As an owner of an online cloth diaper store, at times I hear parents say, “I really want to cloth diaper full-time, but that’s a lot more money than I want to spend.” I never feel it is my job to coerce them into the decision, so I will encourage them to sit down and figure out what diapering their baby will cost over the duration of that baby’s diapering years; reminding them to consider (if only in their minds) that future babies could be on the horizon; cloth diapers aren’t for one-time usage, like disposables. I tell them to record all their numbers and make sure to do the same across any other diapering systems (cloth and disposable) they are considering.
What do they discover? If we’re just talking about the difference between a cloth diapering package such as the Thirsties Fab Fitted Diapers in a full-time package of 12 fitted diapers to a package of 12 disposable diapers, then yeah, diaper to diaper the expense is higher. If however, you considered the price of that same fitted diaper 6 years from now, on your 3rd child, to the disposable diaper you used once and tossed in the trash, then…maybe not so much.
We haven’t even touched on the reduced environmental costs of cloth diapering, although we do that a lot here at CDB. Bottom line is this, even if you don’t take advantage of the cloth diapering packages, like our newest package of Thirsties Fab Fitted Diapers, you will STILL WIN OUT financially if you choose cloth diapers. Figuring in the washing and drying, the detergent, the electricity, the labor, the “anything else you can think of” right down to production, cloth diapers are less expensive and more environmentally sound.
So no, full time cloth diapering doesn’t cost too much. What costs too much is full-time disposable diapering. And that costs all of us, not just you.