Cloth Diaper Fail?

6.07.2011

I'm contemplating giving up our cloth diapering. I feel like a failure!!!! But after weighing the costs, it might actually be cheaper NOT to cloth diaper anymore.

I say "anymore", because I do believe it WAS cheaper to cloth diaper my son for the last 5 months. We started cloth diapering at 3 months. Now he is almost 9. The amount of  daily diapers you use from 3 months to 9 does drop considerably over time. 

After we had some mildew in my diapers, I bleached, sunned, stripped, and soaked and washed again and again. They are cleaned and ready to go again, but I've been using disposables in the mean time. We just use the Target brand of diapers and now that Micaiah's older we just don't go through THAT many diapers a day. If we use only disposables, then we might go through one box per month. A box of Target Size 4's are $20.99 for 128. That's $.16 a diaper.

Yes, the convenience of disposables is nice, but I wasn't completely sold that it was cheaper.

Then, we got our water bill. With using disposables only for one month, our water bill came down from $80 to $44. And I have front loading, energy efficient machines.

Um, that's my box of diapers right there (and wipes).

I think we live in a costly water area. So, for many, it would be wiser to cloth diaper and it would be better, but it may be better for our family to stop cloth diapering.

I may give it one more try, and see how much our water bill goes up. I know I had a lot of extra washing last month, because I was really sanitizing them to get them all clean again, so I'm sure it was higher for the month, because of that. AND, if I sell them, I really am giving up cloth diapering our next baby, which would be essentially "free". I do believe we want to have another baby at some point, so weighing the costs is difficult. There really are pros and cons to both sides and I'm just not sure at this point what I want to do! Do you guys have any encouragement to keep going? Or should I let them go?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.