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Monday, November 8, 2010

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How One Man Fell in Love with Cloth Diapers

My husband has had his eye on a new flat-screen TV for over a year now. But the budget is tight, and at any mention of this hypothetical flat-screen, I'd begin reciting our list of higher priorities. Okay, my list of higher priorities. We disagreed on some of the finer points (a new stroller or a bigger hard drive for the server... anyone?) but overall we were in accord. That is to say, baby on the way = no new flat-screen for daddy.

At the same time, I knew I wanted to try cloth diapering again, even though we had planned and budgeted for disposables. Like many others, I'd helped to cloth diaper my baby sister many years ago (for a given value of the word “help,” and mothers of preteen daughters know of what I speak). I had even occasionally used chinese prefolds when my son was born seven years ago. For all that, I'd never really seen cloth diapers as anything more than a rainy day backup, and my husband didn't see them as anything more than a pain in the yeah-he-did. It didn't help that seven years ago, while we had access to some of the softest water in the country, we were living in military housing with a washing machine that had been drafted at some point during the Vietnam Conflict. Our Ol' Hippie simply refused to provide a clean load of laundry for “the man”.

This time around, though, we would have a washing machine that hadn't been agitating since the Nixon administration, and even more importantly, we had seen ADS. Ads for Rumparooz. Ads for Fuzzibunz. Ads for Bumgenius. After the last go-round, my husband wasn't keen on cloth diapering our new baby, but these new pocket diapers intrigued even him.

I started out with an odds and ends assortment of covers and prefolds, piecemeal remnants of my original little stash that had to be hunted down and collected from various sisters - sisters who had left my chinese prefolds in random lawn-sized garbage bags full of random baby clothes, at seemingly random points in their children's early childhoods. Miraculously - albeit covered in the dust of three different basements and crawlspaces - I was able to retrieve all of my original two dozen prefolds, and most of my covers. Not intending to more than supplement our prefolds, my husband and I decided to splurge on 7 new Happy Heinys OS diapers.

Two months later, it would take me less than one day of part-time use to feel me some pocket love. By the time my baby turned four months old, I was cloth diapering full time with a stash consisting of my original Happy Heinys, some Thirsties Duo Size 2 diapers for nights, and 2 Flip covers stuffed with home-made inserts.

At some point during this transition between part-time (read: tiny financial investment) and full-time cloth diapering, my husband and I decided to sit down and crunch numbers. We knew now that the laundry itself wouldn't pose a problem (our current machine had no problem working for “the man”), but we remained skeptical that modern diapers represented a significant savings over disposables. Convenient or not, at $10-$25 per diaper, they are far and above more spendy than our perfectly serviceable prefolds. Was it ridiculous even to consider them?

After adding our start-up costs, and giving myself a reasonable allowance to purchase supplies and an occasional replacement diaper (where's the fun in cloth diapering if you can't buy an occasional new print?) I had a conservative estimate of what we were going to save.

And shared my joy with my husband.

You can see where this is going.

Meet our new TV. We've named him, “Huggies”.

Author: Angie S. is the mother of two, Andrew (7), and Kate (8 months).  She's passionate about her techie husband and cloth diapers.

12 comments:

Liz said...

I love this story and will be using it as an example for savings whenever someone questions my decision to cloth diaper.

Sunny said...

I loved this piece. I shared it with my partner. I (not we) are cloth diapering full-time with our 10 month old. He has yet to attempt a hand at a cloth diaper change. BUT is opening up to their use. Maybe a new tv will be his final motivation.

Carly said...

What a Great post!!! Love this !!

jessw said...

I am also only doing this if it will save us some money! It seems like a lot of people are happy to spend even MORE than on disposables. Glad to hear from another person who is being penny wise about it!

Yara said...

My husband loves cloth diapers, too. But he didn't do it for a new tv. He loved them for the fact that we never had to run to the store for a pack of diapers! He even has a favorite diaper (our 3rd baby, 2nd in cloth) fuzzi bunz 1 size.

Amber Eaton said...

We have the pocket love in our family too! It feels good to save money, and that is just one of the many benefits cloth diapering offers.

thejepps said...

Great post. Love that the TV is named Huggies! I'm one of the lucky ones because my husband was on board from day one and as we prepare to cloth diaper baby #3 (the second one in cloth) he is a very willing participant in all things cloth!

Jamie said...

Love this post too!
My husband only let us start to cloth diaper b/c how much money we will save but still to this day won't do a diaper change unless I MAKE him and there is NO getting him to wash them LOL
But I have rubbed off on him and he now recommends them to everyone else...I am big on recycling, health and planet friendly things when we are shopping. He loves that since we have been able to recycle more and have been CDing that we've gone from taking the trash out every day to maybe once a wk sometimes longer..He is also very excited to start a compost once we go back to the main land and have our own house and space and tells his friends/co-workers about how doing all this will help our planet and how easy it is =)
And all that it took for me to get him too see the light in all these great things that helps our society, was cloth diapers

Tammy said...

I have been laughing about the name of the tv for a couple of days now.

Clay Family said...

I really love this story and I will be sharing this with my hubby :)

maebystyle said...

i love that you named your tv huggies. we're working on cutting down our debt. i'm glad we don't have to shell out money for disposables week after week (we have two in diapers) so we can put that money towards more important things.

jenmc said...

Seriously, I was so glad when my husband and i made the decision two years ago to give cloth a try. I lost my job in december (3 months before i was due with my third child) and i just cannot imagine buying diapers for her even if I were to coupon and they are on sale. I LOVE that I throw them in the washer and POOF full stash again. Great post. I am sure there are many things that we have been able to buy because 20-40 dollars wasn't being sucked up by sposies.