Why Cloth Diapers

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Lately I have been feeling the pressure to explain our decision to cloth diaper and I figured why not just blog about it? Please hear me when I say this isn't a post about why YOU SHOULD cloth diaper but more why we have chosen this as a family.

Some of the comments we have received lately are listed below with my responses. A lot of the reactions I have received are pure curiosity or well meaning concern for my time and energy, but some border on judgement. While I have a lot of friends who cloth diaper all but one of them live somewhere besides Belton, 'Merica so I can understand the curiosity and disbelief that we would be attempting to take on such a "monumental task" as one person put it.

"You're going to have a diaper service right? It's so much extra work"

• No, that actually negates the entire cost saving reason for doing cloth diapers. I'll just wash them at home. I'm already going to be doing laundry what is one more load? I have a feeling I won't be sleeping much anyways.

"What do you do with the poop??"

• Their poop won't be anything but sour milk for awhile, so we will wash it, and then when it's not just the sour milk I will either rinse it in the sink or flush it down the toilet. I have recently discovered they make flushable liners too which I will definitely be using. When this question is asked in combination with a disgusted face I have to restrain myself from asking "What do you do with your poop?"

"Ew.... you're going to put poop in your washing machine??" 

• See above. Also, how is this any different than when a child has a blow out and you soak their clothing in the sink or just wash it in the washing machine... that is poop in the machine, is it not?

"What about when you go out in public?"

• They make these neat things called wet bags that you can put the cloth diapers in until you get home to put them in the washer. Seriously, I think they are really cool. It's like a portable diaper genie. The best way I can relate it to disposable diapers is it's about the same as when a kid in disposable diapers soils themselves and you have to put their clothes in a plastic grocery bag, except these are designed specifically to keep the moisture and the smell in, and I would be using it daily instead of on occasion.

"Can you not afford regular diapers?" 

• I'm actually not even sure how to approach this one, and it's more common than you might think. We made the choice for me to stay home this next year which obviously makes money tight, and we most certainly could afford regular diapers, but why would we do that when it's an easy way to cut money out of our budget and use it for something else, like the occasional date night or gas money to go see the grandparents :) 

So.... WHY are WE choosing to do this extra work?

IT SAVES SO MUCH MONEY... This is our number one reason for doing cloth diapers. After doing all the research, for us it just seemed like the best decision. With twins on the way and switching from two incomes to one, money will be tight. Cloth diapering will allow us to save anywhere between $5,000 and $7,000 over the next two years. While that seems like a large margin it really just depends on brand of diaper, length of time in diapers, and number of succeeding children. One of the best things about cloth diapers is that I can reuse them with future kids, or resell them for about 50% of the original cost. In fact I have built our initial diaper "stash" for $180. I also recently discovered I can make my own cloth diapers which cuts down on the cost of cloth diapers saving us more money. Just to give you an idea, I can make diapers for anywhere between $5-7 that retail for $15-20. So in summary, this really just seemed like an easy way to cut our already tight budget. If you don't believe me... check out the cloth diaper calculator (there are plenty out there I just found this one easy to customize and fill in). This guy also has a really great post on the cost saving glory of using cloth versus disposable.

It's good for the environment... honestly this factor is more of a perk than a reason for us. We don't recycle, we occasionally compost, and I wouldn't claim to be the "greenest" house on the block. Yes, with cloth diapers you do use more water, but when I'm already running 3-4 loads per week, adding one more doesn't compare to putting 2x as many diapers into landfills. I have done the math, and with two newborns we would go through about 24 diapers per day changing every two hours, and that's not counting the occasional blow out.

**side note: I would love to recycle but since we technically live in the county and not city limits there currently is not a service for recycling that picks up at our address, as for compost I chalk that up to my laziness. I have yet to find a way to compost that doesn't bring a million fruit flies into the house or require me walking to the back corner of the yard every time I want to dump it. I'm open to suggestions on all fronts, as I would love to do more of both.

Cloth diapers are good for the baby... I have a lot of friends who cloth diaper and they were helpful in providing me with good reasons to cloth diaper. One of them being their testimonials on how great they held in leaks and blow outs. I started researching cloth diapers to present the idea to my husband and I kept finding testimonials on how great they were for babies' skin. Less rashes, less blow outs, natural materials/fibers, the list goes on. I think disposables are perfectly safe, and I am not against using them chemicals and all, but less rashes and less blowouts sounded pretty good to me.


LAST AND MOST IMPORTANTLY It's our choice... Just like anything else with parenting, it's a personal choice. I'm not a granola mom or into new age parenting, BUT I'm not going to judge people who are. I don't plan on putting my children on an all organic diet or preventing them from having fast food or sugar until they are teenagers, but I would like to be able to afford to put them through college and if we can benefit baby and bank account at the same time, it sounds like a win/win to me!

What about you? Any parenting choice you made early on that you felt like you had to defend or justify?