Why researching pays off.

With the new baby on the way and with this one being a girl, just like my first two, there aren’t a lot of things that need to be replaced or purchased. Thankfully. However, the house we are living in, the basement slowly leaks moisture from one side. Thus my research begins because when resurrecting the old infant car seat from the basement, we discovered mold on the seat pad, canopy and head support rest.

I wasn’t sure if we could actually replace those three things. I was sure that we could probably find replacement straps, snaps, etc. if we need to. Which we may need to replace the straps but as of right now, I think they are going to work. So I popped a search into google ‘Grace Car Seat Cover Replacement’.

It immediately listed Graco’s website. I had looked there a couple of years ago but didn’t recall being able to order a replacement. I went ahead and checked. To my surprise, pop in the model number, manufacturing date and here is an entire list of replacement parts for my exact car seat. Including the seat pad, canopy and head rest. And even more lucky for me, the seat pad, canopy and head rest are combined into one group for $40.00.

Now I could go out and buy a Safety 1st car seat for $60.00 and some change but it’s nice to be able to reuse what we originally had. We really invested into this current car seat when it came out, we spent $150.00 on the car seat alone. Safety before Financial gain was what we had in mind. We didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars but we have always relied on Graco from day one and knew this car seat would last us.

So if we wanted to replace the entire car seat and get a replica, we’d easily be spending another $100 – $150.00 for a car seat. If we went cheap and didn’t want to focus on safety, reputation, reviews, etc. we could spend $20.00 more than the replacement pads for a brand new car seat. I think I’ll stick with my original car seat and just buy the replacement pads. Yay!

Let’s add in that I am a fan of ebay as well. I’ve been hawking ebay for a small lot of 0-3 month summer girl clothes. Both of my oldest girls we’re winter babies so I don’t have any summer newborn clothes, whatsoever. Yesterday, I scored a lot of 30 items, name brand, lightly used baby girl clothes for $32.00. Which means, each item cost me a total of $1.32 (including shipping). Better than buying 30 items from walmart at an easy $7.00 – $10.00 per item. That definitely satisified me. One season of clothes down. Just need to buy some fall items and I’m good to go! I’m thinking of adding to the older girls wardrobe from ebay as well for this summer and fall. But we’ll get the baby’s stuff done first.