What are the disadvantages of cloth diapers?

Sometimes people making something out to be too good to be true just makes you question it more, because nothing is ever 110% perfect and has no downsides.

Cloth diapers in my experience have 4 main disadvantages

• You have to wash them
• They have a larger upfront cost compared to disposables
• They are bulkier than disposables
• You have to wade through cloth diapering misinformation

You do have to wash cloth diapers

Having to wash cloth diapers is probably one of the things people fear the most when it comes to cloth diapering.

You have to learn what wash cycles to use, what water temperature and which laundry detergents are safe to use with cloth diapers.

You have to make sure your cloth diapers don’t get fabric softener on them and you also can’t use dryer sheets if your drying them in the dryer.

You need to make sure you don’t put more than about 24 cloth diapers in an average size washing machine or the load will be to big and you won’t get proper agitation.

If you have a front loading HE washing machine the number of cloth diapers you can wash at one time drops to around 14.

But these numbers vary depending on the style of cloth diaper you are using and how big each cloth diaper is.

If your baby is a newborn, well newborn cloth diapers are very small so you might be able to fit 30-35 in one load and not have any problems.

Or if your have a 3 year old who pees a ton and needs a ton of absorbency, well all that absorbency takes up space so you may only be able to fit 10-15 in the washing machine.

And you’re the one who has to figure all that out.

Then there is drying cloth diapers, the PUL or TPU which is the water resistant outer layer typically can’t handle drying on high heat.

So you would need to either dry everything on low heat or what I do is hang anything with PUL/TPU on a drying rack and put everything that is just absorbency in the dryer on high.

But if your stash is has a lot of bamboo inserts you still have to be careful with how high of a heat setting you use.

Since some bamboo fabric ( usually lower quality) will just shrink and shrink and shrink if you dry it on high heat.

You will normally see some shrinkage in brand new natural fibers while you are prepping then for use.

But the way some bamboo shrinks could make a flat or prefold originally meant for a toddler barely fit a newborn.

If it’s a nice day I will hang everything out on the clothes line to dry but that does take more time.

Cloth diapers have a larger upfront cost

Many people look into cloth diapers to save money but almost immediately notice that cloth diapers are far more expensive upfront at around $12-$25 per diaper.

Compared to disposable diapers which are typically $0.11-$0.25 per diaper, unless you’re buying a more natural disposable brand which are more like $0.55-$0.80 per diaper.

It will take several months to see a return on investment with cloth diapers especially if you chose a more expensive brand.

While disposable diapers do have a weekly or monthly cost for the 2 1/2- 3 years till your baby potty-trains, they don’t really have a very big upfront cost.

Cloth diapers are bulkier than disposable diapers

While it isn’t true that cloth diapers are less absorbent than disposable diapers, the absorbency in cloth diapers is bulkier.

A lot of people end up needing to size up in pants and pajamas because of how big their baby’s cloth diaper is.

Overnight cloth diapers are especially bulky, my 3 year old and 18 month old look like they’re wearing basketballs to bed, it doesn’t seem to bother them but it does look kinda ridiculous.

If you buy high quality absorbency you tend to not need as much but the higher the quality, and the higher the absorbency, the higher the price.

Sorting through cloth diaper myths & misinformation

There are a lot of opinions and myths floating around cloth diapering and unfortunately some of the time you only realize it was wrong because you tried it and now you have a problem to fix.

Most of the time the time the problem can be fixed by just ” stripping” your cloth diapers.

Which is a few hour process of soaking your cloth diapers in a few different laundry products and then rinsing them all out.

It’s relatively cheap but it is time consuming unless you get a specific stripping product like Grovia Mighty Bubbles.

Which is just a pod you throw into a long hot wash cycle with your cloth diapers and then run a few rinses.

Unfortunately not all problems that come from cloth diapering misinformation is that easy to fix, or can even be fixed.

If you have been putting all your PUL/TPU in the dryer on high you could end up with a bunch of cloth diapers that aren’t water resistant anymore because the PUL/TPU is coming apart.

Your elastics will also probably go bad faster with repeated trips through the dryer.

The thing is, you can replace elastics, you can’t fix PUL/TPU that is coming apart, as far as I know even the manufacturer can’t do anything about that.

Also I have never seen a manufacturer that didn’t say specifically that you should only hang dry or tumble dry low their PUL/TPU.

So if you do put you PUL/TPU in the dryer on high heat you void any warranty they might have had and now you’re up crap creek without a paddle.

In conclusion & Resources

Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you) from qualifying purchases made through those links. * Indicates an affiliate link

I love cloth diapering, and I have for the last 3 years but that doesn’t mean that I think cloth diapers are perfect.

On the contrary many times in the last 3 years I have been frustrated almost to the point of tears with cloth diapering.

But in the end I would figure out the problem and move on to the next faze of my cloth diapering journey.

Link to my article Should you choose cloth diapers? cost and environmental impact

Link to Fluff love university’s cloth diaper stripping instructions How to strip cloth diapers

Link to Grovia Mighty Bubbles on thenaturalbabycompany.com *