Buying baby clothes on a budget

In this week’s baby bargainista column, Rebecca Atkinson talks about shopping for clothes for her baby daughter who is growing by the minute and cute as a button.

As Jenny pointed out in a previous post buying baby clothes can be an expensive proposition when your little one constantly grows and no two manufacturer’s are alike in their sizing.
Given this the rapid changes in weather this summer and our darling’s early delivery, it wasn’t long before we were on the lookout for discount baby clothes in Toronto.

Here’s what we were able to find:
Value Village – when babies aren’t yet crawling, walking or spilling stuff on themselves, their clothes tend to stay in better shape, so Value Village is a great spot to find baby clothes at discount prices.

The Children’s Place – Depending on which location you go to you may end up with a gold mine of discounts: clothes priced between $1.99 -$4.99. I’ve been to three locations in the GTA and here’s what I can tell you. The Toronto Eaton Centre has a small discount area and is worth checking out. Yorkdale Mall’s store has the smallest discount rack I’ve ever seen. However, the motherload can be found at Vaughan Mills, with the biggest discount section – especially for infants.

Old Navy – Again, Vaughan Mills has a large discount area and we were able to buy a ton of her summer clothes, paying no more than $4.99 per item of clothing. I’m not sure about other Old Navy locations, but it could be worth a try.

Obviously, these are pretty Toronto-area specific discount shopping options, so surely there are other options across Canada. Where have you been the most successful?

Bargainmoose shares her Old Navy bargain hunting secrets

Welcome guest blogger Anna Moose. Anna is the author of Bargainmoose, a Canadian coupons and deal hunting website who has kindly offered to share her tried and true tips for big savings at Old Navy.

Here’s a hot tip for the fashion bargain hunters! I’m sure many of you shop at Old Navy, but did you know that you don't actually have to pay the retail prices in-store? With their printable coupons, you can save yourself a bomb on your clothing purchases.

OldNavyWeekly.com is a coupon hunting site from Old Navy. It is renewed weekly, with coupons that you can print out and use in Old Navy stores.

Here are examples of all the previous Old Navy coupons. As you can see, there are coupons to get a percentage off your shopping, or a flat rate discount. The biggest coupons are the $75 off $100s, but they are very hard to get! Even if you don’t manage to get the huge dollar discount coupons, a 25% coupon can still come in very handy!

Old Navy coupon hunting tips:
• The Old Navy Weekly site updates once a week. Currently, this is late on a Thursday night, or in the early hours of Friday morning. If you want a chance at one of the really high value coupons, you need to be online when it updates, as the high value coupons are all gone within minutes.

• To find the free coupons, you must click around the Old Navy site. Any time your mouse pointer turns into a hand (denoting a clickable link in your browser), click it and see if it is a coupon. Sometimes you have to drag and drop items to get the coupons. For example, one week you had to drag and drop a polo shirt onto one of the mannequins.

• When you find a coupon, you will see a popup window where you can then send the coupon to your email. If the coupon has already expired, you still see the popup, but it usually has a “sorry” message.

• If and when you find a coupon, you can usually send it straight to your email address. Normally, you can also send the same coupon to a Facebook friend.

• Keep an eye on the banner at the top of the page, which shows how many of each of coupon remains. If you manage to find a coupon, maybe don’t accept it right away – you may find a better one if you keep looking.

• Check out the Old Navy YouTube channel where they have lots of promotional videos. Some video contain information, which might be asked for on the coupon website to access a certain coupon. For example, one week they had a question, “Who is Christopher’s dad?”

• Monitor the M80 website. This is blog which tells a bit about the coupon site each week, before it goes live.

Every week, there’s always something a little different, and sometimes it can be hard work to find those coupons!

The printable coupons are accepted at any Old Navy store in the U.S. and Canada. They are usually valid for about a week, but each week you can try and bag yourself a bigger and better coupon.

Happy shopping!

Seasonal sales and sundresses

In this week’s baby bargainista column, Jenny shares her shopping tips for scoring big at seasonal sales while buying sundresses for her pre-schooler.

It’s a cliché, but it’s true – kids grow up quickly, right before your eyes! When the first heat wave of summer arrived I reached into our first-born’s closet for the summer sundresses bought last year, hoping that a few of them might still fit, but it seems Girl #1 has sprouted about a foot in height, almost all of it legs. Even the sundresses bought a size larger at the end-of-season sales last year are no better than tunics now.

So, I headed out to find our beanpole some summer wear. Luckily many stores have already started marking down summer merchandise. I first went to Old Navy and H&M in the Eaton Centre; both had big SALE! signs in the windows and I rejoiced! My procrastination was about to be rewarded.

Old Navy may have had kids’ dresses, but the day I went the children’s section was a mess! Picked over, understocked, and understaffed, with many items misshelved so that it was hard to tell what was on sale and what was not. I couldn’t find anything in my daughter’s size, and when I asked a passing staffer for help, she told me it “wasn’t her section”.

Thoroughly dissatisfied, I headed a few doors down to H&M. There I had the opposite experience: sale racks and individual items were clearly marked, and despite the crowds, when I asked a passing staffer if anything else was marked down she happily directed me to another sale rack hidden in a corner. I found nearly a dozen summer dresses but eventually settled on a half-dozen, including the $10 sale item pictured above.

Bottom line? When shopping seasonal sales, remember to:
1. Ask sales staff if any other merchandise is marked down – sometimes sale items aren’t clearly marked and you might find more bargains

2. Buy up for next year – if you can’t find anything in your kid’s current size, there’s no harm in buying a size or two larger – they’ll grow into it!

Cheap clothes for kids

In this week’s column, Jenny Bullough share’s her thoughts about shopping on a budget for young kids.

Now that fall is really upon us, my thoughts naturally turn to outfitting my 4-year-old for the colder months.

After a few years’ experience of digging through last winter’s long-sleeved shirts, pants, and jackets and finding more than half of them no longer fit, I’m prepared for a massive shopping explosion in order to make sure my girl is adequately clothed for the coming chill.

Nothing says “mommy guilt” like seeing the disapproving glances of the other daycare/preschool/JK moms and dads when they see bare ankles and wrists exposed because last season’s pants and shirts are suddenly a size too small! I speak from experience, unfortunately.

I hope you won’t think I’m a negligent parent when I tell you that when it comes to buying my little kindergartner clothes for everyday wear, I am *supremely* cheap.

Again, from experience I know that anything she wears to daycare or school is doomed to come back home stained with play-doh, paint, food, or old-fashioned mud, and most likely missing buttons, fasteners, and any fancy doo-dads sewn onto it, so spending a lot of money on daily wear is just not worth the investment since by the time she’s done with it, it won’t even be fit for passing on to future siblings or younger cousins.

For cheap kids’ wear, my first stop is always Joe Fresh. There’s a section conveniently located in our local Loblaws, which makes it easy to check out their clearance racks every week; and their kids clothes are inexpensive and surprisingly durable. Plus their pants often feature adjustable waists, which is a key ingredient to longevity in the kid wardrobe.

If I can’t find what I need while grocery shopping, Old Navy or Zellers will often have good stuff on their sale racks, and their regularly-priced merchandise isn’t too costly. For durability, go with Old Navy first; for items bedecked with your child’s favorite cartoon characters, Zellers is your best bet. I have occasionally had issues with the fit of some Zellers clothes, but as with all HBC properties their no-hassle return policy makes it easy to buy two sizes and return the one that doesn’t fit.

And finally, I always love to drop into Once Upon a Child at least once a season and I’m rarely disappointed. This chain of consignment stores scores high marks with me for their constant rotation of high-quality, gently-used kids clothing. I’ve gotten some tremendous deals there on barely-worn name-brand designer kids clothes like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren.

Those are my top tips for durable, cheap daily kids wear. What store is your first stop when your little ones need new school clothes?