For the last few weeks, lots of exciting things have been going on behind the scenes at Diaper Daisy, and we are so happy to be ready to share all of the news with you!

Our Big News

As of August 3, 2010, Diaper Daisy will have a new owner!  Katie is a mom of an adorable boy out in Colorado.  She is very passionate about cloth diapers and is so excited to be taking over the reins here at Diaper Daisy.  We have been working together for a few weeks already, and I am thrilled to know that Katie will take great care of my “baby.”  She is committed to providing excellent customer service and helping Diaper Daisy go on to even bigger and better things!  Be sure to be on the look out in the next few weeks as Katie introduces herself and adds some great products to the store.

As for me, I am bowing out of working with Diaper Daisy because of the same reasons that got me into it – my family.  Over the last year and a half, I have loved helping parents discover cloth diapers and the options that work best for their families, and I was so glad to be able to provide such healthy and earth-friendly products to you.  Business has grown, which is wonderful, but that is exactly why I need to step away.  I have three boys, ages 4, 4, and 1, for whom I am a stay-at-home mom.  I need to help them to grow and discover the world, too.

Do you have any questions about this transition and how it affects you?  Please feel free to email us at customerservice@diaperdaisy.com to let us know how we can help.

Thank you so much for your continued support of Diaper Daisy!  Without you, our customers, none of this would be possible.  I urge you to continue working with Katie over the next few years because you will love her positive attitude and amazing customer service.  She has great plans for Diaper Daisy, and our customers are in great hands.

Our Big Sale

As we work to transition Diaper Daisy’s ownership, we are asking for your help.  We need to clear out some inventory in order to make it easier to move products from Tennessee to Colorado.  So, Diaper Daisy is having a fantastic moving sale! You can find items marked down as much as 50% throughout the store, or you can go straight to our sale section to see everything that has been marked down.  Be sure to check out our clearance and gently used sections, too, as both of them have been restocked.

Act now – this sale is limited to stock on hand and will only last through Sunday, August 1st.

Thank you again for your continued support!  Our customers are the best!

Its almost the end of July and its a HOT HOT HOT summer. Thinking of ways to cool us all off, Diaper Daisy has decided to have a COOL summer Giveaway!!!!  We are preparing for some big changes coming in August and want to share them with as many cloth diapering, eco-friendly, baby loving families as we can.

Here’s the scoop:  Once we reach 500 fans on Facebook you can enter to win a $25 gift certificate to Diaper Daisy. Simple right?  Just go to http://www.facebook.com/diaperdaisy and “like” Diaper Daisy. After that, come leave a comment here letting us know you are a fan to be entered to win the prize.  At 500 fans we will randomly draw a winner on Random.org!

Good Luck!

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Congratulations to Kyla, our comment #51!  I will be emailing you shortly – you have 24 hours to get back to me.  Thank you to everyone who entered!

There are three things I consider essentials when traveling:

PlanetWise Hanging Wet/Dry Bag - This large bag is perfect for traveling with cloth.  The front dry pocket can be used for clean diapers and wipes.  Then, the wet section of the bag can be used for dirty diapers.  The entire bag can be hung by the handles on a doorknob or even a hanger in the closet.

ImseVimse Flushable Diaper Liners – When away from my diaper sprayer, I want to be sure I have an easy way to get soiled diapers clean.  I love using these flushable liners that make clean-up as simple as turning the diaper over above the toilet.

Cloth Diaper Detergent - It is so easy to forget the detergent, but I do not want to scramble in a place I don’t know.  We always bring our Rockin’ Green Detergent because I know it works well in any machine.

My first long trip with cloth diapers came last fall on a weekend trip to California for a family wedding. I was anxious, but it worked out great. We rented a house with a lot of different family members, so we were lucky to have a washer and dryer on site. We flew, and so to avoid extra luggage fees, we shoved the bag of cloth diapers in the same bag with my son’s car seat.

This trip is actually three trips in one. We will be spending time staying with my parents and in-laws, which should make washing easy, and I will be in charge of diapering my son.

For the second leg, my kids will be staying with their grandparents while my husband and I take a trip together to California.  This is definitely going to be the toughest leg of the trip for cloth diapering.  In order to help my parents, I am providing a typed out list of directions on exactly how to wash the diapers, and I am only sending two different types of diapers to make matching up the inserts easier.  I am finding myself wishing I had some bumGenius Organic All-in-Ones so that the steps would be a little bit easier.  I guess we will see how it goes!

For the last leg of the trip, we will be traveling to a friends’ home in Texas.  The trick for this leg of the trip will be that there are going to be so many people staying together in the same house – 6 adults and 10 kids!  My friend is a saint for hosting us.   In any case, I am hoping that the washing machine will be accessible.  Hopefully it won’t be a problem if I do it at night…

I am letting you know about my travel worries and concerns so that you know that even cloth diaper “experts” get anxious about traveling with cloth.  But I want you to know that it can be done!  I will report back on our success.

As I speak with parents making the decision about what kind of diapers to use for their children, cloth diapers versus disposable diapers, people often ask me what reasons our family has for choosing cloth and why I stick with it.  There are so many reasons we are proud to be a cloth diapering family – here are some of my favorites.

1.  Cloth Diapers are sustainable. – With cloth diapers, I am not sending hundreds of pounds of diaper waste to the dump each month.  Instead, I wash and reuse my diapers, making them much more sustainable.  Others may try to convince you otherwise, but the environmental impact of cloth diapers versus disposable diapers is no contest.  The Real Diaper Association estimates that 27.4 billion diapers end up in landfills each year, and that they may take anywhere from 250-500 years to decompose.  The raw materials used in making disposables are incredible, too – it is estimated that 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks, and 20 pounds of chlorine are used to produce disposable diapers for ONE baby each year.  (You can check out these facts at more at the RDA’s Real Diaper Facts site or What a Waste.)

2.  I’m not making late night runs to the store when I realize we are low on diapers. - When we start getting low on diapers, I just toss a load in the machine.  It is that simple.

3.  I am keeping chemicals away from my baby’s bottom. - No matter how you toss it, disposable diapers have chemicals in them that I would rather not have anywhere near my baby.  For one thing, disposable diapers contain traces of Dioxin, an extremely toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process (which is used in making the wood pulp in disposable diapers).  Dioxin is a carcinogenic chemical, listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals, so much so that it is banned in most countries (but not the U.S.).  Another chemical present in disposable diapers is a type of super absorbent polymer (SAP).  SAPs are the chemicals that help to absorb liquid.  They used to be present in tampons until they were banned from those products for contributing to toxic shock syndrome, but yet are still allowed near babies.  (Again, check out the RDA’s Real Diaper Facts site.)

4.  Cloth diapers save us a ton of money. – I just wrote about this earlier, with tons of facts and figures, so you can check that out if you would like.  The end result of my research is that people can save an average of $1860.11 when using cloth diapers versus disposable diapers from birth through age two and a half.

5.  They really are easy to use! – Honestly, with a family of five, if cloth was too much work, I wouldn’t be able to do it.  It is just one more load of laundry every two to three days.  And as I mentioned above, no runs to the store!

These are just a few of the MULTITUDE of reasons why we chose cloth in our family.  Each family needs to make this decision for themselves, but I strongly urge you to consider cloth.  I would be so happy to help you along the way – you can email me here.

Happy Diapering!

*****

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.

]]> http://diaperdaisy.com/daisyblog/2010/04/29/save-money-with-cloth-diapers/feed/ 9 http://diaperdaisy.com/daisyblog/2010/04/23/new-fuzzibunz-colors-coming-soon/ http://diaperdaisy.com/daisyblog/2010/04/23/new-fuzzibunz-colors-coming-soon/#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:25:29 +0000 Sara http://diaperdaisy.com/daisyblog/?p=125 Tereson Depuy, the owner of FuzziBunz, just spilled the beans on her blog… FuzziBunz is releasing new colors next week! Let me be the first to say they are fabulous. I am so excited to bring these new colors to you! I will be placing an order for Diaper Daisy bright and early on Monday to get these new colors up for sale as soon as possible.

Check out Tereson’s blog for the complete details.

Happy Diapering!

Did you miss the giveaway? No fear! We have tons of promotions just for our Facebook fans. Be sure to check us out!

I started out diapering my baby in name brand disposable diapers.  As a money-conscious mom, I watch our spending very closely.  A few months after our son arrived I started to wonder where all our money was going.  I quickly realized that it was the $50.00 a month we were spending on disposable diapers!  I knew there had to be a better way to tackle diapering our baby without blowing our budget.  After talking to a few friends who had given cloth a try and really seemed to like it, I decided it was worth a shot! I jumped right into cloth with a Customized Diaper Trial from Diaper Daisy and I haven’t looked back!

Cloth diapers today are nothing like I thought they would be.  Modern cloth diapers give me the convenience I need at a price I can afford. Before I was spending about $50.00 a month to diaper my baby in disposables.  That means in three years I would have spend $1,800.00 just on diapers that go in the trash!  With cloth, I have made an investment of about $300.00 for diapers that will last until potty training with my first child and  then be able to be used again with my second.  With one child alone that is a savings of $1,500.00!  Those are huge numbers!

When I saw the potential savings I knew cloth was worth any effort they might take. To my surprise, however, they were very simple to use and to wash.  Putting them on my baby was as easy as disposables and the rest was simple laundry!

I started cloth because I wanted to save money.  Once I started using cloth I began to see so many of the other benefits that cloth diapers have to offer.  Here are some of my favorite things about cloth:

• Less Money in the Trash – More Money in My Pocket
• Less Smell in my House (The stinky part goes down the toilet)
• Good Bye Diaper Rash!
• Less Trash to Take Out Every Day

I am so glad I realized I had more choices than what is down the diaper aisle!

So where does one begin when deciding to try cloth?

This is question I found myself asking when I decided to try cloth diapers.  I didn’t want to make a huge financial commitment to products that I didn’t like.  I was ready to try cloth but not commit to it!  Then I  ran across Diaper Daisy’s store.  I read about their Cloth Diaper Trial and was so relieved!  Finally!  A place where I can get different styles and brand of diapers to try on my baby without a huge commitment!  I signed up right away for a customized trial.

Sara at Diaper Daisy helped me pick out some diapers and accessories to try and before I knew it my diapers were at my door and I was ready to begin the journey.  I washed my diapers as my instruction booklet that came with the trial told me to do, and we were off with cloth!

As we went, I began to see what diaper systems worked for my lifestyle and then what brands gave my baby the best fit.  At the end of the three weeks I had fallen in love with cloth diapers!  They were no where near the hassle I thought they would be!  I also learned what diapers worked for my baby without wasting money on other brands in the search.

At the end of the Diaper Trial you have three options.  You can either a) admit defeat and send all of your diapers back and get a refund for the retail price,  b) keep what you like and send the others back, or c) keep all of your diapers and get a $29.95 store credit!  At the end of my trial I decided to keep all of my diapers and used my credit to help me stock up on the diapers I loved.

So if you are apprehensive like I was, thinking that cloth diapers may not be something you can handle, or if you are confused by all of the options out there, try a Cloth Diaper Trial!  It lets you try without much risk and it might just be the best thing you can do your family!  It was for me!

For more information and details about the Trial, visit the Diaper Daisy store!

Throughout this past year, Miracle Diapers has developed their organization in many ways, including:

• Naming new leadership with Roxanna Jolly as CEO and Lisa Johnston as Operations Manager and Board Chair
• Relocating their headquarters to Katy, Texas
• Restructuring how they process and accept applications
• Opening a retail store for fundraising
• Founding a new membership program
• Welcoming several new board members from the cloth diapering industry

Because of the growth of the organization and the need to have a name that more directly coincides with their mission, Miracle Diapers is changing their name to The Cloth Diaper Foundation.  The mission of the group is the same, and they hope to do even more good work this year and beyond.

What You Can Do to Help

Due to the slump in the economy, monetary donations to Miracle Diapers fell last year, which means there are more families out there for The Cloth Diaper Foundation to help in 2010!  Monetary donations are essential for the group to financially support the growth of the organization.  You can help share your love of cloth diapers by visiting http://clothdiaperfoundation.org today to make a donation or find other ways you can help.

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Want to keep up with everything happening at The Cloth Diaper Foundation?  Check this page for information about how to become a fan of their new Facebook page and how to follow them on Twitter:

http://www.clothdiaperfoundation.org/2010/02/join-our-new-facbook-fan-page/.