Cloth Diaper Investment

I think that the biggest reason that people decide to cloth diaper their little one, aside from the environmental reasons of course, is the cost savings. This can be a little difficult to get your head around for some people when you're spending hundreds of dollars in most cases to build up a good stash of diapers. To cloth diaper one child, and wash diapers every other day most companies will recommend at least 24 diapers. Some can make due with only 12, we have about 20 diapers.

I'll break down what I have spent so far on diapers to give you and idea of what an average (or what I think is average) diaper stash would cost.
Best Bottom Diapers:

4 covers, 12 stay dry inserts

The cost of the Best Bottom Diapers was: 4 shells @ $16.95 each = $67.80

12 stay dry inserts @ 3.95 each = $47.40

Total Investment: $115.20

BumGenius 4.0 Diapers:



8 BumGenius 4.0

The cost of 8 BumGenius 4.0: $23.95 each = $191.60, minus buy 5 get 1 free promotion = $167.65

Happy Heiny's Diapers:



2 one size diapers, 4 sized diapers

Cost of Happy Heiny's:
2 one size diapers @ $24.00 each = $48.00
2 sized diapers @ 15.00 each = 60.00
Total of: $108.00

Grand Total Cloth Diaper Investment: $390.85

Now for some people out there they may be saying "See, she spent $400 on diapers! That's ridiculous!!" Well to compare what I would have spent on using disposables 100% of the time since her birth I did a quick calculation. Now this calculation would be based on 10 diaper changes/day for 106 days, since she's 106 days old today. This calculation is conservative since for about a month she was getting changed at least 12 times/day. This calculation is also based on a 96 count box of Huggies ON SALE for $24.99. Anyone who has a baby knows when you run out you run out, you don't go searching for sales at 9pm at night, you drive to the nearest store and pay full price on a bag of diapers.

So taking all that into account I could have conservatively spent $274.89 on disposable diapers, so far! I figure that in another month or so I will have saved enough in cloth diapers to have paid off my cloth diaper investment. In three months!

Now some of you out there (those same people!) will be saying "She's probably paying a ton more in hydro and gas, and she's probably buying some expensive special detergent to wash those diapers! Ha!" Ummm, no. I use the same detergent that I use for all of our clothing to wash her cloth diapers, Purex Free and Clear. No expensive special detergent here. It's even cloth diaper friendly, so there! As for our utility bills, our hydro bill is exactly the same (minus the huge amount we pay for HST), our gas bill is a little bit more, but we are also doing more dishes washing bottles by hand (which uses more hot water than using a dishwasher), and we are doing more laundry in general with her stuff, and all of our stuff. So we can't blame the slight increase just on diapers.

So there you have it. The actual cost of cloth diapering!