As I look back on our diaper experience I have to giggle a little bit. When my son was born in 2008 my husband and I thought some friends of ours were crazy to use cloth diapers. All we kept thinking about was how much work and trouble it was to cloth diaper. My husband always said, “I will get another job before I cloth diaper.” But, since my husband always ends up doing what he said he would never do in 2010 when our little girl was born we decided to take on cloth diapering. We still have my 3-year-old son in disposable diapers (while praying fervently that he has a desire to finally use the potty), but little girl has been trucking along almost since day one in the cloth.
What changed our minds? Being big Dave Ramsey fans, we are always looking for ways to cut corners and save a few bucks. Cloth diapering seemed like a great option. When the average parent puts on 8000-10,000 diapers in two or three years that comes out to a lot of cash! Another thing that appealed to me was to have no chemicals on little girl’s bottom. Many disposable diapers contain chlorine, perfumes and other yucky things that I didn’t want to put on my baby’s bottom. The skin absorbs much of what we put on it like a sponge. Much of the substances that we put on our skin will get absorbed directly into our body. Once theses substances get absorbed they by-pass any organs that filter toxins from the body, thus absorbing directly into tissues and sometimes the blood stream. So, we should be careful about what we put on our skin. So, cloth diapers greatly appealed to me for that reason. And, it cuts down on waste. Being a Christian I believe that we should take care of the earth that God has given us, diapers create A TON of waste. Going cloth would be a very easy way to cut down on waste. Plus, trash and toxins in our landfills get absorbed by the ground and recycles into our drinking water. Who knows what yucky things we are drinking when we don’t filter our water, sadly much of it is due to our own waste.
Cloth diapers can be purchased in all sorts of price ranges. We use the Flip Diaper System because it is easy to use and very inexpensive. I’m pretty sure we own 3 boxes and several extra inserts. This comes out to a little under $200. I also like these diapers because kids can grow into them. There are snaps that help make the diaper cover bigger or smaller depending on the age and size of your child. I’m fairly sure we have pretty incredible savings since we rarely buy a package of diapers for little girl. Yay for saving money!
What about you, if you have little ones do you cloth diaper or not? What are your reasons?