There's a flaw here. Sure if you use the basic flat prefold diapers. but as a former cloth diapering mama, I got quite addicted to buying "cutsie" diapers with lovely little duckie designs on them. Those things can get very expensive. If you manage to restrain yourself, I imagine there's a possibility of savings but what about the washing costs? Cloth diapers increased my laundry quite a bit. And adding the chemicals used to wash the laundry into the earth.... Never found answers on that one.

I likely wouldn't do it again, and would resort back to disposables.

What are diaper services like?

This seems kinda like a fail to me. How much does the energy and water your washing machine and dryer use?

The real way to save money on diapers is to clip coupons and only buy on sale. They don't spoil (unless on a baby), so stock up when cheap.

@Brian James Schend: I meant to say, how much does the energy and water cost you.

When you have a kid, it's expected that at some point you will have to literally wash the crap out of a cloth item; however, I would not want to do that every day. Approach any parent while they are engaged in the washing of fouled cloth diapers and say "if you give me $1500, you'll never have to do this again" - I guarantee they'll be tempted.

No sale. First off, it's more like 18-22 cents per diaper once you buy in bulk, and this is one area where you're guaranteed to use them all, so no waste there. Second, cloth diapers still cost money both in the diapers themselves and the cleaning cost, so you're not saving the entire amount. Let's be generous and say you save 15 cents per load by using cloth diapers.

Would you accept a minimum wage job cleaning liquid feces soaked diapers at a rate of 50 diapers per hour? Because that's what you're doing when you don't use disposable diapers. It's pampers and a diaper genie for me, thanks.

We have been using Bum Genius 3.0 diapers for about a year now (since our daughter was born.) We couldn't be happier. The total investment was around 500, for 30 diapers, a pail, some wet bags, and a diaper sprayer. The only ick factor is spraying off the solids, if I have the water pressure too high it gets some splashback, but that's my own fault. We use biodegradable detergent, and only need 1 tablespoon per load of laundry, and our still on our original gallon jug. We live in a condo so our assn. pays for water, so I can't comment there. I suppose our electricity bill went up as we use hot water to wash them, so our water heater is being used more - but we compensate by washing everything else cold.

The only downside is that a lot of the cloth diapering stores are run by hippy types.

My wife has nearly bankrupted us with I can only call a cloth diaper addiction. $33 a pop for these diapers called GoodMamas.The are bought and sold like commodities, sometimes fetching more than that used! On top of that my washer and dryer runs about 7 hours a day for two children. I still don't know if it's cost effective or better for the environment, but my children have never had a diaper rash

@winstonthorne: As the mother of an infant, I do have to wash feces out of clothing just about every time I do her laundry. It's usually very small spots that leak from her diaper, though, and not the massive amounts that I'd be dealing with if I were cloth diapering. There's no comparison.

@ZeshawnWhiles: I'm with you. I have the bumgenius and fuzzibunz diapers and the sprayer. There's very little touching of poop, and I use biodegradable/earth friendly detergent. People make a big fuss about how gross cloth diapers are (and I admit, I was skeptical at first myself), but in actuality, I find them far less smelly and wasteful than disposables that spend an eternity in a landfill.

@jmurphy42: Precisely.

We are having a baby in January and I asked my wife if we could use cloth diapers and she gave me a quick "no".
Her reasoning was that she works at a day care (with 2-year olds) and already has to clean poop out of their clothes and that is enough for her.
I am glad we have a Costco membership because I hear their diapers are great.

@ZeshawnWhiles: there will also be the "time is money" folks.

most of us pay for water (probably) and that would go up tons. Hell our baby has cost us more in water just washing the clothes, and I wouldn't wash them with the diapers if we were doing that. clothes can go on the cold cycle unless there is a terrible accident, then they go with daddy's fishing and work clothes in the hot water.

@chersolly: For my money, they're the only way to go. I've used a service for both kids, one four and one six months now, and while I'm prepared to call the environmental impact about even, (maybe tilting a little positively in the direction of cloth,) there's no question that, even with a service, they're cheaper and waaaay better for the kids. That much plastic next to the skin? Notsomuch. With a service there's no extra ick factor as, instead of having a garbage pail of dirty disposables, you have a sealed pail that gets picked up once a week. Couldn't be easier!

@Brian James Schend: I've done the analysis. Our daughter, now 2 and a half, has been in cloth since she was 3 months old.

We use the BumGenius 3.0 diapers. To buy them 1 at a time, they're $18 at Whole Foods. We buy from cottonbabies.com, where you can get a 12-pack for $180. We got 2 of those, so we're well under $400 invested. These are the pocket type diapers, where you put the liners on the inside, and they go on exactly like a disposable diaper. My wife calls them "husband friendly" for that reason. :)

Big boxes of Pampers cost roughly $37 a box. So, by the time you've bought 12 boxes of those, you've already spent more. This also doesn't address the waste you're contributing to the environment. You're in for probably 2 of those big boxes a month, meaning you'll recoup your investment in about 6 months. How much does it cost for the water and energy to wash the things? It's sure as heck not the same cost as the 18-24 additional months of disposables at about $80 a month. For those of you keeping track, that's another $1440 - $1920 in disposables for the next 18-24 months after the first 6.

If you spend that much for water and power, you're doing something terribly wrong. In terms of detergent - we use an upright washer that has no agitator (Whirlpool makes them, they act like a front-loader). So, we're using the HE detergent, and further, we use about 1/4 of the amount of detergent you'd use for a standard load of laundry. In the fairer weather, we line dry the stuff too.

All in all, it's a monstrous amount of savings.

@chersolly: Like, practically nonexistent, even in the huge international city where I live. I looked into getting my sister-in-law started when she had my nephew, and I couldn't even find one; not in the Yellow Pages, not even online.

@OnefinFinn: on the few rare occasions my disposable diapered child got a rash, we cleared it up pretty quickly with cream. if the child was ambulatory... he was sent outside in his bare heiny to "air out". rashes weren't much of an issue for us, but I know a few folks that did switch to cloth out of necessity due to rashes.

@CubeRat: Ya, Costco diapers are awesome. They are just re-branded Huggies, so they are very good quality. Never had a leak.

@ZeshawnWhiles: Your experience pretty much mirrors ours with the BumGenius 3.0 diapers.. We don't do the sprayer though. We've got the toilet-paper-ish liners that go inside and catch most of the poop. They flush. My wife picked up a case of them for like $20. We've been using that case for about a year now, and it's now 2/3 gone. Our daughter is now 2.5, and is working on potty training, so we probably won't even finish out that case.

@Floobtronics: This is a ridiculously helpful comment. Thank you. (I am 8 months pregnant and we're trying to decide between disposables, a diaper service, and doing cloth ourselves; you may have just convinced us!)

Ummm, if you want your kids toilet trained by two, then use cloth diapers - duh. Multiple studies bear this out.

@lhutz34: Totally agree. We started with some hand-me-down cloth diapers (so we didn't have to pay the initial investment) with our first child, and that lasted all of about 3 weeks. For the pennies you save, it's just not worth the time. Mom is already stressed out, doesn't need to add poop-scrubbing to the list to save a few bucks a year (we have *never* paid full price for diapers - we always get coupons from the various retailers and use them judiciously).

What do you cloth-diaper users do when you go out with the tot? Is there a way to keep the used diaper from stinking up the immediate neighborhood, or, worse yet, the car on a hot day?

is there any market for clean used cloth diapers?
(other than as rags?)

if so, what is it and how would that factor into the overall budget?

So much depends on your situation. If the person taking care of the baby is staying home and can deal with cloth diapers, there's a good chance you'll be having more kids, and if you don't mind extra laundry, it can be a good investment.

However, if your baby has to go to daycare, they may not want to deal with cloth diapers. If you're only having one kid, disposable may or may not be more economical (as pointed out above, Costco diapers are pretty inexpensive in bulk and I never went through two boxes a month, barely even one).

@CubeRat: Yes, we use the Costco diapers and they are just fine. Ours is 7 months. I also tried to go the cloth diaper route, but my wife also refused. Unlike you though she strung me along until the baby was born pretending to be open to the idea! I've considered buying cloth diapers and switching them out one day and see if she notices. Heck I change more of the things anyway :)

My wife and I tried the cloth route when my first was born. We used a service, and I couldn't imagine doing it without. Even with that, we only did it for a month. It's not that cloth diapers are gross, and they're really, really gross, but they aren't nearly as good as the disposeables. They leak. They don't absorb the liquid. And they're quite a bit more difficult to deal with.

As for buying used cloth diapers, check with a diaper service. They would sell them as well. And buy the used ones. We have a few lying around, and they're absolutely the softest rags you can find!

Her's a tip Phil: don't scrape over the sink, scrape over the toilet!
;-)

Never discount the two brand solution:

You buy the cheapo disposable diapers, for lounging around the house, since you can change your kid at the drop of a hat. When going out for long periods, or dropping off at daycare, you switch to a more premium brand, with all the bells, whistles,and extra absorbency.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: At home, we use cloth diapers. When we go on weekend trips, we use disposables.

Think with some flexibility. Life is never black/white.

added - and during day trips, we have the equivalent of a small kayak drybag that we put dirty cloth diapers in. No smell, ever.

@OnefinFinn:

$33 each? WTF! We went with Green Mountain Diapers and their cloth diapers are, on average, $2 a piece.

[www.greenmountaindiapers.com]

@speedwell, avatar of snark:

We use cloth diapers (Bum Genius). We have a small waterproof zip-up bag that holds several diapers. When we go to visit grandma & grampa for the weekend we take a larger one.

Wifey makes and sells her own. Cheaper and amazingly able to contain the largest most explosive baby poo.

@littlemisslondon: The last thread about cloth diapers also mentioned you can add a spray nozzle to your toilet to spray yucky stuff into the toilet once your child is eating solids.

@HappyPig: 2 words, bamboo velour.[www.thegoodmama.com].They are a cult that has brainwashed my wife.

@CaffiendCA:

I have Bum Genius diapers, have been using them for a year. They have never leaked. (These are the kind that have elastic and velcro to hold them on; basically cloth and microfiber versions of disposables with a waterproof layer around it.)

@Floobtronics: For me "I get some splash..." pretty much seals the deal, savings be damned.

@JeepyJayhawk: Where to buy?

@microcars: There are several places: CraigsList (you'd be surprised, there's quite a few on there), Babycenter.com's community has a diapew swap board, and I hear diaperswappers.com has a pretty good thing going on too.

My daughter has only ever had a blowout in a disposable. Cloth has been excellent to us, and we're only paying about $1000 (high estimate) for her entire time being diapered (factoring in our increased water usage and buying the diapers). Even if you guy the diapers new, there is a huge pre-owned market for the diapers, so while we spent about $300 on our first set of 24 FuzziBunz, we'll recoup about $200 of that when she moves up to the next size.

5,840 seems like a lot. That is a new one every 3 hours for the entire 2 years. That isn't right, is it?

@lhutz34: Agreed. First of all we buy non-brand name diapers from Target or Sams and we stock up when they are on sale, so I have been able to keep the cost down to 16-18 cents per diaper.

I'm sorry, but my time is worth more than 16 cents, and I'm not about to add poop scrubbing to my daily list of chores. I'd rather have that extra time to spend with my daughter, and I don't feel like adding even more laundry to the scenario.

Plus there is the convenience factor. If we are out shopping or at a friend's house, do we really want to take a diaper full of poo and wrap it up so we can take it home with us? No thanks - just toss the told one and put on a new one... problem solved.

If people really think they are saving money buy using cloth diapers that is fine, but there is a LOT more to the equation than simply saving a few bucks. The opportunity cost of missing out on family time coupled with the hassle of cleaning funk from diapers on a daily basis is worth a lot more to me than 16 cents a diaper.

@gtheule: That has more to do with the parents being tired of scrubbing poop from diapers thus they push the concept of toilet training faster.

The kid could care less, so I'll stick with my disposables.

We used cloth diapers on our 2 babies years ago, before the fancy cloth ones they have now. We bought Gerber brand and folded them ourselves. We saved major $$ over disposables and I would certainly do it again, given the choice. I stayed at home with them so it was easy. If I had worked outside the home I probably would have gone a different route.

My Daugther is 8, she is off them now. Before anyone say it. She has Austim.

My wife and I use cloth diapers. My wife went through and made about 24 cloth diapers and covers for them. We use micro-fiber towels we picked up from Sam's Club ($9 for 30 of them). They're super absorbant, so leaks really arent a problem. We use scrap fabric for poo, so that the poo just stays on the scrap fabric and we either let the poo fall off the scrap fabric into the toilet, or if we're out and about we just toss the poo in the scrap fabric.

My wife had some bundles of fabric sitting around, and we also used old blankets and such for the diapers.

Our total cost for this ended up being about $50. We dont have a washer/dryer in our apartment and the ones they do have are way expensive, so we wash all our clothes at a family member's house.

We buy a small thing of disposable diapers for night time where we cant really change our daughter, but that costs us $10/month for those.

You can find many patterns for cloth diapers online. They are so worth it!

@OnefinFinn: Re: the environment, it's typically a toss-up. Disposables biodegrade better these days. Diapers washed at home use a lot of hot water and detergent; diapers sent out to a service are washed more efficiently (still a lot of hot water and detergent, but less per diaper), but that's offset by the pollution and gasoline use from the delivery driver. In many analyses, it comes down to individual characteristics -- how efficient is your washer? do you line dry? how far does the delivery guy drive? etc.

@winstonthorne: Yeah, part of me wants to be the kind of mom who cloth diapers, but when my husband suggested it, I was like, "That's not just a no but a HELL NO."

I have a lot of friends who do it, but it doesn't appeal to me.

The newer diapers with disposable INSERTS are kinda cool ... the diaper part is absorbant to catch overflow and reused (and washed as needed) but the insert is flushable like toilet paper. I might consider that.