Why choose cloth diapers? The money savings!
So I've had several reactions lately to me stating "We're going to use cloth diapers". I used cloth part-time with my son, so it isn't my first time using them and I didn't think it was all that radical of a statement. But, the reactions I usually get are "Ew, Why?!" "Oh yeah, my parents cloth diapered me" "That sounds like so much extra work!" and my favorite, "Cloth diapering is more expensive!"
So, I wanted to take a moment to explain why we personally chose cloth diapers and go over a few of the myths that go along with us choosing this "lifestyle" :)
First thing is first, we need to establish how many diapers a kid will go through so that we can talk numbers. For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that our child will potty train around 3 years old, and will use about 4,500 diapers for their diapering journey. Some children potty train sooner, but I know that with my son we were still using pull ups at night until he was almost 4. Each child is different, and each child hits milestones at different times. And that's okay!!
So, we have established our baseline. 4,500 diaper changes (sometimes less and sometimes more)
Now, how much do disposables cost? The cheapest disposables that I could find were .14 each and the most expensive disposables I could find were .38 cents each, so if we take a middle ground, we can say that disposables are about .26 each.
That brings our disposable total to: $1,170
Now let us compare this to cloth....
I have decided that I want to do one load of laundry every other day, sometimes every 3 days. There are several options out there for cloth diapers, but for the sake of easy math, I'm going to pretend that our entire stash is made up of $10 pocket diapers and then I will show you what our actual stash numbers are at the end.
So 30 one size diapers can go from 8 lbs. to about 35 lbs. For most kids this is from birth to potty training, but I'm also going to include 30 newborn diapers in there as well for our skinny legged kiddos and preemies.
30 OS pocket diapers $10/ea: $300
30 Newborn pocket diapers $5/ea: $150
Diaper sprayer: $30
Cloth Diaper total: $480
That is a savings of $690!!!!!!
So now for what our actual stash is consisting of (keep in mind that I've done this before with a previous child and had some preferences for how I'd like to do things this go around)
28 Newborn pocket diapers with bamboo inserts (gifted to us)
4 Newborn fitted workhorse diapers
12 Newborn prefolds
10 Flour sack towels (flat diapers)
26 OS pocket diapers
10 OS All in one diapers
4 Fitted OS diapers
2 Newborn covers
6 OS covers
For a total spending of: $485.18
We were extremely blessed to have some of our diaper supplies gifted to us this time around, and I spent several weeks researching the best deals. We also did not buy all of this at one time, which would've saved us even more money on shipping, but not everyone has $500 just lying around to spend at any given moment ;)
So now, the best part.....I'm going to let you in on my secret websites! (Cloth diapers are just like any other item that you can purchase, there's always a high highend version and a low lowend version, we chose items in the low-middle range)
Alvababy.com (Ships from China, but they have a US warehouse as well. If you spend 50 dollars or more, you can get express shipping)
HappyBeeHinds.com (Ships from the US and is usually less than 5 days if not sooner)
GreenMountainDiapers.com (Great site for fitteds and prefolds, also has several instructional posts and videos to get everyone started with cloth diapers)
So now that we talked about money, keep your eyes out for my other posts to come about how cloth diapers are different now vs. the plastic pants of the past! Have a great day!
So, I wanted to take a moment to explain why we personally chose cloth diapers and go over a few of the myths that go along with us choosing this "lifestyle" :)
First thing is first, we need to establish how many diapers a kid will go through so that we can talk numbers. For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that our child will potty train around 3 years old, and will use about 4,500 diapers for their diapering journey. Some children potty train sooner, but I know that with my son we were still using pull ups at night until he was almost 4. Each child is different, and each child hits milestones at different times. And that's okay!!
So, we have established our baseline. 4,500 diaper changes (sometimes less and sometimes more)
Now, how much do disposables cost? The cheapest disposables that I could find were .14 each and the most expensive disposables I could find were .38 cents each, so if we take a middle ground, we can say that disposables are about .26 each.
That brings our disposable total to: $1,170
Now let us compare this to cloth....
I have decided that I want to do one load of laundry every other day, sometimes every 3 days. There are several options out there for cloth diapers, but for the sake of easy math, I'm going to pretend that our entire stash is made up of $10 pocket diapers and then I will show you what our actual stash numbers are at the end.
So 30 one size diapers can go from 8 lbs. to about 35 lbs. For most kids this is from birth to potty training, but I'm also going to include 30 newborn diapers in there as well for our skinny legged kiddos and preemies.
30 OS pocket diapers $10/ea: $300
30 Newborn pocket diapers $5/ea: $150
Diaper sprayer: $30
Cloth Diaper total: $480
That is a savings of $690!!!!!!
So now for what our actual stash is consisting of (keep in mind that I've done this before with a previous child and had some preferences for how I'd like to do things this go around)
28 Newborn pocket diapers with bamboo inserts (gifted to us)
4 Newborn fitted workhorse diapers
12 Newborn prefolds
10 Flour sack towels (flat diapers)
26 OS pocket diapers
10 OS All in one diapers
4 Fitted OS diapers
2 Newborn covers
6 OS covers
For a total spending of: $485.18
We were extremely blessed to have some of our diaper supplies gifted to us this time around, and I spent several weeks researching the best deals. We also did not buy all of this at one time, which would've saved us even more money on shipping, but not everyone has $500 just lying around to spend at any given moment ;)
So now, the best part.....I'm going to let you in on my secret websites! (Cloth diapers are just like any other item that you can purchase, there's always a high highend version and a low lowend version, we chose items in the low-middle range)
Alvababy.com (Ships from China, but they have a US warehouse as well. If you spend 50 dollars or more, you can get express shipping)
HappyBeeHinds.com (Ships from the US and is usually less than 5 days if not sooner)
GreenMountainDiapers.com (Great site for fitteds and prefolds, also has several instructional posts and videos to get everyone started with cloth diapers)
So now that we talked about money, keep your eyes out for my other posts to come about how cloth diapers are different now vs. the plastic pants of the past! Have a great day!
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