I'm sure there have been many things written on this subject, but I just want to throw my 2 cents in.
Buying clothes can get expensive, especially if you have young children - they grow SO fast! As a mother of 4 kids myself, I know first hand how costly it can get. Here are my tips and tricks on how to dress to impress for less!
If you're like me and want brand name clothes without the brand name price, never fear, there are ways to do it!
One of the best ways is end of season clearance sales. Seriously. I buy about 80% of my children's clothing out of season for the next year, and I get it at deep discounts. Here's a couple recent examples from my shopping sprees:
I went to Kohl's and browsed their clearance racks and came out with 2 shirts for me and 7 shirts for the kids, all for under 20.00 including taxes. Even if you go there during one of their big sales during season you can find plenty of items for around 5.00 each. Not a bad price. And Kohl's carries TONS of name brands. My best deals were a pair of Skechers shoes for only 5.00 and a pair of Mudd jeans for 6.00.
On a recent excursion to Old Navy's clearance racks I walked out of there with 1 shirt for my boyfriend, a cami, 2 pairs of pajama pants and 2 skirts for me, and 10 shirts and 4 pairs of pants for the kids. All for, are you ready, 90.00 including taxes! That averages out to be about 4.50 for each piece, a great deal! The most expensive piece of clothing I bought that day was the shirt for my boyfriend at 7.00, everything else was under 3.00 each.
The only con to buying from the clearance racks is you usually have a limited selection. I usually always manage to find something I can tolerate for the price though...lol
If you are browsing clearance racks, Target's is one to stay away from, unless you catch them at the right time. The discounts are so little, its not really worth spending hours in the store searching for all the things in the sizes you need. A 20.00 pair of pants on "clearance" for 16.00? Please, I want better savings than that!
Another option is eBay. I am a HUGE fan of eBay and get the remainder of my kid's clothing off of there, especially their pajamas. Gap and Old Navy may only have a couple choices in their store, but I can always find a huge variety on eBay. You want to make sure you read the descriptions carefully as well as check the seller's feedback rating. Also watch the shipping costs. You might think you're getting a 30.00 pair of pants for 14.00, but with the 12.00 shipping, is it really worth it? Your best bet is to know how much you want to spend for something and how much it retails for. Including shipping, are you willing to pay almost retail for that outfit or are you trying to save money? With the kid's pajamas, most of them I buy off of eBay are brand new, they retail in the stores anywhere from 14.00 to 20.00. I pay on average 14.00 for each pair that I buy including shipping, and I'm o-kay with that because I get more choices on eBay than I would in the stores. My most recent fantastic finds were 2 pairs of brand new toddler Vans shoes that retail for 36.00 each. I got each one at 17.00 including shipping. Yeah, I could of taken that 17.00 and bought a couple pairs of shoes at Wal-Mart that I didn't really like, but I would of rather had the Vans :) Things like that are what makes it worth it to me. When I shop on eBay for general clothing (always brand name, thank you, unless its just super cute and I can't resist it), I estimate the retail cost of it and then I estimate what an outfit like it at Wal-Mart can cost (and has anyone else noticed that Wal-Mart's clothing is getting uglier and more expensive?) and then figure out what I want to pay for it. Say I can get a shirt at Wal-Mart for 11.00 and a pair of pants for 16.00, that's 27.00 total not including taxes. So I look on eBay and find an outfit by Gymboree that retails for anywhere from 40.00 to 60.00 that I can get for 25.00 including shipping. I'll buy the Gymboree outfit because I like the way it looks better than the outfit at Wal-Mart and it's comparable in price to the Wal-Mart outfit so I'm not spending more money than I would of on the outfit. Plus, Gymboree has better re-sale value than Wal-Mart :)
Another option is your local FreeCycle group. It's an on-line Yahoo group that you can give away things you don't need but are still useful as well as ask for things that you need. My best finds from there was a huge box of all brand name (I'm talking Children's Place, Old Navy, Gap, and Gymboree) toddler boy clothing that all looked brand new AND was cute! Last summer we also got a king-sized waterbed in almost new condition. Everything is free, there is no selling or trading allowed. To find your local FreeCycle group or for more information on them, please visit freecycle.org
I hope you find this useful, thanks for reading and happy shopping! :)