One reason why I never jumped on cloth diapering when Liam was a baby was because I thought it would cost us around $700 up front for us to start cloth diapering. We couldn't afford to drop that much money all at once. And frankly, I didn't have to because there are a lot of frugal ways you can start cloth diapering. I wish that I knew then what I know now.
Yes, cloth diapers will cost more up front, but think in terms of how much disposable cost for one month (roughly $50). For the cost of 4-8 months of disposables, you can buy cloth diapers that will last your child until they are 35lbs and then you can use those same diapers with your next kid too!
For an overview on the different types of diapers you can buy see this post or bum around (get it? BUM around? Har har) on this cloth diapering blog.
ACCESSORIES
Regardless of what type of cloth diaper you go with, you'll need a diaper pail. Mine cost $15.00 a the LDS (no we're not going Mormon here, we're going to the Local Diaper Store).
You'll also want diaper liners. These look like bounce dryer sheets and catch the poop for you so all you have to do is hold the diaper upside down over the toilet and let the po
op and liner fall in to be flushed away. Diaper liners make all the difference for us because it means we don't have to dunk the poopy diapers in the toilet. The dunking process is messy and I find it makes the diaper pail smell worse. Trust me, use the diaper liners because it will make cloth diapering more enjoyable and you'll be more likely to stick with it. For 200 diaper liners I paid $12.99 at the LDS. I've since learned you can get these cheaper elsewhere, but there aren't too many cloth diaper stores where I live, so I'll just have to pay a bit more. I expect these to last us for about 6 months or so.You can buy a fancy plastic bag to hold your dirty diapers in when you go out, or you can just use a left over grocery bag*. So, your costs for a 'dirty duds' bag will range from $0 - $16.
THE DIAPERS
MAKE THEM
This is what my mom and I did. In order to this to truly save a lot of money, a lot has to fall into place. My mom happened to find flannel on sale for half price, so that saved us a bundle. You'll also want to have a surger on hand because this will make sewing the diapers much quicker. And you'll also need to have a schedule where you can set aside large amounts of time for sewing diapers. It was a ton of work (mostly on my mom's part) and in the end we spent maybe $120-$130 total on the pattern, fabric, thread, elastics and velcro for the diapers.
If you have plain flannel diapers, you'll need covers for the diapers. These are sold in various sizes (small, medium, large, XL) and range in price from $8 each to $30 each. You'll want about three covers for each size range. I only bought for sizes small, Large and XL and that will do us just fine.
36 diapers = $120
9 covers (3 for each size range) = $75 - $270 (ouch! don't go for the expensive ones)
BUY 'EM USED
This option has me really excited. I poked around on kijiji edmonton and there were two pages of used diapers for sale. The prices were considerably reasonable and compared with what I paid to make our diapers. The selection of diapers for sale was impressive and you can choose from the fancy types and the plain jane types too.If I had known I could have bought used cloth diapers so easily, I would have and I could have saved my mom a lot of grey hairs!Prices vary, but they're dang cheap - even for the expensive all-in-one kind diapers! No more than $100 - $200 to get started (the same cost as 2-4 months of disposables)
GET THEM AS GIFTS
Ask friends and family to buy you cloth diapers as baby shower gifts or birthday gifts
No cost to you, just sheer enjoyment.
SLOW AND SURE
You can always put aside $20-$40/month while you are pregnant to help offset the initial cost of buying your cloth diapers.
WHATEVER YOU DO, BUY OR MAKE ONE-SIZE-FITS ALL
(This is my personal opinion) This will save you money because you
can have a diaper that fits a child from 8lbs to 35lbs. You only have to pay once for all the diapers you'll need rather than three times for the three size ranges cloth diapers are sold in.To take it to the next level, having a one-size-fits all that is also an all-in-one (where the diaper cover is sewn to the outside of the diaper) will mean less fuss for you. Because the diaper cover is sewn to the outside of the diaper, this type of diaper can also save you more money. If you can, go for this type of diaper because they're fabulous. We use our homemade diapers at home, but take the fancy ones out on the town because they're more user friendly when you're visiting or shopping.
The only downside is that on kids under 6 months, one-size-fits-all diapers look huge. So, when Ada wears a fancy dress to church, she does wear a disposable because it looks nicer under her dress (vanity, oh vanity). But on other days she wears one-size-fits-all under her pants and although she looks like she has a "front butt", she's still cute.
I hope this post helps to dispel some of the myths of cloth diapering (mainly the startup costs). Both Nialle and I love that we switched to cloth diapers and haven't looked back since.
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*I want to buy a nice plastic bag to put our diapers in, but haven't gotten around to it yet, so we just put the dirty cloth diapers in an old grocery bag when we're out and about. Last Sunday, we were over at our friends' house and the husband actually threw out all of our bag of diapers because he thought they were a bag of garbage. Luckily, I discovered this mistake quickly and our diapers weren't taken out to the street with the trash. The moral of the story is that if you're going to use a plastic grocery bag to store your dirty diapers in, look out for people inadvertently chucking it in the garbage!
