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In a move that almost even surprises myself, I decided to give cloth diapering a try right now with Erik.  I know, I said I wouldn’t try cloth until the new baby comes, if at all…But I managed to let myself be convinced otherwise.

The series of events that led me over this cliff began last weekend.  I went to a church rummage sale in my neighborhood on Friday to look for some clothes for the kids and a winter coat for me to wear when my baby belly causes me to “outgrow” my normal winter coat.  On the infant clothing table I spotted some cloth diapering supplies – mostly older diaper covers in various sizes and a few other items.  The prices were very reasonable (most things marked at 25 or 50 cents), but I just didn’t have time to think about whether it was a good use of money with the kids in tow.  This same rummage sale was having a “bag sale” on Saturday afternoon where any bagful of items would cost a buck.  We were all out and about at that time anyway, so we stopped by as a family.  This time, it was a no brainer to throw the diapering supplies in a bag along with other things I knew we would use.  Some of the diapering items had been purchased, but most were still there.

I brought them home and realized that I would have to continue giving cloth diapering some more serious thought, now that I had some of the supplies in hand.  I next did a bit more research into the laundry cost issue.  I found a website that breaks down the cost of laundry into its various parts — cost of water itself (which is actually paid by our landlord, anyway), heating the water, running the washer, and running the dryer. I was able to figure out that (assuming utility prices don’t change too drastically), cloth diapering would add a little less than $6.50 per month on to our utility bills.

With that information in hand, I was able to do some real calculations.  Knowing about how much we spend on disposable diapers over the “diapering lifetime” of a baby, I figured the amount to break even with one baby (after laundry costs are subtracted) would be spending around $550 in diapering supplies.  I know that sounds like a lot of money, but you might be surprised how much you can spend on cloth diapers if you want to! I asked Tony what he thought about this whole thing, and he said he thought it wouldn’t be worth it if we would only save $100 or so…and it would definitely be worth it if we could save $400…and somewhere in between could either way.

I knew it would be really tough to save $400 if the break-even point was $550.  But, if we added Erik into that calculation, the break-even point rises to somewhere between $750 and $800, making it much easier to save somewhere closer to $400.  (This is making the conservative estimate that both Erik and baby #3 potty train when they each are around 2.5 years old, and that Target generic diapers don’t increase significantly in price over the next couple of years.  If either of those things prove not to be true and they are older when they train or diapers to rise in price quite a bit, we would just save even more money if we are able to stick with it.)

I had already been noticing that my smell-associated nausea was lessening as I am entering my third trimester.  I also got to thinking that I would be better off trying out the cloth-diapering laundry routine now without a tiny baby around.  And, the laundry situation seems to have stabilized around here in general — the people living in the apartments above and below us are mostly only doing laundry during the evenings and weekends and the new girls who live upstairs are much more considerate about their laundry habits than our former upstairs neighbors were. So, I didn’t have a lot of excuses left not to try out cloth right now.

My first purchase of cloth diapering supplies arrived yesterday afternoon:

This is a trial package from Cotton Babies consisting of six unbleached Indian prefolds, two diaper covers and one “snappi” (the thing you can use instead of pins to help hold the diaper around the baby).  I also have on the way another dozen prefolds, two more covers, and three “pocket” style diapers (2 fuzzi bunz and one Happy Heinys for anyone who knows anything about cloth diapering).   This is possibly a minimal amount needed to really keep Erik in cloth diapers and do laundry every other day.  I might end up needing a few more prefolds and/or the covers that go along with them, or a few more pocket diapers if those end up being more useful for us. I decided to try out cloth diapering with a full-size set up so I could get the feel for what the laundry routine would really be like.  We still need the diaper sprayer — I will do without for a few days until Tony has time to make a Home Depot run and buy the supplies needed to make one!

I’m very pleased with the fact I’ve only spend $105 so far on a combination of new and used items. It’s a relatively small investment overall, and if I find that I just can’t make cloth diapering work, I should be able to resell many of these items and make back at least some of what I spent.  If these items do work for us and we are able to continue cloth diapering, baby #3 will be able to use them, and I will only have to buy the smaller sizes of diapers for him to wear when he is smaller.  Most of the items from the rummage sale turned out to be too small for Erik, so if any of those diaper covers turn out to be usable at all, I’ll have those for newborn diaper stash as well.  In general, I’m really hoping we are able to make using mostly prefolds with covers work for us, since this seems to overall be more economical than buying a full set of any of the other varieties of cloth diapers (pocket diapers, fitteds, or all-in-ones).

The journey begins today.  Erik has his first cloth diaper on right now!  I’ll be updating as we actually try this out!