diapers on-line.

The bigger sizes do end up costing more per diaper in most cases. To get the best price people usually combine coupons with sales and gift card deals. They also stock up when diapers get clearanced. Huggies/Pampers and even store brands will change the number in a pack or the design of the diaper and clearance out all the old diapers.

[CRW]

As the previous posters have mentioned it can be difficult to try to stock pile diapers because you don't know which diapers will work for your baby or how many diapers of each size you will need. Huggies leak like crazy on my son while most store brands actually work really well for him (even the one's that are supposed to be just like Huggies). I have one friend who's six month old has already outgrown size 3's and another friend who's 21 month old is still wearing size 3's. Whatever you do there's a good chance you are going to end up with at least some diapers that don't work for your baby (and you may end up with lots and lots of diapers that won't work for your baby).

Even if you keep the receipts I'm not sure how many stores would be willing to let you return diapers 2+ years after you bought them, especially since the packaging and things like that often change which would make it difficult for the store to resell them. Plus you have to factor in whether you want to deal with the hassles involved in returning/exchanging lots of diapers (or trying to sell them on craigslist or something like that).

Diapers also take up a lot of space so you'll need a lot of extra room to stock pile them.

There is also the issue of what happens if you end up having difficulty getting pregnant. Hopefully you won't, but if you do have difficulty then having to look at the diaper stock pile may just make you feel more stressed out.

If you're going to start stock piling before you're pregnant I would probably aim for 5 cents per diaper or less. It's pretty rare to find this good of a deal but since you've got that much time you might as well wait for the good deals (these type of deals usually only happen when you find diapers on clearance and also have a coupon). Normally I aim for 10 cents or less per diaper to stock up.

[hrhmom]

Mine wore those for a very long time. In fact when she was first born, newborn were too big for her. I think she wore the newborn for about 3 months and then the size 1 for 3 months. For a time she was in between the two sizes. I had to use a size 1 with a doubler and hope she didn't pee out the leg hole. The size 1 was too big but the newborn was really too small. She used to be skinny. That all changed once she started eating.

:)

I had chubby babies...both right at 9 lbs when they were born.

Gosh I miss those squishy knees. Now "skinny" jeans are practically loose fit on them.

[MamaBird06]

I did, and I am so glad I did. I cloth diaper dd part-time and had some family issues so had to go to fulltime disposables for about 2 months, I blew threw all the size 3's and most of the size 4's in that time and dd is just 6.5 months. I thought I had plenty but circumstances ate up my stockpile. I just had to buy some from target yesterday. DD is back to part-time cloth so hoping that what I have will last awhile. We have tried many brands, pampers, huggies, cvs, wags, earthsbest, you will find you like certain ones better, but most babies don't have horrible reactions, and I would say a variety is best to try out them all and see what works best for your baby. I started stockpiling in may 2009 and had dd april 2011. I did have plenty that they were often given as shower gift presents. I don't regret stockpiling. We started stockpiling when we were ttc.

[MelInKansas]

One other reason not to start too early. I had bought ahead on Amazon a bunch of size 5's that I figured would last my 2YO about 6 months. One of the boxes I bought (I won't say what brand) had at least 1/2 of the diapers where the tabs would break off while she was wearing them. I have never before or since had this problem with these diapers, but I got on the company's website, entered the batch number that was printed on the diapers, and they sent me coupons to replace the diapers (at full retail, which was way more than I had spent... now going to get better-than-free diapers with those coupons!) Again, I don't know what they would have done if I had discovered that defect 2 years after I bought the diapers instead of 4 months later (which I did end up using the diapers anyway too, I just put pants with tight waists on her when she was wearing those and only during the day - probably could have even used tape because the tabs would work when I first put the diaper on but would break while she was wearing them).

Great diaper deals can be hard to find, and often it depends on how good your coupons are too. Homemailers are usually better of course than the insert coupons. Look for catalina deals too. One time I got so lucky that I had a raincheck for a great diaper deal and then a catalina started, so I got my jumbo packs at $4.50 AND cats to go with it! But I tend to find that there are a few deals that always come around (Walgreens BOGO with a coupon on theirs net the cheapest jumbo packs in my area if you like their diapers), otherwise you really have to scour the ads and jump on it when the deal is hot! Rebates - occasionally the companies even do rebates, I'm about to do one on some Huggies with the Cars 2 movie promotion. Kimberly Clark - maker of Huggies - does rebates I haven't seen any on Pampers or Luvs (made by Proctor & Gamble).

I did a breakdown on cloth - granted this was when my 3rd child was 9 months old so I had already missed out on a lot of benefit of the investment in cloth diapers. I added in laundering costs, which most people don't calculate and say is nearly nothing, (if you coupon for your detergent that does bring it down a lot of course, but water, energy, and TIME TIME TIME especially if you end up having issues where the diapers need more than just regular care). I found that the cost of couponing for disposibles was cheaper than cloth diapering - this will greatly depend on how expensive your cloth diapers are, whether they truly can be worn all throughout diapering as some claim, things like that (with cloth you still often have to buy different sizes, again the biggest benefit comes when you reuse them for more than one child).

If I find a deal where small sizes are around 10c/diaper and large sizes are 18c a diaper I buy some. When I find a deal cheaper than that I will get as many as I possibly possibly can (trying to take into account what I think my kiddo will use, which I am now much better at predicting having had 3 and now working on my 4th).

[wendylv5]

I wouldn't start to early. You should wait till you are pregnant. I never like to buy to much stuff prior cause I don't want to jinx myself. I know I shouldn't think that way, but it is always in the back of my mind.

[foggierbard9]

I did a breakdown on cloth - granted this was when my 3rd child was 9 months old so I had already missed out on a lot of benefit of the investment in cloth diapers. I added in laundering costs, which most people don't calculate and say is nearly nothing, (if you coupon for your detergent that does bring it down a lot of course, but water, energy, and TIME TIME TIME especially if you end up having issues where the diapers need more than just regular care). I found that the cost of couponing for disposibles was cheaper than cloth diapering - this will greatly depend on how expensive your cloth diapers are, whether they truly can be worn all throughout diapering as some claim, things like that (with cloth you still often have to buy different sizes, again the biggest benefit comes when you reuse them for more than one child).

I don't know who can buy a months worth of disposables, coupons or not, for less than what it costs me to wash my diapers in that same month.

The cost for us to wash our diapers for a month is right around $8.50. This includes a wet pail, soak, full wash cycle, extra cycle no detergent, and drying 50% of the way in the dryer with line drying the rest of the way.

The additional time is negligible. I mean throw in pail, throw in washer, dryer or hang dry, fold....doesn't take much time at all in comparison to having to run out to the store, or hoping you don't run out of diapers when the hurricane hits or you get an unexpected snow storm/blizzard and can't get out of the house for 3 or 4 or 5 days and you have one pack of disposable diapers or you are tight on money one month because of an unexpected bill that comes up and you have to decide between diapers and food.

When we did use disposables it was a pack a week(or more) plus special overnight disposables.

I have diapered my DS for 6 mos and DD for 19 mos(still in diapers) and have spent...$399.87 on diapers, $161.50 on laundry, and $22.95 on Tide. So at this point I have spent $584.32 on cloth diapering.

The cost of 6 mos of disposables plus wipes for DS and 19 mos of disposables and wipes for DD would have been around $1203.17...not to include all the rash cream we had to use, extra laundry for blowouts that occurred in disposables that I haven't had to deal with in cloth, and no extra sheets being washed because the disposable can't last all night.

I have spent half of what it would have been for disposables....and for our 3rd child that we are expecting I will only have to buy a few of the smaller sized newborn diapers.

Not to mention I am not throwing all those diapers away, and whether you use disposable or cloth, you have to dump the poop in the toilet so that isn't any different.

I would rather have $600 in my pocket for use on something else instead of throwing $10-$15 a week into the trash can.

When we are done having kids we can sell all the diapers we have and recoup money that we've spent.