By Carrie Kirby

sack of household items

I am a frugalista. I am willing to work for a bargain. But today I had to ask myself — why work hard when you don’t have to?

Because Alice.com — a new site that sells necessities like toilet paper, detergent and diapers by mail — is offering its gift cards at 30% off today for Cyber Monday, I really investigated the site for the first time. After a brief look, you can bet I ordered myself a $100 gift card for $70. More on that deal below — first, let’s look at how Alice.com won even this hard-core frugalista over to convenience.

Like some of you probably do, I get a lot of toiletry and household items for free by working the rewards programs at CVS and Walgreens. But there are a few items that I have rarely or never snared for free: napkins, toilet paper and diapers. Readers of my blog, Frugalista, know that I will drop everything and haul my kids to Target for the chance to buy Huggies at 10 or 11 cents per infant-sized diaper.

(And before you comment to tell me how much I’d be saving using cloth diapers, you’re right. I’ve used them and I’d like to get back to them, but with two in diapers right now, a thriving work-at-home career and a kindergartener to boot, I’m just barely keeping up with the regular laundry at the moment.)

Alice.com sells household staples at about the same price you’d see at Target. Then, they load the available coupons out there onto the site, so you can use a coupon without clipping or even getting the Sunday paper. Then, they ship your order to you for free.

They also have sales that look like Amazon’s Lightning Deals when you’re logged in, look at the bottom of the site and you’ll see some item listed at 7% off or 30% off or more, but only for a limited amount of units, and do they go fast.

I knew I could save time by ordering diapers on Amazon or Diapers.com, but I put in the extra work to get a better deal. But now, with my 30% off gift card, I’ll be paying less than 11 cents a diaper (for infant size) at Alice.com and I will never have to put the kids in the car for a can’t-resist-this-deal diaper run.

Here’s how the math works: Alice.com has a Jumbo pack of size 1 Huggies diapers for $9.39, similar to the shelf price at Target or wherever. A coupon right there on the site brings it down to $7.39. Using the gift card I bought at 30% off, it’s like I’m really getting a 30% discount on everything I buy. So I’d pay $5.39 on Alice after coupon and 30% discount, for that pack of 50 diapers – 10.8 cents per diaper. That’s pretty much as cheap as I’ve ever bought diapers, even working it. Baby Cheapskate’s handy chart lists the "price to beat" for Size 1 Huggies as 17 cents.

The deal is also good for larger diapers: Baby Cheapskate’s price to beat for Size 4 is 25 cents a diaper. Alice.com has a Jumbo pack of Size 4 diapers (31 count) for $9.69. The $2/1 coupon brings the price down to $7.69. After the 30% discount, my $7.69 diaper pack will cost me $5.39, or 17.4 cents a diaper.

(Buying a larger Mega Pack would not save me money: If I bought the Mega Pack, I’d get 52 diapers for $16.28, $14.28 after coupon, and $10 after my 30% discount, which works out to 19 cents a diaper.)

As for toilet paper, the other thing I’m excited about buying at Alice.com, I hate doing toilet paper math. There are all those different roll sizes and stuff. But I’m going to trust that if I can get a great deal on diapers by combining Alice.com’s prices and this gift card offer, I’m going to get a great price on toilet paper, too.

Here’s how to get gift cards, today only, for 30% off:

1. Create an account at Alice.com or log in if you already have one.

2. Go to Alice.com/gift_cards.

3. Click the button that says "Share this deal on Facebook." It should give you a little window where you can add a little message for your Facebook page. I filled it out and immediately was told that my 30 percent discount was activated.

4. If you don’t want to post to Facebook, you can get a gift card at 15% off.

5. Go ahead and buy gift cards! The 30% savings will be reflected in your cart.

6. Wait for your gift cards to arrive in the mail.

Because these are physical gift cards, I think they would make great gifts, especially for those impending teacher holiday gifts.

This deal ends at 11:59 p.m. tonight, Central Time.

This post is riddled with affiliate links, so yes, if you sign up for Alice.com through the links here, I’ll make a small commission on your purchases. But honest, this is a great deal — I just bought myself a $100 gift card and a $50 as a gift, and I might yet log back on to buy more gifts.

Permalink | 2 comments | Carrie Kirby's blog | Channel: Shopping

Similar entries:

This article is from Wise Bread.