More baby products you’ll never, ever need.

There’s a mind-numbingly large number of products targeted at new parents who just don’t know better.  Here’s a sampling of my favorite utterly useless baby products.

Wipe Warmer

This little gem will set you back anywhere from $15 to $40, depending on how many bells and whistles your model has.  So, what the heck is it?  Put simply, it’s a little box that’s got a low-power heating element in it and plugs into the wall.  You buy wipes, shove them in the box and as you need them, you pull them out one at a time from the top.  Wait, you what?  You mean, like the package they came in?  Exactly.  But the difference here is that little Skylar will only ever have nice, toasty-warm wipes touch her tender little tushie.

Give me a break.  The wipes touch the kid’s butt for what?  5 seconds at a time?  So, save your money, don’t buy a $30 box that duplicates the functionality of the already free package that your wipes came in.

Designer Stroller

I don’t care if you’re the wealthiest parents walking, you do not need a $700+ stroller.  Really, you don’t.  I don’t care if you’re at the height of New York society, your baby’s tender little rump won’t suffer if you just use a normal stroller.  Heck, for the first year, you don’t even need a conventional stroller at all.  Get the 30-lb rated carrier style infant seat, and a frame to drop it in, like the Snap-n-Go.  Don’t get suckered into buying the “Travel System” either.  The strollers tend to be very large and don’t fold compactly at all.  After your kid is done in the carrier, that’s when it’s time to consider upgrading to something else.  We had excellent success with a Maclaren Quest.  It was very durable, lasting through 2 kids.  Ok, through 1, and then 3/4 of the way through the second.  We weren’t exactly gentle with it, so we felt we got our money’s worth.  We got another of the same model, and eventually recouped probably 2/3 of the cost when we re-sold it.  Those go for about $200.  I’ve heard excellent things about the $99 Maclaren Volo as well.  A friend of ours has a Peg Perego, which is also very nice, though doesn’t fold up nearly as compactly as the Maclaren models do.  Why not a $20 umbrella stroller?  If you’re short, go for it.  I’m 6′ tall.  While my wife, who’s 5’5″ is completely comfortable pushing around those $20 umbrella strollers, they’re so short that I had to walk hunched over.  That alone made it worth the extra cash to me.

Britax Super-Deluxe Car Seat & Cappuccino maker.

This is really one of my pet peeves.  Let’s face it, people are gullible.  Someone didn’t install their car seat right, or their seatbelt failed and a kid got killed.  It’s a terrible shame, and it’s awful that the family had to go through that.  As part of their grief process, they convince themselves that all children need to be put in gigantic, suffocating 5-point harnesses, locked inside a Sherman tank, and made a youtube video showing their other kid in one of those seats.  Cue the herd of Internet sheeple who jump on the bandwagon, and you’ve got 5-point harness hysteria.  Do kids need to be in properly installed car seats at all times?  Yes, without question.  Do you need the $400 car seat?  Nope.  A $100 Graco seat will do just fine, thanks.  And yes, belt-positioning boosters are just fine too, for kids that are big enough for them.  The greatest irony?  In that youtube video, their younger kid that’s in the gigantic Britax seat isn’t properly restrained.  Say what?  There are twists in the harness belts.  Twists in the belt greatly increase the likelihood of the strap breaking in a collision.  Broken straps mean much greater chance of injury or death.

Shopping Cart Cover

Nothing screams, “utterly stupid waste of money” like this thing.  You’ve seen them before.  Strolling through the supermarket, here comes little Hunter and his parents, in a cart that’s lined with one of these monsters.  First thing, can you imagine how hard it is to install it, with two arms, let alone trying to do it one handed while holding a squirming child?  Get real.  But, but, but…  germs! bacteria! pestilence! plague!  Shopping carts are dirty, filthy things that will instantly give your child the Ebola virus, right?  Well, not really.  If you’re that worried about germs on a shopping cart, use an antibacterial wipe on the handle.

It’s funny, I saw one yesterday in the supermarket.  This monster was fully tricked out.  Not only did it cover the whole area that the kid sat in, it covered the handle of the cart, had a 5-point harness built in (you know, in case your baby suddenly develops the leg strength of a 5 year old and decides to launch themselves out the cart), and little tethers suitable for connecting toys to.  After all, you wouldn’t want a toy to ever get dropped on the floor (gasp!).  If you’re the overprotective, helicopter parent-in-training, this is definitely the product for you.  If you’re normal like the rest of us, skip it.

Changing Table

This one’s right up there with the shopping cart cover.  While it’s certainly got some utility, that utility is short-lived.  By the time your kid’s a year old, you’ll be on the floor changing your kid, simply because he’s too big.  We got a dresser that had enough surface area to accomodate a changing pad.  Worked just fine, and the pad was worth the $10 for convenience early on.  By a year, we were down on the floor.

Toddler Beds

Now mind you, I’m not talking about removing the front rail of a crib so that it’s like a day bed.  I’m talking about buying a bed, specifically made for a crib-sized mattress.  Our oldest was in a crib that had the rail off by the time he was a year old.  By the time he was a year and a half, he was in a regular twin bed, since we needed the crib back for the arrival of his little sister.  We had a rail on the twin bed for about 6 months, at which point, it was time to get rid of it.  For the first couple of nights we made big piles of pillows along the side of the bed in case he fell out.  Never happened.  He’s only ever fallen out of bed from fooling around, which doesn’t exactly count.  Our younger one was in a twin bed for her 2nd birthday.  Never had a rail for her in the twin, as it was a much lower bed than our son’s.

Bottom line, use your head, and don’t believe what marketing people tell you is good for you & your kids.

Diaper Cost Analysis

Ok, it’s time to go get your green on.  Do you feel like you’re constantly spending money on diapers, like every five minutes?  Yeah, we used to feel that way too.  With Lizzie, we made a conscious decision to go cloth, after finding that she got lots of rashes with disposables.  We settled on the bumGenius all-in-one cloth diapers.  What’s this all-in-one stuff about?  Your garden variety, traditional cloth diaper involves a big wad of cloth, shoved inside a cover that keeps all the junk inside, lots of moving parts, not very user-friendly.  An all-in-one, like the bumGenius, goes on like your average disposable.  Inside, there’s a pocket that holds the various absorbent pads.

The all-in-ones are very easy to use.  My wife refers to them as “Husband-Friendly”.  Even the nursery workers at church can handle these things.  They’re adjustable, and fit kids that are between 7 and 35 pounds. What’s the down side of these diapers?  They’re not cheap.  Like really expensive.  Up-front costs are pretty high.  The bumGenius diapers cost about $18 each.  The folks at Kellly’s Closet sell larger quantities (12 or more) for a decent discount though (about $1 per diaper).  Their “Starter Package” is right about $400, and includes 24 diapers.  Based on prices for Pampers at Amazon, and Kelly’s Closet, as of Nov 6, 2008, here’s what I came up with.  The primary assumption I made was that the child would wear diapers until they’re 3 years old, and used an informal poll between a few random sources, including our own experiences with our 2 children to come up with how many diapers per day would be used.

Pampers Costs

Type	Per Box	Price	Cost / Diaper	Diapers / Day	Cost / Month	Months	Months of Use	Total Cost
Swaddlers 1	216	$39.99	$0.19	10	$55.54	0-3	3	$166.63
Swaddlers 2	184	$41.99	$0.23	10	$68.46	3-7	4	$273.85
Cruisers 3	160	$41.99	$0.26	8	$62.99	7-12	5	$314.93
Cruisers 4	140	$41.99	$0.30	6	$53.99	12-21	9	$485.88
Cruisers 5	124	$41.99	$0.34	5	$50.79	21-36	15	$761.92
Grand Total								$2,003.20

bumGenius Costs

Item	Quantity	Cost
bumGenius Starter Pack	1	$406.80
Extra Diaper Inserts 3-pack	4	$43.80
Grand Total		$450.60

Wow, that’s quite a difference, eh?  So, if you’re willing to invest at least 7 months of time to devote to using cloth, you’ll come out roughly even ($440.48 vs $450.60).  If you continue down the cloth road, by the time your child is potty trained, you will have saved a bit more than $1500.  What does this comparison fail to account for?  The cost of washing the diapers vs. disposal of the disposable diapers.  Most folks buy bins like the Playtex Diaper Genie, which means you’re in for buying replacement cartridges, so more ongoing costs.

Maybe cloth isn’t for you.  There’s certainly a larger commitment involved – you’ll be doing a load of diapers every day.  You could stretch this to every 2 days once the child is a bit older, or if you get another 12 diapers, which would add another 50% to the cost.  That means your time period to recoup your investment is closer to a year.  Still, you’re ahead by about 2/3 in that case as well.  For us, it’s totally worth it.  And guess what?  Lizzie doesn’t get rashes from cloth diapers, ever.

Financial and comfort issues aside, consider the potential environmental impact from using cloth diapers, vs. disposables.  How often do you empty a diaper genie that’s full of diapers, resulting in a pile the size of your leg?  Think about how large a pile of disposable diapers that is over the first few years of a child’s life.  Go back up above, and multiply it all out, using the disposable numbers — that’s over 7,000 diapers.  That’s a pretty large pile of diapers that will spend dozens or in some cases, up to hundreds of years in landfills (for the non-cotton components in the diaper).  With a cloth diaper solution, what are you introducing into the environment, apart from the bio-waste?  Water and detergent, just like washing clothes.  However, with diapers, you use less detergent, and can always use a more naturally formulated detergent, further minimizing environmental impact.