This might seem off topic for an infertile, but if you have an infant or are around any mothers of infants, I'm very curious to know how much you spend on disposable diapers per week? Do you have the option of using a diaper cleaning service? If so, and you didn't, why not? If not, would you use that service over disposable diapers? How concerned are you about "green" issues and do you think cloth is better than disposable?
If ya'll could pass on this post to any moms, I'd really appreciate it.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I know DH and I were at Walmart and calculated how many diapers we'd need and how much a year's supply would cost, and we estimated that even with the added laundry that cloth diapers would cause, it would still be considerably cheaper to cloth diaper. I'm not super strict with being green, but I do try to do what I can, recycling and such. I really like that the cloth diapering option is cheaper AND greener.
ReplyDeleteI used cloth diapers for both my kids (with the added benefit of being able to use the same set with both!). I used disposables for night time sleeping as I found that cloth would soak through, and I used disposables if we were traveling. The car seat also needed adjusting depending on what kind of diaper was in use.
ReplyDeleteSo, that would be 7 disposables per week plus whatever was needed if we were traveling overnight, or a few extras for trips out to the mall or whatever. (I sometimes did cloth, sometimes disposable for those excursions).
for a time we were able to get a service that picked up the disposable diapers and recycled them somehow, but when green cart recycling came into our area the diaper recycling service stopped.
We had to get a new washing machine when we moved houses before baby 1 arrived, so we got an LG washer that had the "sanitize" option since I knew I wanted to try cloth diapers. The cost of different cloth diapers is different - I was very happy with the kind that is a rectangular white cloth, which you fold a certain way, and then you put on a water resistant (but not water proof) kind of pant that attaches with velcro. The all-in-one kinds are apparently easier to use (though I found my way was fine), but they are more expensive.
I probably would not have gone with a diaper cleaning service, as I felt our home laundry system was well set up to manage our own diapers, plus I like having our own diapers not get mixed in with others' ... although I am sure they must have even better ways of sanitizing.
Both my kids toilet-trained around the age of 2 - I had a good friend who was a great help to me in getting this to happen, but I may have been more motivated to make it happen due to the cloth diapers as well ;)
I feel that it is very important to do what we can to reduce our impact on the environment - especially given that we North Americans waste so much of the resources just because of our lifestyle and how things are delivered to us. (ex. I love Tassimo coffee, though I don't have my own machine, and I quite see how convenient it is ... but talk about packaging per cup ... yikes!)
My SIL used and loved Fuzzi Bunz for her twins, so when we brought our son home, my MIL bought us 18 of those. If she hadn't bought them for us, we probably would have bought some secondhand. There are tons on Craigslist. We love them. They work well, and they're easy to use. They fit from birth to toilet training. I wash them every other day, and it's really not a big thing to deal with. We also love not paying for disposables. And we love not putting diapers in the landfill. We use them overnight, too, w/ a doubler in there. We also use them when we're out. I think that if we went on vacation out of town, we would buy disposables for that, though. I looked up diaper services in our area, and it looks like $489 for 16 weeks. So we wouldn't do that b/c of the cost. But then, I have a washing machine and I do not mind doing laundry, so to me it's not a big deal to just do it myself. If I were working full time or having to use a laundromat, it might make more sense to pay for a service.
ReplyDeleteWe use disposable, and have found that the Target brand of diapers (Up and Up) is wayyyyy cheap and works the best of any generic. I like them a lot. Now that my son isn't a baby anymore (15 months old) we only go through about 4 or 5 per day, and a box of 140 costs $20, so that's only $20 per month. I wish I were more "green" in this department, but I'm just not :)
ReplyDeleteps. Hopped over here from Awaiting a Child of God :)
Thank you so much for your feedback, ladies!
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