Cloth Versus Disposables

Around now is the time that I usually start to stock up on diapers for the new baby. I buy a package every time I get groceries, but I haven't been able to bring myself to drop $10 for a package of 20 of the preemie sized diapers that we usually start out in. Newborns require very frequent diaper changes, even if you'd want to keep them in the same diaper until it felt full you can't because for one thing breastfed babies poop just about every time you feed them, and for another the best way to tell if your baby is healthy is to keep track of how many wet and dirty diapers he goes through.
So, you wind up changing a newborn baby's diaper pretty much every time you feed them, between 8 and 12 times a day usually. That means one package of Pampers Swaddlers is gone in two days or less. $60+ to diaper a newborn for one week.

Our 16 month old probably has another 12 months in diapers ahead of him. Currently we go through a package of diapers a week with him, around $50 a month to keep him diapered. Add a newborn in July and my monthly diaper budget goes from that $50 to more than $300 to diaper two kids. The cost of diapering the new baby will gradually decrease as he grows but won't be drastically reduced until he is sleeping through the night.

Personally, I think that cloth diapering has become a fad. The diapers are adorable, with enough options to make anyone happy. We've come a long way from a strip of cloth and safety pins. Now cloth diapers have velcro and snap closures, hundreds if not thousands of colors and patterns, different types of fit and inserts. I see a lot of moms who have gone overboard with cloth diapering to the point of obsession. I can see the allure, definitely. Cloth diapers for baby boys are like hair bows for baby girls. I admit I wanted some cloth diapers for my summer baby just so I could leave him undressed in the summer heat and still have him "dressed" cute. The $20/diaper price is off-putting, though, and it is hard to get past the start-up cost of cloth diapering and see the long term savings.

Last night prompted me to really look into it. A late-night run to buy diapers, our usual store was closed and we wound up at CVS paying nearly double the price for a package of diapers. So when we got home I spent a few hours looking into different diapers and figuring out the costs. I was astonished when I realized that by going with my usual brands of disposable diapers and frequency of changes I spend approximately $1530 to diaper one child for twelve months. And I buy cheap diapers!

The laundry doesn't really bother me. I'm going to have four kids pretty soon, I do laundry every day as it is. I've narrowed my choices of diapers based on ease of laundering them, and found some all-in-one cloth diapers that have biodegradable liners. Toss the liner in the trash, flush it down the toilet or even add it to a compost heap and add the diaper to the laundry. The diapers I am liking best are Bummis, they appear to sell for around $18 each if purchased brand new, and the liners come in rolls like paper towels for less than $10 a roll and about 200 liners. So, if we were to cloth diaper exclusively, I would need probably about 25 diapers, which at $18 each is a cost of $450, and if I used a disposable liner in each diaper I would go through around one and a half rolls per month, a monthly cost of $15 which would be $180 a year. If we estimate that baby would be in those cloth diapers for two and a half years, diapers plus liners leads to a grand total of $900 from birth to potty training. If I sold my used cloth diapers for half of their purchase price, I would make back $225.

So, realistically, two or three months of disposable diaper purchases would buy me enough cloth diapers to last two years. If I always used a liner and flushed the soiled ones, my house would be free of the dirty diaper smell, I wouldn't have soiled diapers sitting around somewhere waiting to be rinsed out, and used diapers would simply be added in the wash at the end of the day the same as my kid's underwear.

My husband and I have discussed "mommy" diapers and "daddy" diapers, or at-home diapers and away-from-home diapers. If we used cloth diapers half the time and disposable diapers the other half we would be spending right around $1000 a year, still a savings of over $500 a year if we were to exclusively use disposables.

Now, if only I could get the people who plan on buying us a pack of diapers as a baby gift to buy us one of these diapers instead...