You Saved How Much? #schoolofcloth

When I was pregnant with my first child, I read a lot about cloth diapering. It was becoming a “thing” again. Being pretty green myself, I was intrigued. They looked much easier than my mom’s cloth diaper and they were super cute. I was able to sell my husband on the financial aspect of it. I explained how much money we would save if we invested in a stash of cloth diapers.

There are many levels of cloth diapering meaning that you can decide how much you want to spend. You can spend very little by using prefolds and covers or you can invest more by going with all-in-one diapers. Regardless, you are saving money. Our stash includes prefolds, one-size pocket diapers and a few all-in-one diapers in 3 different size. My guess would be that we invested a grand total of $700 on cloth diapers. A lot of people out there would say, “Wait, wait, wait! I thought you said cloth diapering was cheaper that disposable!” It is.

I say that we have invested about $700, but that has cloth diapered 2 kids and could diaper more if we chose to have more. Let me break it down for you. On average, a baby needs to have their diaper changed every 4 hours. If you take that average, your baby will go through about 2,190 diapers in their first year. If you shop at a warehouse store like me, you can get a box of diapers for about $39. You will go through at least 12 boxes of diapers in your child’s first year. Twelve boxes x $39 = $468. If you are lucky and your child potty trains by 2.5, you have now spent about $1,170. Just after one kid, I have already saved almost $500! That was just savings on my first child. Now that we are cloth diapering our second, we should save a grand total of $2,340!

Some may also argue that you are going to spend a lot more on water laundering all of your cloth diapers. Yes, I am using a little more water, but when an HE washer it’s probably pennies to the dollar compared to throwing away disposable diapers every day.

Not everyone has $700 to invest in a diaper stash in the beginning. Heck, we didn’t. We grew our stash overtime. Our first investment was about $250. You can do it cheaper than that if you start with prefolds and covers. You could start out as low as $100.

So when people ask if cloth diapering is really worth the upfront investment, I always say yes. Hands down, yes. You may need to invest a little bit more than expected at first, but think about all the money you are saving over time – after one or two or more kids. So worth it!

By Triana


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