Many people jumping into cloth diapering have an idea that they might be saving some money, but really, how much? Oftentimes, it seems easier to keep buying $20 packages of disposable diapers instead of investing a few hundred dollars in a cloth diapering system. So, let’s crunch some numbers here, and see what we can find. How much can a cloth diaper user really save?
Assumptions
We are going to have to make a few assumptions here in order to make this number crunching workable.
- Let’s look at the cost of diapering a child from birth until potty training starts. For our purposes, let’s say children will be in diapers for 2.5 years, so we will study the costs for that time period.
- Some people are really great about buying diapers at inexpensive prices. Others buy them at regular price in small packages. Still others focus on more high-end disposables (ie Seventh Generation and Tushies). For this study, we are going to look at the cost of buying diapers in bulk through diapers.com, getting the discount of bulk without adding the discount some people get for couponing. I am going to look at the cost of Huggies Supreme diapers in the Giant Case size, a middle-of-the-road diaper as far as cost is concerned. Hopefully this will even things out overall.
- We are going to assume there are 30 days in every month, just to make my life easier. This shorts us by about 12 days in the final cost analysis for disposables.
- With disposables, I did not figure out the cost of garbage, just like I did not figure out the cost of water and electricity for washing. I also did not figure out the cost of manufacturing and transporting to stores (and then to consumers’ homes) over 7000 disposable diapers. I am hoping the costs about even out. Let me know if you want to do the number crunching for those.
Sticking with Disposables
When breaking down the cost of buying disposables, you cannot pick one flat rate per diaper, because the cost of each diaper goes up as a baby increases in size, and at the same time the number of diapers used each day goes down. So, I first figured out the price per diaper at each size based on current prices at diapers.com. Then, I did a price breakdown of the cost per month based on the growth of my older boys, who honestly were always big for their age.
So, you can see that in my calculations, the cost for 2.5 years of disposable diapers is $2294.39. But there are more costs to consider, including wipes and garbage bags. For wipes, I looked at the 576 count refill of Huggies Natural Wipes on diapers.com for $22.99. For garbage bags, I turned to amazon.com, where you can get 180 Glad drawstring kitchen bags for $45.99.
So, with these calculations, the grand total for diapering a child in disposable diapers for 2.5 years is $2489.91.
Cloth diapers
The cost of cloth diapering can be extremely variable, based on the types of cloth diapers one purchases, whether they are sized or one-size, the accessories purchased, etc. So, I did three different cost analyses. The first is for a frugal cloth diapering system, the next is for a one size system, and the third for a sized diapering system.
All three include diaper detergent and other accessories to make cloth diapering full time a possibility, including hemp doublers for nighttime and at least one pail liner and wet bag for storing diapers at home and on the road. For detergent, I picked Rockin’ Green Detergent, which is the least expensive cloth diaper-specific detergent out there. Some people buy mass-market products (ie Tide), while others choose more expensive options (like Allens Naturally or Country Save). I chose this option because it is middle-of-the-road.
Here is where the numbers fall…
FRUGAL
ONE SIZE
SIZED DIAPERS
So, the cost of cloth diapering for 2.5 years ranges from $358.10 to $927.19. The savings can range from $1562.72 to $2131.81.
The Final Numbers
If I average the three cloth diapering packages, I come up with an average cost of $629.80. If I use this number as the cost of cloth diapering for 2.5 years then we find…
Cloth diaper users can save an average of $1860.11 from birth through age 2.5!
What do you think? Without even considering the environmental and health benefits of cloth, will over $1800 dollars in your pocket convince you to use cloth? For me, it is a no-brainer.
Tags: cloth diapers vs. disposables, saving money with cloth diapers
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sara Ingmire, Heather McNamara. Heather McNamara said: RT @DiaperDaisy: Can you really save money with #clothdiapers? YES! Check out the number crunching I did and share with your friends. http://bit.ly/aZYTsJ [...]
This is great news for cloth diaper families! Add in selling your used diapers when you’re done with them and you’ve got even more money in the bank!
I really wish I would have done cloth. I work full time and daycare only does disposables so I didn’t think the money made sense to do both. I think I was wrong. Oh well, there’s always baby number two!
Kristie Hayes DuSharm Its true you don’t safe as much as you think. BUT you are ridding the world of garbage/diapers in the landfills. Just flush the mess stuff and then wash with the other pee diapers and in the end it is a saving method. We only use disposible diaperss when going to church or going to be traveling, I still flush the poo from the disposibles to help with landfill
I LOVE seeing these numbers! I do feel there is one piece left out which is hard to calculate but there is the extra cost of laundry. I keep track of my daughters diapers each month and tell everyone who I know how much it would have cost me if I went with disposables for the month. For example, for the month of April so far if I would have purchased Target diapers I would have spent over $50 and put over 350 diapers in the landfill! I do laundry pretty much every other day so that has cost me $15 (I did research on the internet to figure out how much it cost me to run my washer & dryer per load of laundry) so in one month I have saved $35!! Keep adding the months together and it sure adds up quick and I can always sell my diapers when I’m done!! I think seeing these numbers really can hit home for some disposable users! I am defiantly going to pass this information along!!
I agree, but I think it’s INCREDIBLY vital to include the cost out of pocket as well as to the environment of washing cloth diapers. I was using them for a few weeks with my newborn, but having to do two rinses, at least 2 cycles of drying, as well as a wash cycle, and the fact that more often than not, when she had large (and liquid) stools, they leaked out and soiled my clothes, her clothes, and even my friend’s couch, I abandoned them. My husband and I may consider going back once her stools are solid.
Well….with only 18 diapers, you’ve got people washing diapers every 2-3 days, which is a LOT of loads of laundry over 2.5 years–about 365 loads. So you can’t just “ignore” the cost of laundering.
Anyone know what the going rate is to wash & dry a load of laundry at a laundry mat? That would give a reasonable estimate (a bit on the high side of course) of how much it costs.
I haven’t had to use a laundry mat to do laundry in over 15 years…but back then, it was $.75 for the washer, and $.75 for one run in the dryer. I’d expect the dryer to need to be run twice. Might it be fair to estimate that washing & drying a load of diapers at home costs about $3 to $3.50?
That would come to $1095 – $1277 for the washer & dryer. Honestly, I think this is an over-estimate since the laundry mats do have to make a profit…but short of figuring out how many kilowatts of energy my washer and dryer and hot water tank use to wash & dry one load of laundry….
However, by doubling the number of medium diapers purchased (unless you plan to use the “small” diapers for more than one child it may not be economical to get a bunch of small diapers…but then again, they are needing to be changed more often, so it might be more worthwhile to have a big stash at that age)–an investment of about $50 to $323, depending on the diapers chosen, the number of loads of laundry can drop to about 200 (washing once every 5 days once in the medium size). This reduces the laundry cost by $495 – $577, bringing it into the $600 – $700 range.
Sooooooo…..you do save money by cloth diapering, and buying more cloth diapers can help you to save more money….but it isn’t QUITE such a great savings as laid out in this blog post.
But certainly, being that I am cloth diapering my 5th child while I did disposables with my first 4…I would encourage people that cloth diapering really isn’t very hard at all. I’ve been pleasantly surprised…in some aspects I’ve found it to be EASIER than using disposables (like lack of poopy blow outs!, not having to remember to buy more disposables).
Given the modest financial savings and the tremendous environmental impact…I think cloth diapering is a very good choice.
@Jacqueline – That is a great point about resale, Jacqueline! There is quite a market for used cloth diapers on DiaperSwappers.com and even Craigslist.
@Rachel – You are right – there is always time to try with baby number 2!
The Real Diaper Association and the Real Diaper Industry Association just finished up creating a tip sheet for getting day cares to use cloth diapers. You can find it at http://www.realdiaperassociation.org/daycare/Daycare-tip-sheet.pdf. Hopefully it can provide some helpful pointers on getting your day care to accept cloth the next time around!
@Shannon – You make an excellent point about the cost of washing diapers. However, there is way more water involved in the diaper making process for disposables than most people realize, especially as they cut trees up and turn them into pulp. I am sorry to hear you had trouble with your newborn diapers – those leaks should not have happened. Please contact me at sara@diaperdaisy.com if you are interested in troubleshooting.
Balance
We suggest a hybrid system of disposables for the first 0-2 or even 0-4 age and then migrating to a travel and/or “out of pocket” scenarios. The rest is the cloth system. It may not be the avg $1.8k suggested in this study but a savings but more like the 800-1k number. Its practical, still economical, and when you add the positive karma for the smaller environmental footprint plus consider the reuse possibilities for multiple kids – why not?