Ironically, the reason that I was first opposed to cloth diapers became the reason I switched to cloth diapers.
No, I didn’t suddenly fall in love with the idea of dealing with poopy cloth diapers.
As with a lot of things, it came down to cost. In the beginning, I was pretty certain that cloth diapers would not save me money. At the time I may have been right. Now, there is no denying that cloth diapers are saving us a significant amount of money!
Our Story
When our oldest (who is now 7) was born, cloth diapers were not even on my radar. Of course I knew that my mom had used cloth diapers with me and my siblings, but it never even crossed my mind that people actually still used them.
With my second, I saw that two of my sisters-in-law were using modern cloth diapers. I was slightly intrigued, as I had never seen how convenient modern cloth diapers were. I was still imagining diaper pins and plastic pants.
I asked them about how much money they spent on their cloth diapers. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was an investment of several hundred dollars. That sounded like a lot to me.
At the time, I was pretty much the queen of getting disposable diapers dirt cheap. I would combine coupons with deals at places like Walgreens and CVS. When I would find diapers for $3 a pack, I would stock up. And I don’t just mean buying a couple of extra packages. When I would find diapers cheap, I would buy diapers even when I didn’t have a child wearing that size. We had a whole shelf in the garage dedicated to my disposable diaper stash.
We moved across the country to the boonies when our third was still in diapers. As I finished off my stash of disposables, I quickly realized that tracking down all the deals would be impossible. The nearest drugstore is 45 minutes away and Target is an hour away. Any gain in chasing deals would easily be eaten up in gas. For the first time, I was facing paying regular price for diapers, something I had never had to do before.
Suddenly cloth diapers were looking much more financially attractive.
Financial Benefits of Cloth Diapers
- We don’t have to budget for diapers every week/month! While we had to pay upfront for our cloth diapers, with a little deal-finding we were able to save money on cloth diapers too. For less than $100, we got everything we needed. That’s much less than most cloth diapering families. I wrote a whole post on getting cloth diapers free or cheap, so I won’t go into that here, but trust me that it can be done. Cloth diapers do require a couple of additional loads of laundry each week, which takes water, electricity, and detergent. The extra laundry cost is small compared to the savings of not having to keep buying disposables.
- We don’t have extra trips to the store just for diapers. How many times do you make a trip to the store just to get diapers? And how many times do you really get just diapers? Some of my friends here in the boonies will even buy diapers at convenience stores ($$$) when they run out but don’t have time to go all the way to town. They end up paying premium prices!
- Cloth diapers can be used for subsequent children! We were planning to have more kids, so we knew our investment in diapers would continue to save us money. We’re enjoying the savings now, as we don’t have to buy disposable diapers for our 2-month-old
- Cloth diapers hold their value and can be resold when you’re done with them. There is a market for used cloth diapers on ebay, diaperswappers.com, craigslist, and local Facebook groups. If you buy your diapers at a good price, then sell them when you’re done, your overall cost of diapering is very small.
Bonus Benefits of Cloth Diapers
Besides the major financial benefits of cloth diapers, there are some other bonuses:
- I found that I actually enjoyed cloth diapers. I know that sounds ridiculous. I enjoy hanging them to dry and then folding them. There’s something empowering about not relying on disposable diapers.
- In my experience, cloth diapers work better, especially with poop. Every parent knows that baby poop (pre-solid foods) is notorious for diaper blowouts. We don’t have those with cloth diapers. I love that!
- Modern cloth diapers are super cute! I love that they come in so many cute colors and patterns.
- We don’t have to worry about chemicals in disposable diapers or rashes caused by allergies to disposable diapers.
- You have less trash with cloth diapers than with disposable diapers. It’s amazing that a person so little can make such a large contribution to landfills.
Confessions of a Cloth Diaper Convert
If you are curious about cloth diapers, I highly recommend reading Confessions of a Cloth Diaper Convert by Erin Odom. In her 200+ page ebook, she goes over all of types of modern cloth diapers (pros, cons, how-to, etc), how to build a cloth diaper stash, how to care for your diapers, and much more. She has an extensive troubleshooting resources as well. I read her book after I had been cloth diapering for over a year, and I still learned some great tips and tricks. If you think you might be interested in cloth diapering (or have already started), Confessions of a Cloth Diaper Convert is worthwhile comprehensive resource.
How about you?
- Have you considered cloth diapers to save money? Why or why not?
- Have you noticed a cloth diaper comeback where you live? It seems like they are getting more and more popular where I am.
Some of the links in this post are referral or affiliate links. All opinions are my own. See my disclosure policy for details.
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After our son was born,i couldnt have any more babies,so when our son was 12.we adopted a 14 year old daughter and started her off right away in cloth diapers and plastic pants 24/7 for her adjustment period.
I am in love with the Flip and Econobum cloth diaper lines. We started putting my daughter in cloth just before 3 months old. We got tons of disposable diapers at the baby shower even though I insisted that we would be using cloth.
When we started potty training the switch from cloth diapers to the Flip cloth trainers (thin cotton insert) made it go fast! She was almost 100% potty trained by 30 months. That is until my in-laws had her for a weekend and put her in Pull-ups! She reverted badly.
Here it is 4 years later and I am pregnant with #2. I have all our cloth diapering supplies ready to go! I bought a few packs of newborn inserts only because I will not use disposable this time!
I never tried the Flip inserts! Congrats on #2. It’s nice to have the diapers already!
We did cloth with my first and they really helped clear up his terrible diaper rash! But with our second it just became too much because at the time we didn’t have a washing machine in our house.
Cloth diapers have helped clear up (and prevent) rashes for us too. For the first six weeks we did mostly disposables and my daughter had a terrible rash most of that time. A couple days in cloth and it cleared right up!
I can’t imagine doing it without a washing machine!
For us cloth cost us more than disposables and I don’t do coupons. With #2 I decided to give it a go though because I was at home full time and we lived 45 minutes to a town. The cost of the water, extra electricity to run machines and special add ins because we have extremely hard water where we live. Cloth were only $5 more a month than disposables would cost us so we stuck with cloth. We moved into town and had to use a laundromat which was even more expensive to get the diapers clean. Next place we moved to we had 2 in cloth with utility & add ins again it was more expensive than disposables. After almost 8 months I was severely injured in a head on collision and we just couldn’t justify the higher cost, money & time, anymore and went to disposable.
Thinking of cloth diapering using a laundromat sounds exhausting and expensive. That would probably be the deal-breaker for me!
I agree that you can save a lot of money with cloth! It is an initial investment, but I’m on my 3rd kid (11 yo, 9 yo& 14 months) and yes, it has saved us money.
I will say that for some people, it’s a hobby, and they can drop LOTS of money & become quite obsessive about the perfect “stash”. That’s pretty easy to identify, though.
Touching on what someone said above-
Our water bill has not even gone up since we had our baby, to any noticeable degree. I wash diapers about 3x/week. As your kids get older, the laundry piles up more than ever anyway, so personally I don’t think washing them is a big deal. There is even a challenge that I saw somewhere to show how easy cloth is- I think it was about using “flats” (big flat thin fabric that you fold & pin, or trifold) and you can really even wash those by hand. (So good camping solution!) I just do not see how my little stash of about 20 diapers would be any worse for the environment than buying thousands of diapers over the lifetime of my 3 children.
And, there are moms who do cloth diapers AND elimination communication (infant potty learning) and they minimize the soiling of cloth and usually get their kids out of diaper earlier. Apparently I just don’t get the memo when mine are about to go, so I’ve never done that. 😉
Really enjoy your blog, btw! 🙂
Thanks for sharing Elizabeth! The additional laundry has not bothered me at all either. And I totally agree that it can become a hobby for some people if you let yourself get carried away with buying all of the new cute prints and styles available. We’ve never done elimination communication, but we did potty train earlier than most (right at 2 years)!
We never seriously considered using cloth diapers for one reason: water. Where water is at a premium the amount of water it takes to launder cloth diapers is excessive.
And yes, I know – disposable diapers use water during the manufacturing stage. But, as much as this sounds like a cop out, that water is someone else’s problem. Where we live, we are solely reliant on rainwater for 100% of our water needs, for inside and outside the home. We couldn’t justify using the extra water it would use to launder several loads of diapers a week.
I’m not arguing that disposable diapers are better for the environment; but cloth diapers aren’t necessarily, either. It’s a give and take, and unfortunately unless you’re wiling to put your kids in slit-pants like they do in parts of Asia, you just have to make a decision: use lots of water or use lots of landfill.
I can’t imagine relying completely on rainwater! That sounds like it would be stressful! I also can’t imagine slit pants! 🙂
I think we tried cloth diapers two separate times, but eventually switched back. They are definitely becoming more “in” lately. If we have another baby, we might give it another try. In that area, I honestly just do whatever my wife says!
You’re a smart husband, Mark!
I don’t have children so I cant speak to cloth diapers, but along the same line is “mama cloth” -reusable feminine products and the Diva cup.
Currently I am getting ready to start college again and we are working towards paying off our house/getting out of debt for the second time. Every expenses is being scrutinized. I was spending about $12-$15 a month on feminine supplies. I spent about $110 to stock up on reusable feminine products and it should last me for YEARS. The yuck factor doesn’t bother me in the slightest, especially when you consider the 100’s of dollars I will save!
Good for you CeCee! I hope it works out well for you!
I have only done disposables with my 3 (6, 2, and 1). Because I work outside the home, we have always had to find childcare. Most of the childcare options around here do not allow cloth diapers. While I have always been intrigued by them, they just aren’t practical for our situation. (As a side-note, if anyone is considering starting a child care service in their home as a way to earn extra money, saying that you are open to cloth diapers might invite some great clientele!)
That makes sense. It sounds like there is a shortage of care facilities that are willing to use cloth. I bet if they tried, they would see that they aren’t any harder to use than disposables, especially if the family is the one doing the laundry!
There is a hybrid option made by Bumgenius (Cottonbabies.com). You can use one of their Flip diaper covers with a disposable insert. The inserts are pretty cheap. I used them when we were out of the house (shopping or whatever) this way I did not have to bring a wet/poopy insert home. I also left a few packs at my folks house for when they babysat.
I do both. I have 2 sons ages 5 and 7 who still are heavy bed wetters, and while cloth diapers don’t always contain the accidents, they often do.
With my youngest, who is almost 1, we do mostly disposables because she seemed to wet through the diapers so frequently and I was seriously falling behind on laundry with her (because I was already doing the others’ diapers!). We have an Aldi here where diapers are $5/pack, and for the time being, I am doing disposables for her just to give myself a break.
Oh I miss Aldi! 🙂