If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever use cloth diapers, I would have looked at you like you were crazy and said “Not possible.” Now we are 9 months in and loving our choice. If you are an expectant mama or want to have kids (or more kids) someday, I hope you will read on and consider cloth diapers. Why did we choose cloth diapers? There are so many reasons.
1) Cost
Here’s a calculator that will show you exactly how much you can save using cloth diapers, including cost of water, detergent, etc. We broke even after about 4 months and will save well over $1000 after 18 months. If we continue to use our cloth diapers with future children, the savings increase exponentially. The average savings per child are between $1500-2000. Nice. Hello, starter college fund. We went with one size diapers, and love some of the more expensive brands. We could have saved even more using prefolds, but we couldn’t get on board with them. We love the ease of use of our one size diapers and were willing to pay a little more initially. Our favorite brands are Soft Bums, Apple Cheeks, and BumGenius. I will explain our cloth diaper trials in a post coming next week.
2) Environmental Impact
Did you know that each baby using disposable diapers creates about a ton of landfill diaper trash during their diaper years? It’s true. Disposable diapers create over 3.6 MILLION TONS of landfill trash per year. HOLY CRAP. Literally. Some folks argue that the additional energy used to launder cloth diapers negate the environmental positives. Not true. We do maybe 3 more loads of laundry per week than we used to do. We line dry our diapers whenever possible, so that saves on some energy usage.
3) Safer for Baby
Disposable diapers contain so many chemicals, synthetics, and toxins (like dioxin) that I would rather avoid putting next to my Little Bear’s skin. We have to use disposables occasionally (for Mother’s Day Out, church nursery, MOPS, etc) and know that when we do he is prone to get diaper rash. He never gets it from his cloth diapers.
4) Functionality
Cloth diapers work better than disposable. Really. We have had very few leaks or blowouts with our cloth diapers, really almost none. Disposables are a whole other messy story.
5) Cuteness
Cloth diapers are just so cute. Seriously. They come in a million fun patterns and colors and you can match every outfit. So fun.
I plan to most more about our cloth diaper
decisions and routine soon.
Do you use cloth diapers?
Why or why not?
Would you ever use them?
Do you think we are crazy?
