The other day on CNN I saw a segment about a woman who started a business during the Recession and how well it's doing. It's doing well because it's a niche market that also helps people save money: She makes cloth diapers. She stated in her interview that using cloth diapers instead of disposables will save a family an average of $900 just on the first child.
I had considered switching to cloth before, bought a couple diapers and used them even. But I found that if you are going to switch you really need to switch all out to make sure you have everything you need for a successful cloth diapering experience. So I quit. But after hearing it can save $900 I decided to add up how much we spend on diapers. Averaging 4 diapers a day, we probably go through one economy pack of Huggies a month (The bigger the size of diaper, the less in the box so that probably accounts for the newborns going through 10+ a day well enough). That is $35 per month. My daughter is 19 months old, which puts us at $665 we have spent on diapers so far. You could probably add more, seeing as the size 1 diapers only hold 70 more diapers; and boy do those newborns go through them!
That is $700 that could have been spent on food, insurance, clothes, or even put in savings! $700 that could have been put toward our food storage or a new windshield for my car!
After figuring this out I decided, enough is enough! We are switching to cloth. My husband is not too excited about it, but he has agreed to it. I went to
Cotton Babies and stocked up on the Flip diaper system (that is what I decided I liked best when I half-heartedly tried it before) with the organic tri-fold inserts. While I wait for them I only have enough diapers for one day... once what I've ordered comes I'll probably have enough for 5 days or so. I figure 2 days of the week she goes to daycare so she can stick with disposables those days. So far she doesn't like them much. It takes her a minute to break them in so they move with her, so she waddles around for an hour until they soften up. It's funny... Hopefully she'll get used to them!
