Cloth Diapers: The Cost Breakdown

This is part 4. See parts 1, 2, and 3 to get the whole story :)

I've always been curious about how much I've really spent on diapers- so in this post I'm going to break it down. There'll be alot of numbers and it may get confusing, but for the sake of savings totally worth it!

Just for comparison, I found that disposable diapers cost between 17-19cents a diaper. It was a really great deal if I could find them between 12-15cents.

Just over the course of Luke using cloth we "saved" $115 (if you consider diapers are 17cents. If they are 19 cents it would have been $130). Now I don't really consider that savings because we turned around and spent that on cloth.  We really haven't seen diaper savings until Emberly because most of the "savings" went in to buying cloth. BUT remember with Luke we only used cloth for 6 months of nights/weekend/holidays, and a third of a year of nights. Most kids would wear them for 2-2.5 years exclusively.

As for how much I spent on my stash- it's hard to pin point a number. I have sold a good portion of my newborn stash (that I didn't even talk about in the first post), and turned that money around to buy more cloth, so it's like a revolving door! Companies run sales (like if you buy so many diapers they'll throw one in free), so I'll have to estimate (on the high side) what I've actually spent.

I have 8 BG 4.0s. I spent around $13 per diaper. I bought most of them as seconds on Jillian's Drawers. They have a diaper trial and after people have sent back what they don't want, they resell them at a discounted price (many times $4-$5 off PER diaper). Many have been used only once or twice. So 8X$13= $104

I also have 4 Flips which run around $11 ($14 new). Total: $44

Our Bumkins prefolds were $17, and our Thirsties diapers (which I've sold half of), were $13.25 each. I turned around and sold them for $7.50 each. So after figuring up the difference they ended up costing me $46 for the life of 8 diapers (which was about 4 months). That's the price of 1 pack of boxed diapers which we used to go through every 2 weeks.

The Swaddlebees and Blueberries (which I just bought) were $37 for 5 diapers and a bunch of inserts. Remember I can resell any of these for at least half of what I spent.

So what's the savings comparison?

For Emberly, I started her in cloth around 4 weeks. I anticipate that she won't start potty training until 2.5-3 years old. She goes through a MINIMUM of 5 diapers a day (many days it's 6-7). But let's just figure 5 a day for 2.5 years= 4,550 diapers. If each diaper cost 17 cents that would be $773 (for Emberly) + $130 (Luke)= $903 MINIMUM spent on diapers (is anyone elses mouth hanging open?). And that's totally estimating low.

What I've actually spent:
$104- Bum Genius
$46- Thirsties (difference left after selling them)
$44- Flips
Bumkins (prefolds)- $17
Swaddlebees/Blueberries- $37
Total spent on cloth: $248 (and I can resell most of this at 50% what I originally paid like I did with my Thirsties). I can possibly come out spending just $125 out of pocket for diapers after selling!

Not bad at all!

No comments :

Post a Comment