There are a lot of weird baby products out there, like these hands that you can place in the crib around your baby to help them sleep.

But honestly, I hope even in your sleep-deprived new parent delirium, you understand that these novelty products are a huge waste of money. So in this article, I’ll give you my top five insidious wastes of money when it comes to baby products – those items that you actually might have put on your registry thinking, “we might use that.”

1. Wipe warmers.  Where do you plan on storing your baby wipes, the refrigerator? Not only have several brands of wipes warmers been recalled for giving users electrical shocks, they often dry out and turn wipes brown before you finish the pack. Warming a baby’s wipes just might be the first step towards helicopter parenting and still cutting off the crusts of their bread when your son is 25.

2. Baby shoes. I know, those teeny tiny size one pink Converse high tops are literally the cutest things you have ever seen. Had you invested the $22 at 9% interest instead of blowing it on shoes you had to wrestle on a non-walking child, your daughter could have had $100 towards university 18 years later. Even more ridiculous? High heels for babies.

3. Tummy time mats. These soft mats with attached toys might be shaped like surfboards or airplanes. Some even have revolving platforms you can strap your baby to and let them pull themselves around on. While babies need tummy time, they certainly don’t need a $45 mat on which to spend those few minutes a day.

4. Diaper genies. Who decided the plastic smell of rancid potpourri diaper bags mixed with poopy diapers was better than just pitching the soiled diaper into a knotted plastic bag and tossing it out in the garbage right away? Unless you live in a New York high rise, skip the costly diaper genie and

5. Educational DVDs. Honestly, who really believed plonking your child in front of the boob tube to watch puppets at six months of age was going to teach them anything? Besides, you can do that for free with Sesame Street. Given that the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommends that children under two should have no screen time at all, these videos are a total waste of money. If you need the parenting break some screen time might allow you, find their free favourites on YouTube or Treehouse.

Want something worth spending your money on? Simple receiving blankets. They’ll act as burp cloths, pee geyser blockers, swaddling wraps, tummy time mats, sleep positioners, change mat, cleaning cloths, and someday fort walls for toddlers.

Anything on this list you disagree with, or did I miss something you caution new moms against buying? Let me know!

I went back to full time work last week. My available free time got a whole lot smaller, just as I vowed to embark on a mission to make my waistline smaller. I’ve felt like the two things were incompatible, until I found Mamavation and the Sisterhood. It’s an online community of moms who blog, tweet and Facebook about their progress in a challenge to eat healthier, move more and inspire their families to do the same.

As part of my involvement in mamavation I’ll be blogging every Monday about my progress and of course, I’ll be incorporating tips on how you can lose weight without resorting to expensive gym memberships and insanely priced nutritional counseling or weight loss programs.

There’s a two week challenge happening right now, and I started it yesterday. I did the beginner work out last night, as though I wouldn’t consider myself a beginner, I had surgery in December and have just gotten clearance from my doctor to work out, so I thought I’d take it slowly to begin with. I did the second work out today and pushed myself harder, and my arms were definitely jello after this one. My husband worked out with me tonight in our sad little underused home gym, while the kids watched a movie in the next room and popped in to watch occasionally. I really liked having someone to work out with – and it helped that he’d change the Bowflex for me. The mamavation work outs can be done with just hand weights though, and they link to instructional videos on youtube if you’re unclear on anything.

I also met with the trainer at my corporate gym and had my measurements taken and a weigh in done. I’ve avoided weighing myself for a bit because I felt I was getting obsessive about it, so it was a fantastic surprise to discover that I’m officially at my pre-baby weight. That was supposed to be my first goal post. For those of you keeping track, that would be for the first baby, who was born six and a half years ago.

I’m 5’5″ and 154lbs and my goal is to drop 20lbs of fat and build more muscle. Come back next Monday and I’ll be talking about finding deals on gym memberships, bootcamps and more.

I’m not above splurging on things I really want. But I am a little obsessive about making sure I get the best price. I’ll sometimes pay a premium for convenience or service,  but in general I’m very price conscious about the things I buy.

So yes, I do keep a rather compulsive list of the groceries we buy frequently to ensure I’m not overpaying on staples. Why would I pick up a treat of Kool-Aid Jammers for the kids when they’re two boxes for $8 instead of waiting until they go on sale for two boxes for $3? We go through three to five packages of bagels a week – I stock up when they hit $1 a package instead of spending the usual $3.47. It also helps me ensure I’m not overpaying if I chose to shop at a more expensive grocery store to score bonus Air Miles.

I also keep track of the pricing on things I’m thinking of buying.

When I discovered online that Zellers, not a store I normally shop at, was offering 50% off anyone item, including sale items, I grabbed my price list and headed in. You can print the coupon here – it expires December 31. I had some big items on my list – a mattress pad, a carpet cleaning steam vac, and a bed in a bag set. Going through three different registers, I saved $210 off the regular Zellers price. Because of my price list, I know my real savings was only $140, as the Zellers regular price was much higher than the lowest price I had seen these items at elsewhere. A fantastic deal!

It’s not a lot of work to keep a pricing sheet for the things you buy regularly, or are planning on buying. Because really, don’t you have better things you’d like to spend that money on?

UPDATE: Zellers changed their policy this morning to remove the ability to use the coupon on items already on sale. This would have significantly decreased my savings – in fact, two of the items would have still been priced higher at Zellers than at Walmart even after the 50% discount had been applied. Zellers is getting a massive PR headache on their Facebook page because of the change. However, I’m sure they’ve been overwhelmed by customers taking advantage of the fact that they had no way of tracking if customers used more than one coupon (as I did) by going to different registers or stores. In fact, this has inspired another blog post on coupon redemption ethics. Stay tuned!

SECOND UPDATE: I used the Zellers coupon tonight at Bed Bath & Beyond (they honor competitor’s coupons) with no hassle at all. They won’t allow you to buy Kitchen Aid or Tassimo, but most everything else is fair game. They were happy to do it, and I was happy to save $20 on a hair dryer.

In a Moneyville article today, a writer lays out the math on why she thinks cloth diapers are more expensive than disposable. While cloth diapers are certainly not right for every family, they make the most financial sense if you launder them yourself. Her math is totally wrong, and here’s my breakdown of her argument.

Our son is almost four months, and we figure we’ve gone through 1,440 diapers – around 12 each day. Costing 15 cents a diaper, this has already been a $216 investment.

By year’s end, using disposable diapers will cost us over $648. To curtail this cost, we’ve been looking into cloth diaper options, and have learned that there are many out there, at various price points.

Are you potty training at age 1? Likely not. Even if you manage to potty train a boy by age 2 and a half, you get a medal, and your disposable cost rises to a whopping $1,620.

If we bought cloth diapers, we would purchase a minimum of 24 to give us a grace period between washings. Using a cost of $10 per diaper – a reasonable price for mid to high-end, quality cloth diapers – that would cost $240. Although you can get one-size fits all, it is recommended to get them in sizes so they fit your baby properly and comfortably.  So, we’d likely end up buying new diapers at least twice a year, which would cost us a minimum of $480.

It’s clear this writer hasn’t done much research on cloth diapers. The best cloth diapers are one-size all-in-ones. They work awesome for every baby but the tiniest – by four months they’d certainly fit her son wonderfully. They run around $22 each in Canada. 24 is a good amount to have on hand. That’s a lifetime cost of $528.

The estimated cost of one load of laundry is 44 to  78 cents depending on how efficient your washer and dryer are. If we wash our cloth diapers once per day, at low peak usage, this would cost us $160 a year.

You can also choose to use biodegradable liners to avoid pre-laundry rinsing. These liners take care of the ‘dirty’ work of cloth diapers, but are also costly. For 100 flushable liners, you pay $5.95. If you’re like me   you’ll go through a package of liners in eight days.

These means you could spend up to $271 a year on disposable liners. To cut this cost significantly, you can buy reusable liners anywhere from $10 to $25 for a set of three, or simply make your own.

I’ll give her the laundering costs. Though as your baby ages, you change diapers less frequently, saving laundering costs. However, you would change disposables less frequently too, and this difference is likely similar to the savings she’d get from using fewer disposables which she didn’t account for. So it comes out about even. But liners? Only newbies use liners. There is absolutely no need for them! They are wasteful, pure and simple. The most disgusting poopy diaper you can imagine can be wiped off in seconds with a bit of toilet paper, and thrown in the wet bag. Once washed, that formerly foul diaper will be pristine and snowy white again. Many babies hate liners as they stay wet and don’t properly wick wetness away from the baby’s bum like the diaper itself is designed to do. Every brand I’ve ever seen is much rougher against the skin than a naked diaper.

If you buy one-size fits all diapers, and opt to get 12 instead of 24, cloth diapers would definitely be a cheaper option than disposable. However, you would be doing laundry more often and also may have some issues with the size of the diaper and comfort level for your baby.

So, so wrong. Buy good diapers and your baby will be perfectly comfortable and you’ll have no problems with size.

As you can tell, there is no right answer when it comes to the price of disposable vs. cloth diapers. It can be argued that cloth diapers can be cheaper, but this isn’t always the case depending on the products you buy.

Wrong! By her misguided calculations, she would spend $648 in one year on disposables. By her numbers, she thinks cloth will cost her $961. But as ANY experienced cloth diaper mama will tell her, and based on my calculations above, cloth should cost no more than $740 in the first year (for top of the line diapers, laundering at home, diaper pail & wet bag). And the second year? Laundering costs only. Third year? Laundering costs only!

If she plans on having second or third kids, she may decide to up her stash by a few diapers – let’s say $100 worth. Then again, her costs are laundering costs only.

Finally, even after 7 years and three children’s worth of use, the majority of my one-size all-in-ones were in fantastic condition. I sold 24 of them online for $120, recouping a little of my cost.

Assuming she has two kids in diapers for five years total, she’ll spend $$3,240 on disposable diapers. Cloth? That would ring in, including laundering, at $1,480.

Environmental issues and single use only lifestyle discussions aside, it’s a financial no-brainer.

UPDATE: I took a few minutes to break out the costs being more realistic about diaper use per day, and laundering costs and frequency. Here’s what I came up with. Again, keep in mind that you can buy some brands of cloth diapers for under $100 for 24, but in this assumption, I’m using the cost of my personal favourite cloth diapering brand.