You’d think that I would have done this by now considering my baby-wearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding approach to parenting, but I had a few hangups. For one, the apparent start-up costs seemed staggering. Second, I was leery of poop-scrubbing. Then my neighbor and friend, Lindsay, got into cloth diapering with her three-month-old daughter. After she educated me and let me come over to her house and play with her fluffy stash, I realized two things: cloth diapering is only as expensive as you allow it to be and flushable liners are going to be my best friend.
Ironically, I made my decision to switch a week after buying a jumbo box of Pampers Baby Dry diapers. So my diaper budget is spent for the month and I have to wait until June to order. I have been researching my options like crazy in the meantime. I am going to start out with a basic stash of prefolds and covers, along with a few snappis and a roll of liners. I’m thinking about getting the Bummis starter kit from Nikki’s Diapers, but I haven’t made up my mind yet. There are so many choices and places to order from! It’s too bad there isn’t a brick-and-mortar store in the area…
I am looking forward to deleting the $45 monthly diaper expense from the budget. I expect the water bill to increase by about $10-15, but saving $30-35 a month will be worth the extra laundry!
I love cloth diapering. We started with prefolds and Thirsties Duo Covers. I love that when she dirties a diaper right after I put a clean one on her, I don't feel a twinge of pain about changing the diaper again. She has had no problems with diaper rash. Diaper laundry is really easy. The prefolds are easy for us right now. She doesn't move too much, which is handy. I think you'll be thrilled with the diapers once you get into a routine. However, I'm not sure I'd buy a bunch of one kind of diaper to begin with. Jillian's Drawers offers a $10 21 day trial with several different kinds for you to try out. They charge you $151 to start and send you enough diapers for full time diapering. At the end of the 21 days, you send back what you don't want to keep and they refund your money minus the ones you kept and $10. I'd really recommend it if you aren't sure what kind you want. Yay for another cloth mommy!
http://www.jilliansdrawers.com/products/clothdiap…
Wow, I think I will do that! Thanks Adrienne!
Awesome! I checked out the link that Adrienne posted. I would love to try out all the different types of diapers! I keep thinking of switching to cloth. Then I think "well, hopefully i won't be using diapers much longer anyway…." But really? I want to have more kids so an investment in diapers NOW would still be good in a few years when I need this size again.