Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Cloth Diapers- why do I do it?

How many of you knew that I cloth diapered? (Henceforth to be referred to as CD, CDing, etc.) Well, I do. Except at night. But even that will be coming to an end soon. There's a lot of buzz right now surrounding cloth diapers, disposable diapers, which is easiest, which is cheaper, which is more environmentally friendly... etc. Gotta have something to argue about, right?

I chose to CD because for us, it's cheaper. Right now I'm just using your basic prefolds, liners, Snappis, and covers. Nothing fancy, heck, the prefolds are Gerber! At the time when I was buying the diaper covers, I felt like I was spending a lot of money. I really wasn't. Really. Diapers are cheap where I live. $10 for a pack of 40. (Okay, at least I think that's cheap...) We use disposable at night, so it normally takes us about a month to go through a pack, factoring in the occasional middle of the night leak. But if we were using solely these disposables, we'd go through approx. a pack a week. That adds up. All our ultilities are being paid for us this year, so all we have/had to pay for were the diapers (again, Gerber- $13 for 12, we bought 4 dozen, but are really only using 3, so 4x13=$52), covers ($100, I think...), Snappis ($4), liners ($30), and detergent (I don't know how it works out for the detergent). I'm not a math whiz, and I don't have my calculator open over here, but it looks to me like we spent less than $200 for start up, and are now just paying detergent costs. $200 would have bought us 20 weeks' worth of diapers. Max is now a year old, so you do the math. We saved a lot.

Yesterday I spent almost $300 on pocket diapers, inserts, and one PlanetWise wetbag. I will probably have to buy a few more in late June or early July before we head over to Korea, so I'm figuring on about $400 for diapers for soon to be two children. These should last us until Max is potty trained, and possibly even the new baby. I have no idea how much disposables cost in Korea. But I will be shocked if it worked out to be cheaper. Shocked.

Beyond the whole cost issue, there's the landfill thing... it takes possibly hundreds of years for a disposable to decompose. Now, you could use gDiapers, which are biodegradeable, but they're really expensive. Otherwise, all those diapers just sit. And sit. And sit. I read somewhere this morning that by the age of 2, a child has been changed approx. 13,000 times. That is a lot. of. diapers.

And the chemicals. I looked into that a bit, but really don't remember much besides the fact that I was grossed out by what was touching and leeching into my baby's bottom.

Anyway... I also hopping onto Etsy last night and typed in AIO cloth diapers. And, WOW! I found some AMAZING deals from sellers with stellar feedback!!

I think I've rambled long enough... and considering nobody is paying me to even type this post, no PR, no nothing... I'll leave you with the websites I use(d) for buying cloth diaper stuff. =)

Green Mountain Diapers

Nicki's Clearance

Nicki's Regular site

9 comments:

  1. I tagged you on my blog!

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  2. Cost was the motivator for us too. We spend $20 a week in diapers for one child. With another just born, we kind of freaked out about what we were going to be spending on diapers!! So we started switching to cloth. We're not all the way there yet....we just ordered more dipes....and I'm not even bothering with cloth until I'm healed more from the c/section. But we'll get there. And even buying the more expensive pocket dipes ends up being cheaper in the long run, especially for more than one kid.

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  3. We started using cloth because they were cheaper too. I went and found instructions for washing by hand while we make the trip to Ethiopia to keep me from buying an entire weeks worth for two babies. :) I do love them though. I have used prefolds, AIOs and pockets.

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  4. I thought about using cloth diapers. In fact, a friend of mine started her own eco friendly cloth diaper company. I am just lazy and used disposable with both my kids but I see no reason not to use cloth if you like them...use them.

    Did I miss a referral??? I have been away from blogs for so long. Sorry!

    I updated my weird blog issue. We think it's a spam blog. I reported it at any rate. And SEO stands for search engine optimization. :-)

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  5. Sorry...my own freaked out over post brain temporarily forgot that this was not an adoptive mom blog...sorry about the referral comment..I truly knew you were pg...just had the wrong Carrie in my head when I wrote this!! :-) xoxo

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  6. daughter has thought about using cloth diapers and is looking into it thanks for sharing

    thanks for also visiting my blog and good luck in the contest you entered

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  7. We CD and love it! It was a bit tough getting my DH to buy into it, but once he saw how easy they are to use, he wants to start CDing #2 form the get-go (whenever we have # 2 that is!) We also started because of the cost issue--I think I invested a couple of hundred dollars in diapers--mostly one size so that they will last as he grows and use for #2--I love knowing that we are doing our part to keep the landfills a little less bogged down with diapers and padding our pocketbook along the way!

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  8. I love to see all the cloth diapering options available now!

    http://countrycitymouse-pam.blogspot.com/2009/06/canadian-etsy-giveaway-3.html
    Do drop in, I have a giveaway!

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  9. I haven't had a baby to diaper in many years but all my children wore cloth diapers. We had disposables on hand for trips and occasional night times but cloth was used most. It was certainly more economical for us and I felt better knowing cotton was against their skin, not some kind of weird fibers and chemicals.

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