King of the Diaper Mountain

I estimate that we have over 1000 diapers for the twins in our home, in sizes newborn to size 2. I also estimate that we go through about 100 diapers per week, giving us enough diapers to last through about mid-March. That’s almost two entire months after they start sleeping through the night. I hope.

Many of those diapers were gifts, but I bought most of them. I purchased four 168-count boxes of size 1 diapers weeks ago before the twins were born when I saw an outstanding sale at Toys R Us. Their generic brand was two for $30. That’s less than 9-cents per diaper. Of course much of that savings will be offset by the price of detergent I’ll need to clean their outfits when those cheap diapers leak, but at least I can feel smart for now. The rest of my purchases are assorted small packages I collected with coupons about to expire because I’d rather trip over stacks of diapers for weeks than see a perfectly good coupon wasted.

The rest of our diapers came as gifts. Many of those are left from baby shower gifts when we mistakenly felt we had everything needed to raise twins and asked for mostly diapers as gifts. Those shower gifts are almost all newborn size, and should keep them dry until they’re big enough for my cheap diapers. After the twins came, we received half a dozen gifts of preemie size diapers from friends, family, and the hospital,* but those are all gone now. That’s just as well since those are only rated up to five pounds, and both kids are over six already.

The biggest gift came about a week ago. One of Ellie’s coworkers was cleaning out their closet, and found a goldmine of diapers too small to fit their daughter. They stuffed them into a giant box and delivered them as a Christmas present to our door. They gave us about 400 diapers. They’re good diapers too, Pampers Swaddlers, not those generic diapers that only cheapskates buy.

* They gave us two packages. I think it was part of their “get a free package of diapers for every $100,000 you spend” promotion.