01
Nov
Update on the costs of cloth diapering
I mentioned before that my wife and I were committed to doing cloth diapering for our new baby. It took us a while to get it started. The lure of the convenience of the disposable diapers was too great for us to resist for the first few weeks. However, when we upgraded in size from newborn to size 1, we tried a different brand of diapers. These caused the baby to get a severe diaper rash all over his bottom. We immediately switched to cloth diapers, and it solved the problem fairly quickly. We have been using them 99% of the time since then. Now that I have a better sense of how many cloth diapers we use I thought I would re-visit the calculations of how much money we are or are not saving.
The Diaper Count
We have an Avanti Eco-Egg washer (which is unfortunately not made anymore) that we use to wash the cloth diapers. 8 of the diapers can fit in the washer at a time (it’s a small washer). We do about 1 1/2 loads of laundry per day, meaning that the baby uses about 10-12 diapers per day. We’ll just set the total to 10 a day because that’s a much easier number to work with.
The cost of cloth
The cost of the cloth diapers and the covers was $100 for 36 diapers and 6 covers. We have since bought one more cover for $13 and we have bought 3 snappies (these are basically diaper pins without the pins - we love them) at $2 each. So we’ve spent $119 on cloth diapers. We also have worked out that we are using about 3 cents of laundry soap per load for the diapers. In six weeks, that’s about 63 loads, or another $1.89 for laundry. The electricity to run the washer is hard to gauge, but not too expensive. Water is included in our monthly condo dues.
Now, of course, one needs to figure out whether to include the cost of the washer ($70) and the spin dryer ($90) in the cost of the cloth diapers. We wouldn’t have bought either of them if we weren’t doing cloth diapers, yet we use them for other things. In the short run I am not going to include these costs since hopefully both of these appliances will last us for several years and the amortized cost should go way down.
So, 63 loads of diapers at about 10 diapers a load gives us 630 diapers. We have spent about $121 on those 630 diapers, so we are averaging about $0.19 per diaper so far.
Disposable diapers
Looking at a national brand name diaper, $32.69 buys you 192 diapers. That’s $0.17 per diaper. I cannot find a price at the moment, but I know you can get Costco diapers a decent bit cheaper than that. Let’s call it $0.10 per diaper.
Six weeks and we get our money back
If we look at those numbers above, I’m very pleased. In about six weeks of cloth diapering, we have gotten the costs of the cloth diapers down to just above the cost of national brand diapers. And we will be able to continue to use this batch of diapers on our baby for at least another 8-12 weeks. 8 weeks more brings the cost down to about $0.12 per diaper. So by the time we are done, we will get about the same price as Costco disposables for our diapers.
But here is the good part. When we have the next kid (and the next one), we will be able to use these diapers again with only the $0.03 in laundry soap costs per 10 diapers. So although we have “evened out” on cloth diapers with this baby, we’ll be way ahead with the next one or two. And from what I have seen of the larger toddler diapers, we’ll be way ahead in the 1-2 years we can use the next size of cloth diaper.
The downside
Of course, there is a down side to all of this money saving. Some days I feel like I’m always washing diapers. Which is, of course, somewhat true since I do a load at least once a day (and since the washer is in our bathroom and uses our bathroom sink for water, it’s a bit of an inconvenience to do a load.)
Overall
Overall, we’re happy with our decision. When we switched from disposables to cloth, the amount of trash that we were throwing out decreased so significantly, I felt like the planet could breathe a bit easier. We are still using water in a desert, but we’re choosing that over filling up landfills. The cost savings are also a nice bonus, and our baby’s bottom is a much nicer color than it was with some of the disposables we were using.
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:00 am
Did you know that the amount of water you use a week to wash diapers is equal to what you use flushing the toillette? So basically you are using the water of a potty trained person. Can you really count that in the cost of cloth diapering? That cost is going to be there even when you no longer need diapers.
I saved even more money on cloth by buying diapers that last through all the stages, from birth to 35lbs. I have small kids, so that does pretty much cover it for me. I only have to buy a few diapers that are larger for night time toddlers.
My husband was not supportive of using cloth, but I convinced him with the chemicals in the disposables, and now he loves the cloth diaper savings to him. I spent around $300 in diapers and that will last me a long time, and if we have more children we are set! (well, I am addicted to cloth, so I will have to buy a few cute things!)