What we learned while pulling together items for Newborn Kits.

We found that Toys R Us was a great place to find the diapers. They need to be the unfolded kind. Walmart carries these, but I think that people often go there first, and the supply of diapers wasn't really consistent. We were consistently able to find the unfolded variety at Toys R Us.

Dollar stores were a good place to find diaper pins. The ones we found were Gerber brand, which was very good quality.

Walmart had the 12 packs of Ivory soap under  4 dollars. That makes the two bars of soap for each kit about 66 cents. The Dollar store had 3 packs of Ivory - which works out to about the same price - except that the bars were larger in the Walmart packs, and so in reality they are the better buy.

Blankets from stores all seemed to be the wrong size - usually not large enough. The sweet double 28x40 blankets that we love here in the states are what is most available in stores. We found it easiest and fastest to serge fleece blankets. If you piece two blankets, you can get 5 blankets from 3 yards of fleece. 

We found that many people had more money than time available to look for items. Many people brought money when that was offered as an option. In one instance, a sister found many packages of the diapers which she purchased and offered others an opportunity to help pay for them. It was by far the most successful way of finding donations for the project.

One sister, upon the purchase of a new pair of shoes, decided that "if she could spend that much for shoes - she could do a lot more for the newborn kits" - She purchased everything necessary for 10 kits - including making 10 blankets. 

Anyone else got any tidbits?