Do you prefer cloth or disposable diapers? Why I feel cloth is superior.

I love cloth diapers and cloth diapering, I have 3 kids in cloth diapers and with each new baby I love cloth diapers even more.

I truly think that cloth diapers would be very beneficial to a lot of struggling families, and are very beneficial to the environment.

If you are interested in learning more about the cost of cloth diapering check out my article ” How much do cloth diapers cost? some numbers you should know”

Do parents still use cloth diapers?

Approximately 9% of parents in the USA still use cloth diapers.

However, because of price increases and supply chain issues with disposable diapers the number of cloth diapering parents is on the rise.

That being said, if what you are really asking is if parents still use the same big square pieces of cloth with pins and plastic pants, then the answer is very rarely.

Once in a while I do come across someone who does still use the old Gerber flats with plastic pants.

But once you discover the more modern cloth diapers you realize that the old cloth diapers are pretty obsolete.

Modern cloth diapers are easy to use, easy to wash and really freaking cute, so why wouldn’t you go that route instead.

Also, in reality while the Gerber cloth diapering stuff at Walmart may seem like the cheapest option it really isn’t.

If you want to learn more about that check out my article ” Gerber cloth diapers: readily available, but are they any good?”

Why do people choose disposable diapers?

I truly feel that a lot of parents choose disposable diapers because they don’t know that cloth diapers even exist.

Think about it, when was the last time you saw an ad for Pampers or Huggies? yeah it was like 2 seconds ago wasn’t it?

Now when was the last time you saw an ad for Thirsties or Grovia? if you have ever seen one at all, they’re pretty few and far between aren’t they?

Pretty much all my life I thought, you had a baby, then you go to the store and buy diapers every week.

It never even occurred to me that there could be another option.

Until one day right after I got married a friend of ours mentioned that we should totally look into cloth diapers for our future kids.

After that I started looking into cloth diapers on google and YouTube and I thought they were super cool and cute and I was totally gonna try cloth diapering.

I also think that people have a really hard time visualizing the amount of waste they are sending to the landfill.

In 2 1/2 years, 1 baby will go though an average of 7,200 disposable diapers, which adds up to around 2000 pounds of yuck that is just gonna sit and be nasty for around 500 years.

It is also not uncommon for disposable diapers to end up in rivers and oceans where they can leach chemicals and those weird little absorbing beads get eaten by fish.

If you want to learn more about the environmental impact of cloth diapers check out my article ” Should you choose cloth diapers? cost & environmental impact”

Why I prefer cloth diapers

3 years ago I was expecting my first baby, I was working part-time on a dairy farm and my husband was running his landscaping business through spring, summer and fall.

Once the landscaping was over for the season he would also start working at the same dairy farm with me until his business started back up in the spring.

We were doing pretty well as far as young married couples go as far as finances but then the farm we worked at went out of business.

For a while I helped my husband with his business but with the new baby coming that just wasn’t something I was gonna be able to keep doing long term.

On top of that I kept hearing more and more people say how expensive babies are, so I was kinda freaking out.

That’s where the cloth diapers come in.

I could buy cloth diapers during the times we had enough money coming in, and then during the winter I could just not buy any diapers at all.

Cloth diapers gave me peace of mind because I knew my daughter would have diapers.

I didn’t have to worry about our 10,000 year old furnace or water heater finally abandoning us and going off into their hard earned retirement and now not being able to afford diapers.

Every month parents spend an average of $50.00- $75.00 on disposable diapers.

If your baby is sensitive to the regular disposables and you need to use the more natural (and more expensive) brands then the cost goes up considerably.

If I wanted, I could never buy another again or I could choose to buy 5, 10 or 50 more, it’s all up to me.

If I chose to never buy another cloth diaper everything would be fine, and if I chose to buy 10 more cloth diapers everything would still be fine.

With disposable diapers you don’t get a choice, every week or month or whenever you run out, you have to buy more.

That freedom to decide what to do with that $50.00 – $75.00 you spend on disposable diapers every month is gone.

Then there is the average cost of $16.00 per month for disposable wipes.

If your baby is sensitive to regular disposable wipes and you need to use WaterWipes well now we’re talking $43.00 per month for just wipes.

But here’s the thing, I personally don’t have to care about these numbers, it’s the whole ” not my circus, not my monkeys” kinda thing.

Now if the price of cloth diapers goes up I would be kinda sad cause I enjoy buying the new cute prints, but I don’t have to.

I have choices, and neither of those choices would mean my kids didn’t have clean diapers.

Resources

Link to a great article on the downsides of disposable diapers at smallfootprintfamily.com