Adventures in Cloth Diapering

Here is my follow up post to my personal breastfeeding story. Before Mason, I knew very little about diapering options.  Had you asked me three years ago, I wouldn't have even known that there were options outside of using disposables!  It wasn't until I read about cloth diapers on one of my favorite blogs (Young House Love) that I even knew that they still existed and how awesome of a solution they could be!

When we got pregnant, I talked to Thomas about exploring the option of using cloth diapers so that we could prevent emptying our bank account for disposables.  I knew what brand I would want to buy (Bum Genius) and the fact that I would be home with Mason for at least his first year (until we started him with twice weekly daycare), it seemed like an option that we should really explore.  It all came down to this: the baby shower.  I had several friends acquire so many diapers at showers that were thrown for them that they didn't even end up having to buy diapers for almost their entire first year!  I thought that if we could get that lucky with gifts that I wouldn't want to spend the extra dough on cloth diapers on top of that.  Well, while we did get many many generous gifts- diapers weren't really one of them.  We did get enough to cover our first few newborn months but it wasn't enough to make sticking to disposables worth it for us.  And so, we went with cloth.

I shopped around online to make sure that I got the best possible price.  I started out with buying a bundle of 12 velcro diapers for $215.  It's a hard hit on your bank account at first- but when you consider what you would be spending over time with disposables, it made it easier to swallow (hmm, maybe saying easier to handle would be less gross when talking about diapers).  Mason started out on disposables when he was a newborn and stayed in those until he was about 2-3 months and was finally chunky enough to fit the smallest size of the Bum Genius.  They do make newborn cloth diapers- but I didn't read as much positive things about those (regarding fit, clean up, etc) and we had gotten enough newborn size disposables to last us for a while.  After getting into the swing of things I bought another bundle of 6 snap diapers (which cost $110) thinking that I might like them more than the velcro which can wear out over time.


With the cloth diapers, all that we had to do was purchase the diapers (duh) totaling $325, a toilet sprayer (an attachment that hooks onto your toilet tank to spray out the #2's) for around $40 and a wet bag from Planet Wise for $19 (to store the dirty diapers before they go in the wash).  Since all that we were disposing of in the nursery were the dirty wipes, we just got a small trash can with a lid (we empty the trash nightly- so it doesn't get stinky in there).

Our extra expenses do include disposable diapers though.  I don't know about anybody else in their cloth diaper escapades but we experienced a lot more leaking when it came to overnight usage.  After a few mornings with a soaking wet baby, pajamas, and crib we switched to disposables at night.  I don't know- maybe our kid pees a lot.  But we made the switch to nightly disposables without much damage to our wallets.  After all, one disposable per night equals maybe, just maybe one small bag of diapers per month for about $10 (I shop until I get the best possible deal).

In total we spent:
$325 on diapers
$40 on toilet sprayer
$19 for wet bag 
$99 for disposables (month 3-12)
Total: $483.00 (roughly)


Our main motivation for going the cloth route was solely for budgets sake.  We're not crazy green people- although we recycle and use some eco-friendly products we aren't super green or anything- which is why we opted out of using cloth wipes.  Disposable wipes aren't going to break the bank and the idea of the cloth wipes was just too yucky for us.  I draw the line at spraying poop into the toilet, thank you!

 With cloth diapers does come some extra laundry though.  Initially when I only had 12 diapers, I was washing every day and the load wasn't full.  I bought the extra diapers so that I wouldn't have to wash as frequently (maybe every 2-3 days) and so that when I did wash, it was a full load.  Despite the extra laundry we did not notice an increase in our water bill.  Once the baby comes into play, you're doing extra laundry anyhow.  Pre-baby I could get away with doing laundry every other week.  Now with the kid, we all have a lot more dirty laundry!  I'm lucky if I can go thru half of the week without three loads!

Another downside to the velcro diapers is how easy it is for Mason to pull it off- from outside of his clothes.  Since our boy has started walking, he has really gotten into the habit of pulling the velcro (especially on the the more worn out diapers) while he is fully clothed.  There have been multiple occasion where we go to change the boy and the diaper is just sort of hanging off of him.  So while the velcro diapers are easier to put on him when he's being squirmy (which is almost always), the snap diapers are more difficult for him to pull off of himself.  He has yet to yank one of the snap diapers off *knock on wood.

Now, here we are one year into our cloth diaper experience and I can definitely say that this will be something that we carry over with the next child- hopefully with the same diapers!  The snap diapers are all definitely in great shape to be used until Mason gets to potty training.  The velcro ones, while easier to get onto a very squirmy child, wear out easier.  At this point, I have only had one diaper that I have had to retire due to velcro losing it's velco-ness (that's totally a word).  So, I might have to buy more diapers for the next kid (and different fun colors should we have a girl next time around) but we're still way outside of the red when it comes to diaper expenses!

Overall, I calculated that we would have spent roughly $1,200 for disposable diapers alone in this last year!  That's a savings of over $700.  Yes, please!