How Much do Cloth Diapers REALLY Cost?

As I’ve ventured into the world of cloth diapers, I’ve been surprised to discover they aren’t as affordable as I would have hoped. They definitely can be used cost-effectively, but only if you are really careful about where your money is going. Here are some costs to consider as you calculate your cloth diaper budget.

Set-Up Costs

These are potential costs that occur upfront before you start diapering your baby.

Regular Daytime Diapers: $200 - $625+

Nighttime Diapers: $66 - $129+

Newborn Diapers: $84 - $360

Doublers/Washable liners: $0 - $45+

Diaper Pail: $0 - $80 ($30 is average)

Diaper Pail Liners: $20

Cloth Wipes: $0 - $54 ($30 is average)

Cloth Wipes Containers: $0 - $35 ($15 is average)

Travel Wet Bags: $10 - $40

Diaper Sprayer: $0 - $70 ($30 is average)

Clothes Line + Pins: $0 - $10

Diaper Sprayer Shield: $0 - $25

Diaper Organization: $0 - $50

Product Testing to determine which brand to use: $0 - $200+ ($50 would be plenty)

TOTAL: $380 - $1743+

These numbers are just rough estimates of what you would spend on Amazon.com or KellysCloset.com for low-end versus high-end products. It is always possible to spend more on cloth diapers, and also quite possible to spend less- for example, if you buy second hand, shop sales, etc. You may also have some things (like wipes containers or a trash can to use as a diaper pail) around the house, and you may not need all of these products depending on the type of cloth diapering system you choose to use.

Newborn/Sized Diapers

It is rarely cost effective to use newborn-sized cloth diapers unless you plan to use them on multiple children. However, this is still a necessary cost as you will likely have to buy disposables until your baby fits one-sized diapers. If you plan to use a sized cloth diaper system, your diaper costs will definitely be on the higher end of the spectrum, but you probably wouldn't have a seperate newborn category.

Monthly Costs

These are costs that occur every month as long as you are using cloth diapers.

Laundry: $8 - $25+ a month.

Disposable Diapers: $0 - $10

Disposable Wipes: $0 - $20

Flushable Liners: $0 - $10

Cloth Wipes Solution: $0 - $5

TOTAL: $8 - $70

Laundry

Laundry is one of the most complex and potentially expensive aspects of cloth diapers. This website will help you figure out how much you are spending. Plan to use large loads of hot water. One tradeoff to consider is that the more diapers you have, the less often you will have to wash them.

Ongoing use of Disposables

Few Cloth Diaper cost calculations include disposable diapers. I have found that real life demands disposables from time to time. We aim for about 30 a month, which gives us just barely enough to leave disposables with babysitters and nursery workers and to use them when diaper rashes get really bad. That costs about $5 a month for us.

Cost Trade-Offs

If these numbers are scaring you away, take comfort- no one will need to buy ALL of these things. For many items on these lists, there are trade-offs between setup and monthly costs. If you line dry your diapers instead of machine drying them, you will need lots of clothes line and pins, but will save around $0.46 per load on laundry costs. If you buy a diaper sprayer to remove solid poo, you don’t need to use flushable liners. Cloth wipes increase your setup cost, but will save money every month on disposables. In all of these cases, one option (usually the more expensive one) is significantly more convenient.

Cheapest Route

Because of the cost trade-offs, it is NOT really possible to spend only $380 on setup costs and $8 a month on monthly costs. So how affordable can cloth diapers be?

Setup

Regular Daytime Diapers: $200

Nighttime Diapers: $66

Newborn Diapers: $100 for disposable diapers for 2 months

Doublers/Washable liners: $0 (use diapers that come with plenty of absorbency)

Diaper Pail: $0 - use a plastic trash can

Diaper Pail Liners: $20

Cloth Wipes: $15 for 30

Cloth Wipes Containers: $0 (use containers from disposable wipes)

Travel Wet Bags: $10

Diaper Sprayer: $30

Clothes Line + Pins: $10

Diaper Sprayer Shield: $0 (not a necessary product)

Diaper Organization: $0

Product Testing to determine which brand to use: $0

Total - $451

Monthly

Laundry: $8

Disposable Diapers: $0 (only works if your childcare workers are on board!)

Disposable Wipes: $0 (same as above)

Flushable Liners: $0 (use the diaper sprayer to remove solid poo)

Cloth Wipes Solution: $5

Total - $13

Cost Comparison to Disposables

My general estimate is that it costs about $50 a month to keep one child in disposable diapers. So this is the calculation I use to determine if my cloth diapering habits are cost-effective:

Cost of Disposables ($50) - Monthly cost of cloth X 30 Months = Max amount to spend on setup cost.

Most children potty train around the age of 2 1/2, which equals 30 months of use. So in order to break even with the cost of disposables, I figure I cannot spend more on setup cost than I save using cloth over the course of 30 months.

Example:

So lets say you spend $25 a month on cloth diaper monthly costs. Your calculation is:

50 - 25 = 25

25 X 30 = 750

So if you spend $750 on setup costs, you will spend pretty much the same amount on cloth diapering your baby as if you had used disposables. If you only spend $500 on setup costs, you will have $250 of savings at the end of 30 months. Of course, this isn't a lot of savings. But if you take my Cheapest Route example, you could save a grand total of $659 in 30 months.

Multiple Children

The greatest cost benefit of cloth diapering comes for families who plan to use them on multiple children. If you are able to recoup all of your setup costs with you first baby, every dollar you save on future children will be actual savings. Based on my calculations, you could save as much as $1,110 by cloth diapering your second child. You may have to replace some items as they wear out, but the savings will still be exciting.

Conclusion

I hope this post helps you to see how cloth diapers can easily become very expensive, but also how they can be used affordably. Of course, there are many reasons to use cloth other than saving money, but at least now you are empowered to make informed decisions! Happy shopping!

How much do babies cost during the 1st year?

I've heard people say that they don't want to have kids because it costs too much, and at first I kind of laughed at that. We had a GIGANTIC baby shower for Katara and only had to spend a few hundred on supplies, most of which went to unneeded things like paint and decorations. And then for the first few months she didn't need anything except diapers... she wore hand-me-downs and nursed exclusively, and it was really nice.

Now it's a different story, since she's started on formula and baby food. I thought it might be helpful for some expecting parents to know how much an average couple spends on a baby for the first year.

To get set up with everything you need for the first year, assuming you pay for everything at low-end retail value and don't have a shower, would be about $2,000 dollars. This could be cut down by shopping at thrift stores or going without some things on this list:

Travel:

• Baby carrier and/or sling $30


• Diaper bag $50


• Pack 'n Play $70


• A rear-facing infant car seat with base. $80


• Stroller $120

Changing:

• Diaper pail $20


• Plastic Bags $20


• Diapers $30


• Disposable wipes. $20


• Diaper rash cream $10


• Changing pad $20

Sleeping:

• Baby monitor $40


• Crib mattress $50


• waterproof mattress pad $30


• 2-3 fitted crib sheets $30

Feeding:

• 6 bottles $20


• High chair $50


• Bowls $20


• Spoons $10


• Sippy cups $20

First Aid/Grooming:

• Thermometer $40


• First Aid kit $30


• Sunscreen $10


• Infant medications, like infant Tylenol or ear drops $50

Bathing

• Baby bath set (shampoo, lotion, oil, ect) $20


• Hooded towel $25


• Washcloths $10


• Baby Bather $30

Clothes

• Everything - $100 (at the most... babies get lots of clothes as gifts!)

Other

• Burp cloths $20


• 1 or 2 pacifiers $15


• 4 to 6 receiving blankets $50


• Teething rings  $10


• Dye and fragrance free laundry detergent $35


• Books, toys and rattles $50

Nursery

• Vibrating bouncy chair $50


• Crib $200


• Changing table/Dresser $80


• Swing $60

Nursing

• Breast pump $300


• Nursing pads $30


• Nipple cream ointment $10


• Nursing bras $45


• Nursing cover $20

After the initial set-up, babies need these things every month:

• Clothes - $40


• Diapers - $50


• Wipes - $5


• Incidentals - $30


• Food - $250 (only for the last 6 months)

Here's a breakdown of how I reached those numbers:

Clothes - Assuming you buy at thrift stores or use hand-me-downs for the most part, this cost should be fairly low. For me, it has been virtually non-existent until now. We are starting to buy her some things, but we still try to keep it to about $100 for each stage. That's about $40 per month.

Diapers - My baby has always used about 7 diapers a day. You can find diapers for about $0.22 each, 7 diapers a day X 31 days in a month = 217 diapers per month. Add in the occasional unexpected blow out and you'll need about 230 diapers a month. That comes out to almost exactly $50 a month.

Wipes - A Costco box of wipes costs $20 and lasts me 4 months. So that's $5 a month.

Incidentals - This covers everything from the emergency pacifier purchase to new toys. We try to keep this to a minimum, around $30 a month if possible.

Food - This one varies the most. If you're nursing, you will save a LOT on formula. If you make your own baby food, you'd probably save a lot on that too. So I'll take a middle-of-the-road approach and let's say you switch to formula at 6 months of age, at which time you also start baby food three times a day. Formula costs about $1.25 per 6-ounce bottle, which your child will probably be drinking 4-5 times a day. That equals just under $200 a month. Baby food is $0.50 a jar (if I'm remembering right), so that adds up to just under $50 a month. Babies also eat rice cereal, crackers or cheerios, but those things are cheap and can be easily absorbed in the family budget.

So the average monthly cost of babies for the first year is $125 for the first six months, and $375 for the last six months. In total, that's exactly 6,000 dollars for the first year.

GRAND TOTAL (Set up + First year): $8,000

However, I feel that this is a very worst-case-scenario number. This doesn't factor in gifts, sales, coupons, or do-it-yourself projects. It also includes a lot of extemporaneous things you could do without - such as a breast pump and BOTH a swing and bouncy chair. I'm pretty sure the resourceful parent could do it all for $5,000 or even less.

EDIT: This also doesn't include prenatal care and hospital bills, which depends so much on your insurance it's almost impossible to make an estimate. If you have AWESOME top of the line insurance, you might not have to pay more than $400 for all of that... the next step down is estimated at $2,500 and if you have poor insurance or no insurance at all you could be looking at $10,000 or more, especially if you have a c-section or a premature baby. (Source: experience and some online reading.) We decided to budget for the middle ground number and if the worst case scenario happened, we would treat that as a family emergency rather than a baby expense budget-wise. For us, not being totally prepared for an emergency was not a good enough reason to not have a baby- we knew emergencies could happen at any time to any member of the family and God would provide as needed.

So if you were to budget $2,500 for the hospital bills and prenatal care, your total worst-case-scenario cost for the first year would be $10,500.