I’ve used cloth diapers for two years and I will be the first to tell you that using cloth diapers is not a straightforward decision.
Sometimes, the only thing that kept me using them was thinking about less trash and the amount I’d spent on the cloth diapers. Not necessarily what you were thinking you’d read in an article on cloth diapering, huh?
It’s an uphill battle for parents to actively choose cloth diapering. It’s not the mainstream choice. The market is flooded with inexpensive, generic disposable diapers. There are no tax benefits for the positive environmental impact of using cloth diapers.
So are cloth diapers even a sane choice for sleep-deprived parents?
Didn’t disposable diapers give parents more freedom from the burden of washing? Why would we go back?
These questions, among others, may buzz around your head, but for many reasons, cloth diapering can be a legitimate and attractive alternative. However, even though I have cloth diapered my child for two years, I will be the first to admit that it is not a clear-cut decision.
Are cloth diapers a valid alternative to disposables? Let’s dive deeper into the world of cloth diapers and what I’ve learned from two years of using them to help you decide whether you want to pursue it.
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A Mom’s Full Disclosure: Now, before we fully dive in, I want to say that cloth diapering is not an all-or-nothing game. I did not use cloth diapers 100% of the time. I am not “holier than thou” and don’t want to portray that I am. In my mind, it would be crazy not to take advantage of modern technology when it’s most needed, for example, during nighttime or while traveling.
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Pros and Cons of Cloth Diapering
There are many things to consider when thinking about cloth diapering. Cost and environmental effects seem to be the two main ones, but time and convenience can play a huge factor.
The weighting of these considerations is very personal. One parent may value convenience above all else, while another parent will find cost or the environment to be the main priority. There is no right answer. It’s a matter of what fits in your life.
Graphic by the author
Cost: Economics of Cloth Diapering
I originally considered cloth diapering solely for cost. The price of a name-brand pack of diapers made me want to cry. I thought I’d save a bunch of money by not having to buy as many disposables. However, due to cheap generic disposable diapers, it turned out that the economic reasons for cloth diapering were not very valid in my hybrid approach.
Let’s recap. You will pay around $1,000 for generic diapers or $2,300 for brand-name diapers over the first two years. Premium diapers will cost a whopping $2,900.
For a hybrid strategy, cost savings are minimal and not a huge incentive, however, these savings can be quite significant if you choose to exclusively use cloth diapers.
Yes, I did save money by using cloth diapers, but not much. With my hybrid approach to diapering, I saved approximately $360 over two years. This is a 37% cost savings over only diapering in store-brand disposable diapers. When you add in the cost of extra wash cycles, this cost savings probably drops by half. Is the extra mental and physical effort of cloth diapers worth a savings of only $360 or less? Well, it depends.
For example, your economic savings would be higher if you continue to use cloth diapers on a second or third child, with no additional cloth diaper purchases. This cost savings could be around $500 over two years for any additional children (51% cost savings over only disposables).
Each person’s economic scenario will be different depending on their approach:
- What is their investment in cloth diapers? How many do they buy? Do they buy cheap brands or expensive brands?
- Do they supplement with disposable diapers? How often? Do they buy store-brand, name-brand, or premium disposable diapers?
My diaper investment was lower than for most people. This is twofold. I didn’t buy a lot of diapers and I bought cheap brands. I will admit that I had a small “diaper stash”, which led me to wash more frequently, but I also had a trick where I would layer the liner on top, rather than in the pocket, thereby allowing me to use the diaper covers more than once for a pee-only diaper change.
As soon as you start to go wild in terms of the number of diapers or the price of each cloth diaper, this initial investment will shoot up.
Generic diapers go for between $4.00 and $6.00 for the outside cover and basic inserts cost approximately $1.85. These sell both on Amazon and AliExpress. If you want to go for a higher-end brand, you will spend anywhere from $15 to $25 per diaper cover. All-in-one diaper options cost between $18 and $35 per diaper. You quickly see that your initial investment for cloth diapers starts to add up. Someone can easily spend $300-$500 on their diaper stash, quickly erasing any gains, unless you use only cloth diapers.
If you only use cloth diapers and never use disposables, you might spend $400 initially, but save $600 in two years over using generic diapers. This savings skyrockets to $1,900 and $2,500 over name-brand and premium diapers, respectively (excluding the cost of washing).
Environment: To Trash or Not to Trash
An average baby uses over 6,00 diapers in the first two years. This is loads and loads of trash.
Even with cloth diapers, I’ve used approximately 2,950 disposable diapers in the first 2 years. Yes, that’s still a lot! The diapers were used when traveling, for long naps and overnight, when I forgot to throw the diapers in the laundry on time, or when I was feeling lazy. Do I feel bad? No, I have better things to worry about.
I prefer to focus on the fact that I saved landfills over 3,000 diapers. This is over 50% of typical usage for a baby.
Diaper waste is with us forever in landfills. But what if you could cut down the volume of diapers you produce by half? That is still an improvement. That’s 780 pounds or 353 kilograms of trash.
That is for one tiny baby in your family.
Have you ever felt a garbage bag filled with disposable diapers? The drawstring cuts into your hand, it’s that heavy. And all that goes straight into a landfill. If I could have even a minor effect on that, I wanted to do that.
But to complicate matters even further, there are two additional negative environmental impacts to think about…and these relate to cloth diapers.
Upstream manufacturing impact: Just like the clothes we buy, cloth diapers range from name-brand to cheaper labels to environmentally friendly versions. Eco-friendly brands use organic cotton and unbleached natural fibers. There are environmental impacts in the production of cloth diapers, just like disposable diapers. If you continue to use the cloth diapers over and over again, I think this impact is negligible. However, if someone buys cloth diapers, only to hardly use them, then that’s an environmental impact that could be avoided.
Water and electricity usage: If you are lucky to live in an area without major water shortages, this is not a big concern. After all, water is filtered, treated, and reused. I have found that for the number of cloth diapers I own and the way I use them, I have to do an extra load of wash (diapers only) every three to four days. There is a cost, both economically and environmentally, for the extra water and electricity usage of cloth diapers.
Now you see that the environmental discussion is significantly more complicated than just trash usage. In our modern life, almost all of our choices have some kind of environmental impact. It’s just a matter of how much.
Time
Time is something of short supply for any parent. Disposable diapers keep a baby drier for longer, which means you will not have to change as many diapers. Cloth diapers need to be changed more proactively, around every two hours, so that the inner liner doesn’t get too saturated.
On top of that, there are more loads of laundry. In my situation, cloth diapers required approximately two additional washes a week, some more mental load, and of course, an extra few minutes every day washing the poopy diapers. I could have bought more diapers so that I washed less, but it’s a choice between less wash and more upfront costs…or a smaller diaper stash and washing more frequently.
Convenience
Cloth diapers have a higher mental load for parents. You need to remember to change the baby more often, wash out the poopy diapers, throw in a load of diapers on time.
Disposable diapers, on the other hand, have less thinking involved. You just have to remember to pick them up while you shop for groceries. There is even a fix for that if you have an automatic subscription on a platform, like Amazon.
However, at the peak of the pandemic last year, when everyone was rushing to buy enough toilet paper, I remembered being very glad that I was using cloth diapers. If I ran out of disposable diapers to use for sleeping, it wasn’t the end of the world, I would just use my cloth diapers. I didn’t have to worry whether stores would run out of diapers.
Also, legend has it that babies potty train quicker while wearing cloth diapers. If this is the case, perhaps the overall diaper journey is shorter with cloth diapers.
Hygiene
Some people may worry about the hygiene of cloth diapers, but I’ve never had any issues on this front.
- Hot wash cycles and detergent fully clean the diapers.
- With the modern waterproof covers, sheets and baby clothes are (mostly) saved from leaks.
- Letting the wet diapers air dry in a laundry basket between washes has never led to any urine smells in my home. My laundry room doesn’t smell like the back alley of a bar.
The main thing is that your hands have to get nearer to the pee and poop. Yes, you have to wash the poop into the toilet and occasionally, your fingers might get too close for comfort. But, that’s why they make antibacterial soap! If you can’t stand the sight of poop, maybe it’s not for you. But honestly, it’s not that bad.
Would I do it again?
Yes, I would. With a second child, I will continue to use cloth diapers in a hybrid approach.
However, since there are so many factors involved, it’s not a straightforward or easy choice for any parent.
Honestly, using cloth diapers is not that hard. It was less work than I had initially thought. However, sometimes you want to get five extra minutes of sleep, rather than wash out the poopy diapers and pop in a load of wash.
You would think that having used cloth diapers for two years, I would be a “superfan.” I mean, yeah, they are fine and I’m glad I saved a lot of trash, but I can see the convenience of always using disposable diapers.
It also wasn’t as cost-effective as I thought. That is because I often chose the convenience of disposable diapers rather than using a cloth diaper. When we went on vacation for two weeks, I chose disposables. When I visited family in the U.S. for a month, I chose disposables. Early on, my partner and I had tried taking the cloth diapers with us during a week of vacation. It was bulky to pack and inconvenient when we weren’t in our home environment.
I still had leaks, especially if I wasn’t proactive about changing wet diapers. However, because the cloth diapers are a bit more snug around the legs, “poop explosions” never happened, but they did happen sometimes with disposables.
Why did I keep doing it then? In the end, the environmental reason kept me going with cloth diapers. I wanted to decrease my trash.
It felt good to be doing my small part to help the environment. When you are mainly around the house, it doesn’t take that much more effort to throw in an extra wash load or to throw them over the clothesline in the morning and leave them there. I had bought the diapers, so I just decided to keep going and make it a default choice to use them as much as possible.
This was enough to keep me going for two years and what will motivate me to use them again for a second child.
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The main takeaway from my cloth diaper journey? Parenting is tiring and hard enough…don’t make it any harder on yourself. Use modern advances when you can, but also think where you can be a bit kinder to the earth.
Whatever route you choose — cloth, disposable, or hybrid — don’t judge other parents doing it the other way. We are all just trying to make it through.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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