Goodwill Hunting

Goodwill is the place to get cheap cloth diaper fabric - i.e. T-shirts -  and if you manage to catch one of their 50% off sales you can get shirts for $1 or even less. But holy cow, the madness! I took dd to our local Goodwill this morning for the latest 50% off sale and even though I only spent maybe 15-20 minutes getting my shirts, it took me 45 minutes to get out because the check-out line was that long.

Two things prevented an otherwise speedy purchase - the place only had two cash registers and there were a few people (unfortunately ahead of us) with, and I'm not exaggerating, FULL GROCERY STORE SIZE SHOPPING CARTS. It was crazy, I've never seen anyone purchase so much of ANYTHING all at once. I don't know how they managed to get it back to their cars. God forbid they had to get on the bus with 2 or 3 full pretty-much-garbage-bag-size shopping bags.

I was going to go when the store opened at 9 am, but I wanted to wait for the diaper laundry to go into the dryer and I didn't think it would be that packed since it was a weekday. If today had been a Tuesday I would have been fine - I was chatting with another mum who was in line with me and she told me that the last 50%-off sale had been on a Tuesday and there were only 2 or 3 other people in the store when she'd gone. So middle-of-the-week is definitely the way to go with these things. You couldn't pay me enough to go to one on the weekend.

My dd did very well until the last 10 minutes when she got upset and wanted to be 'akka-mamma!' and of course I'd left the sling in the car. She was in an umbrella stroller and I didn't expect to be there long enough for her to get upset and want to be held. I never learn; this isn't the first time I've neglected to bring the sling and then really needed it. I have to burn it into my brain - ALWAYS bring the sling! Better to have it and not need it than vice versa.

Anyway, I did get a good deal - 8 mens' T-shirts (either XL or the same size as XL) for one dollar a piece. Good quality, too - new or nearly new. And a nice range of colours:

I think the lime green shirts will make especially cute diapers. I was originally looking to get mostly white shirts and maybe one or two coloured ones, but the coloured jersey was so much thicker and better quality than the white that my ratio got reversed.

They had some nice orange shirts too, but I didn't want to go overboard since these will be used to make 'tester' diapers. I estimate I can get about one medium-sized diaper per shirt, with 4 body layers and enough scraps left over to make an external soaker. I'm going to use the scrounged Zorb I have for the soakers since I intend my dd to actually use these diapers; she needs the absorbency of the Zorb since she's a supersoaker.