Adventures in Cloth Diapering

     So in my latest quest to save money, I've started to look into cloth diapering. And by look into I mean that it's been my obsession for the week.

I'm lucky enough to live close to the Diaper Lab, and I'm doing their "experiment to own" program. I liked cloth diapers in theory but wasn't daring enough to just make the plunge and then end up saying "I hate this! I'm just goint to use disposables... and now I spent all this money on cloth diapers I won't use".

So far at least, I'm really liking it. There is something that just really appeals to my sensibilities to buy something, wash it, and re-use it vs buying something just to end up tossing it in the trash. I don't mind doing a little extra laundry - it's actually quite easy. Before having a baby I thought the idea of washing poopy diapers was gross, but I wash poopy things all the time now anyway. No big deal.

The Numbers - is it worth it?

My baby is about 4.5 months old right now. Most estimates go based on a baby being in diapers until 30 months. So that leaves us with 25 months to go in diapers (rounding down).

Disposables: I'd estimate that we spend about 50 dollars a month in diapers on average. So 25 months = 1250 dollars in diapers.

Cloth: We're looking at start-up costs of around 450 dollars. Definitely there is a lot more up-front cost. But that will average out to a savings of 32 dollars a month vs. using disposables. Theoretically we shouldn't have to buy any more.

Even better, if we end up having another baby and can re-use these diapers that's a whole lot more savings. So I'd better take good care of these diapers!

I'm planning to get mostly pocket diapers - if you went with mostly prefolds and covers this would be a lot cheaper - but after all was said and done I really liked the Babykicks Basic Pocket Diaper a lot - so I decided to just go with that - but still got a few prefolds and covers so I wouldn't have to buy quite as many pockets. That way if I run out before getting a chance to do laundry I have some cheap backups!

August Budget Roundup

     This past week has been crazy somehow - didn't find much time to write about what I did. I feel like it's kind of too late for details, but there were good sales this week. Free Shredded Wheat, free Lunchables, free Progresso Meal Starters, free Totino pizza rolls, catalinas galore. Cooking food for the week was a fail. I did make some Beef Stroganoff and that was good, but there was more I should have made in addition to the fact that we bought some produce and didn't end up cooking it which is a waste - don't know if it's still any good. I embarked on a new cloth diaper journey but that merits a post in and of itself.

Monthly Budget

So onto the real topic of this post: how we did for the budget this month!

Net for the month: -428 dollars.

Now normally I wouldn't be too happy with that, but when you break it down it's actually not that bad.

Where we failed

1) Gas and Fuel: 80 dollars over budget.
     Way over budget but this includes 3 drives between Boston and NY which is not typical - this is really a one time overage. And I'm excited to see what it is next month now that we have the Prius v.

2) Restaurants: 150 dollars over budget.
     Doh! A lot of this is because we went out for a fancy dinner for restaurant week - but I even tried to plan for that and say - knowing we're going out for a fancy dinner at the end of the month we have to not eat out much before that. This was just a budget fail. It's our weakness! Really want to make it within budget next month.

3) Baby Supplies: 240 dollars over budget.
     A lot of this is due to buying a new car seat for 150 dollars. Also a baby monitor for 30 dollars. 35 dollars for cloth diaper trial (more on this later). Even taking out these one time expenses that's still over my 100 dollar budget I set. Probably about 100 dollars on diapers this month, maybe slightly less. I was under budget last month so it may be partly timing, but still a lot of money for diapers!

4) Miscellaneous expenses: 1,000 dollars
     I don't know that this can really be called a fail but we had a lot of expenses mostly due to paying medical bills from my pregnancy so that put us over a lot.

Where we succeeded

1) Utilities: 40 dollars under budget
     Energy costs have been good - we are being efficient with both electric and gas.

2) Groceries: 70 dollars under budget
     I think we did pretty well here - only 180 dollars spent on groceries.

3) Shopping: 125 dollars under budget.
     We didn't do a lot of retail shopping this month and finally made it under budget on this category!

Overall

I'd give us a pretty good rating overall with our budget. Not perfect, but given all of the medical bills we paid and things like that, we're not too far out of line. There's a lot more room for improvement. Let's see how much we can cut it down for September.

Deals for the week

So I had a pretty productive shopping morning.

Stop and Shop Deals!

     Went to Stop and Shop and got 10 Lunchables for free. They are on sale 2 for $6 and if you buy 5 you get $5 off instantly from Stop and Shop. But there is also a catalina from Kraft if you buy 10 you get $10 on your next order. AND in the free Stop and Shop savings booklets they have at the front of the store they have $1.00 off coupons, so I grabbed 10 of those.
So 10 lunchables on sale = $30.00. Get $10.00 off instantly from S&S. = $20.00. Used 10 $1.00 coupons = $10.00 and I got a catalina printout for $10.00 off my next order = FREE! Yay for free stuff. Thanks to HTSFF for alerting me to this deal!

     Also at S&S I had a bunch of Yoplait yogurt coupons to use. Two $0.40 off of 6 yoplait cups coupons, one $0.50 off of 2 yoplait greek yogurt, two coupons for up to $1.50 off of any yoplait cup, and two coupons for $0.35 off.  So I got 14 cups of regular yogurt on sale @ $0.50 each, and 4 cups of greek yogurt on sale @ $1.00 each.  Anyway here's how it turned out.
       4 Greek yogurts = $4.00- two coupons at $1.29 each (they took off nonsale price for some reason - just realized this now) = $1.42- $1.00 from doubled coupon = $0.42. 
      14 regular yogurts = $7.00 - $1.60 from doubled 40 cent coupons = $5.40 - $1.40 from two doubled 35 cent coupons = $4.00
    
     So total It was $4.42 for 18 yogurts. But even better, I didn't know it but I guess there is a catalina on yoplait too, because I got a $2.00 on your next order coupon. So that's like paying $2.42 for 18 yogurts which is about 13 cents per yogurt! So I'd say we did pretty well with that too!

Oh and I bought a big bag of tortilla chips for $2.50. Can't get everything with coupons! But I did get generic brand vs buying Tostitos, so at least I saved some money that way.

CVS

Haven't gone to CVS yet, but I need to go today because they sent me a $2.00 coupon in the mail and it expires today. I just have to figure out what to get with it - preferably for free. I could get a free gallon of milk, but I'm trying to avoid dairy. Which also excludes all the nice milk chocolatey candy I would buy. I could get two 2-liters of Pepsi @ $0.88 each, but that has the disadvantage of both not being especially good for you plus that's like throwing out 24 cents, so I'd have to get something else. Or my husband has been asking me to buy C batteries for a while, I'm sure it will be more than $2.00, but I could just use it toward that. CVS batteries are BOGO so that's probably the wisest course of action.

Free Desitin and free pacifiers!

Babies R Us/Toys R Us has a coupon out for 5 dollars to use in their stores. Last time they had this coupon out I used it to buy some Desitin which is $5.99 so it only cost me a dollar which is a good deal. But I read the coupon and realized it does not have any restriction on combining it with other offers like a lot of the Babies R Us coupons do.

Johnson & Johnson has a $1 dollar off coupon on their website  (I just got the regular Desitin in the blue box - not sure of the price on the others). So the Desitin was $5.99, minus the $1.00 coupon, then gave them the 5 dollar BRU coupon = FREE Desitin!

Also if you go to couponnetwork.com they have a coupon for $1.00 off a pack of Avent pacifiers. These are also $5.99 at Babies R Us. So doing the same thing, you can get FREE pacifiers.

My baby is not much of a pacifier girl - it's hit or miss - most of the time she'll refuse it, but every once in a while she'll be going crazy and I'll give her a pacifier and she falls right asleep. Anyway I happen to like the Avent pacifiers. 1) Because she will actually take them. and 2) Because they come with a cover which is great, especially if I want to bring one along with me in my diaper bag - don't have to worry about it getting dirty from whatever is inside my bag!

Saving

So this is just sort of an overview of what we've done so far in attempts for saving, especially with a new addition to the family.

1) Buying things used

Especially with a lot of baby things - we have found craigslist to be great. We spent about 150 dollars and got a full wardrobe of baby girl clothes to last from birth-12 months and some pieces up to 2T. It's all in good condition - nobody would know the difference. We got our swing on craigslist, our glider, way better than paying full price. We also went to a consignment shop to buy our Ergo baby carrier. Obviously you don't want everything used, but there's a lot of good stuff out there. The Boston area has a very good craigslisting population.

2) Coupons

Initially it was my husband who wanted to start couponing and I thought he was crazy. I saw those shows on TV with people diving through dumpsters for coupons and coming out of the stores with 1000 cases of ramen and sports drinks and having it take over their whole house. Well, I've found that couponing has worked well for us even though we only do it really basically and just get one set of coupons from the Sunday paper which we get delivered to us. What's really helped is Kathy Spencer's How To Shop For Free (HTSFF) - she posts coupon match ups and alert you to good deals. But what I think is the best is there is a coupon database. So now all I need to do if I know I want to buy something is type it into the coupon database and it will tell me if there's a coupon for it and if so, where to find it. I also recommend Kathy Spencer's book - I checked it out from the library - I didn't read the whole thing but it was good to skim through for the basic information I was looking for.

3) Lifestyle changes

We already downgraded our TV package, changed insurance companies to get a better rate, and big things like that. The biggest change for us is really going to be with regard to our food budget. We are used to eating out way too much so my new goal is to eat at home more. We've really kicked the comparison shopping into high-gear - for everything, but especially groceries. My new goal I'm just starting out with is meal-planning. I want to at least have good things to eat instead of just making junk because it's fast and easy, you didn't think ahead, and now you're starving. Still a work in progress, but hopefully I will find some good recipes and can post them here.