Friday, December 16, 2011

Pampers vs. Huggies


It has been 8 long years since we had a baby in the house, and transitioning along with our older kids we had completely forgotten all the baby nuances. One of them is how to avoid diaper changing in the middle of the night. It wakes you up, it wakes the baby up, the transition out from the cuddly warm blanket to the wet wipe on the baby's bare body in a cold room is a torture, it wakes your partner up, as well as the neighbors. Yet, the Huggies diapers that I purchased started to leak after 4 hours, making it impossible not to change in the middle of the night.

Is there any trick? I couldn't remember from my younger kids' days. I emailed my sister-in-law who recently had twins and all she replied was: "ONLY PAMPERS!!!!!"

Could it be so simple? I checked online and saw similar laconic advices everywhere on babies' forums.

I went to the store and bought the recommended brand.  Surprisingly they were exactly the same price as Huggies, like no one was in onto the secret.  We used it and, true enough, it doesn't seem to leak for 8-9 hours.

I know that more frequent diaper changes during the day is healthier, but for the night - the problem is solved. The question is: assuming that you leave a Pampers diaper on during the day for 4 hours and during the night for 8 hours, how much money you are saving as compared with Huggies diapers that you would replace every 4 hours night and day.  Let's compute it as a percentage of a diaper's price or assume that diapers are 3 for a $1.

Top image by dhinivh, distributed under CCL.

Answer ideas accepted any time until midnight on Sunday December 18th (EST), on our Family Puzzle Marathon. They will be hidden till then and everyone who submitted something reasonable will get a puzzle point.

5 comments:

Jerome said...

Suppose the first diaper is changed at 12 midnight.

The next diaper would be changed at 8 am
The next one would be 12 noon
The next at 4 pm
The next at 8 pm

The day this was done would require 5 diapers. If you used Huggies, you would need 1 more.

At the end of 30 days you would have saved 30 diapers. At 3/$1 you would have therefore saved 10 dollars, enough to get one of your other kids a hamberger delux. In six months you could treat the whole family.

You have made a 16% saving I think, but you have also been acting responsibly for the environment. A 16% saving in the landfill of a million people is a huge savings.

Pampers rule!!!

anne-marie said...

Very cute baby!:-)

I have counted five pampers or six huggies per 24 h.
For the huggies, the price per 24h is 2 dol.
For the pampers, the price is 5/3 dol.
You substract both numbers and you have your saving for 24 h so 1/3 of a dol.
Every three days, you save $1.

Ilya said...

In a 24 hour cycle, we would be using 6 Huggies diapers for $2. With Pampers, in the same cycle, there will be one night period of 8 hours where we can use one diaper instead of 2, thus resulting in a savings of $.33. Percentage-wise it's 1/6, i.e. slightly less than 17%.

TracyZ said...

Assuming each 24-hr period consists of 16 hours of day, and 8 hours of night, and that:
- Huggies diapers are changed every 4 hours day and night, and
- Pampers diapers are changed every 4 hours during the day, and every 8 hours at night

Then:
+ A baby using only Huggies diapers would go through 6 diapers in a 24-hr period: 4 diapers during the day, and 2 diapers at night.

+ A baby using only Pampers diapers would go through 5 diapers in a 24-hour period (that starts in the morning): 4 diapers during the day and 1 diaper at night.

Assuming that Pampers and Huggies cost the same, then using Pampers results in a 20% savings (= 6/5 - 1)

@ 3 diapers per $1, the savings is $0.33 cents per day, $2.33 per week, $116.40 per year (assuming the larger diapers needed after 1 year are still the same price).

(An aside based on my personal experience of Pampers vs. Huggies with my two kids: I used Huggies much more than Pampers, and didn't have big problems with Huggies -- I just would go up a size when they started to leak a lot. In the stores I shop in, Huggies usually cost less than Pampers (and had more coupons) and Pampers usually had "baby powder scent", a "feature" that irritated me and my allergies. With my second child, I often used a store-brand from a national retailer that I found worked about as well as Huggies, especially during the day, and saved more money that way. Many families where I live use cloth diapers and talk that option as a way to save money that way, but for me, it was never worth the time and labor costs it involved, and there are environmental pluses and minuses to both cloth and disposal diapers).

Maria said...

$.33 per day is not a lot but not bad. This reminds me of a savings program offered by one of the diapers companies (I believe Huggies) that invited to contribute a similar amount daily to save long-term for baby education. It could add up to $4-5,000 by age 18. Of course kids get out of diapers much earlier.

a puzzle point for Jerome, anne-marie, Ilya and TracyZ.

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