Cloth Diaper Mama

Never thought I would be a cloth diapering mama. However, after a year of spending a third of my grocery money on disposable diapers every week, I was getting pretty sick of disposables. And then I realized I was going to have TWO kids to buy diapers for. There is nothing more depressing than realizing all your vacation money is going to have to go to stinky diapers.

So I did the math for switching to cloth.

Disposables: 
--Approximately 25 cents per diaper (depending on size of diaper and if I got it on sale or not, sometimes I spent more than that per diaper and sometimes less)
--Used approximately 12 diapers per day for the first 6 months = $546
--Used approximately 6 diapers per day once baby started on solid food, 6 months = $273
Yearly cost: $819 per kid

Cloth diapers (I bought only one-size-fits-all diapers....depending on what you bought, your start up cost would be different)
--10 bum genius and oh katy diapers = $175
--20 comfy rumps diapers = $130
--Extra liners = $20
--2 boxes diaper detergent per year = $30
Total cost: $355

So, the cost of cloth diapers for TWO kids is less than half the price of disposables for ONE kid. Plus, I will probably use the same cloth  diapers for our third, fourth, and maybe fifth kid (depending on how they hold up). And if not, I can always resell them (on our county's resell facebook page, used diapers are going for $5 each).

Things I wish I had done differently:
--Started cloth diapering sooner!
--Hadn't bought any bum genius OR oh katy diapers. I bought those first 10 to just try cloth diapering out, but I've liked the comfy rumps SO much better, AND they are only 1/3 the price.
--Wish I had bought 10 "size small" pocket diapers and only 20 of the one-size-fits-all. I have found the one-size-fits-all diapers (bum genius, oh katys, and comfy rumps) don't really fit all sizes. They fit pretty well once your baby is 12-14 pounds, but are really too big before that. This wouldn't have been a problem for Joel (he would have fit them almost right away), but it has taken Selah about 2 months to grow into them. The one-size-fits-all still fit Joel great at 40lbs.

Other than that, I'm very happy with my diapers!

$1600 saved = a trip to Idaho to see my family = one very motivated cloth diapering mama!