Making The Switch From Disposable To Cloth

Cloth diapers never even crossed my mind with Areyna. My interest began when I was pregnant with Zeke but I never followed through. My interest began to grow when I was pregnant with Micaiah and when my friend, Rita made the switch I really got the itch to do it. She has a GREAT POST reviewing several different styles/types along with her personal experience with them, which gave me a great place to start my research! I remembered my friend, Emily, using cloth with her first two, while living in Africa, so I called her to see if she still had them, if she liked them, and if she wasn't using them if she'd be willing to sell them to me.

Within 4 days I had the box of cloth diapers sitting on my doorstep and I couldn't wait to get them on Cai's cute little bootie!

One reason why I hesitated to go this route was because I didn't think it was even worth it now because we were already on our third baby and he is almost 11 months old.

Good thing I'm a numbers girl, though. I did a little number crunching for you so you can see what I saw. Let the numbers speak for themselves.

Keep in mind that these figures are very relative, but should put a little perspective on the monetary benefit for making the switch, even this late in the game. Now, if you can get those GREAT diaper deals by stacking coupons, store deals and store coupons, like I had been getting, you can get a pack of diapers for between $4-$6. This is way cheaper than getting the big boxes at the warehouses because the warehouses rarely do sales and don't accept coupons. So, again, these figures are going to be very relative!

Let's say we just average $5 a pack which has 45 diapers in them. Again, each pack is different and some have less diapers and some have more, so we're just averaging here.

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Let's start with babies first year:

53 - weeks in a year

12 of which your baby will use at least 10 diapers a day

41 of which your baby will use at least 5 diapers a day

That is: 840 diapers in the first 12 weeks

1435 diapers in the remaining 41 weeks

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2,275 diapers in just the first year alone (AT LEAST!)

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That's 50.5 packs of diapers w/ 45 diapers per pack

@ $5 a pack

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TOTAL : $252.50 (if you buy them at regular price you are looking at about $450)

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Babies Second Year (and most of the time third year as well, if not more)

@ 5 diapers a day/53 weeks a year - 45 diapers/pack @ $5 a pack

That's: 1855 diapers a year

which is roughly 41.2 packs a year

TOTAL: $206.11 for every additional year

If your baby is in diapers for ONLY 3 years you'll be spending $664.72 in disposable diapers, not including the wipes. IF you can find them for $5 a pack and IF your child is potty trained by 3.

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I spent $250 for Emily's used cloth diapers, which have already been through 2 kids, and are still in great shape. I should be set for the rest of our kids!

I did buy several new FuzziBunz inserts online today because I've been using the pre-folds inside and they are pretty bulky so that was an additional $45. (they were $4 each)

So, for less than $300 I am set! That's less than a whole year of disposables (if you are getting a good deal on every pack), and I'm not having to throw anything away!

I'm definitely not saying this is for everybody, but I am encouraging those of you who are sitting on the fence waiting to make the plunge. It's worth it! You can buy them new, you can get them used at consignment stores/sales, off of Craig's List and many of the major brands sell discounted ones as seconds for much cheaper.

I'm not an expert by any means; Rita, Emily and my mom can vouch for that (thanks for answering all my silly questions:), but I'll post how our first week has gone, tomorrow, to let you know what mistakes I've made so far and what has worked best for us.