I never thought of running a cost analysis regarding cloth diapers, so Trent saved us moms the trouble and we find out that there really isn’t much of a difference in cost. So the choice whether to go cloth or disposable becomes more of a preference than a financial issue. Unless you go the way I did.

When I had my first baby, I wanted everything to be perfect for her and of course, like any mom, I wanted the best for her. I chose that she should only wear cloth diapers. Even though I chose to go that route, I knew I wasn’t ready or equipped to be washing diapers myself so I found a diaper service with a good reputation and chose to have them wash my diapers instead. I loved this service because it kept my diapers separate from others using the service. Some diaper cleaning services put everyone’s diapers together in the same wash so you could be getting someone else’s stuff next time around. I knew they adhered to their promise of keeping diapers separate because, of course my mother and grandmother went and bought a bunch of cloth diapers and embroidered them with my daughter’s initials. hehe! I know that using a cleaning service throws off Trent’s analysis making my cloth diapers way more expensive than disposable.

Of course, life always throws a wrench at all your best laid plans. My second daughter arrived a mere 11 months after my first. So now we have two babies and both of them in diapers albeit different sizes. We tried to continue using cloth diapers but we soon found out how difficult doing all the cloth diaper logistics (even with the laundry service) when you multiply it by two. Can you imagine not only lugging a twice stuffed diaper bag everywhere but also a second bag for the dirty stuff? Yikes! So that’s when we decided to go disposable and threw the land fill implications to the wind. At least we wouldn’t be schlepping dirty diapers everywhere we went. I think this is also about the time we discovered warehouse shopping.

The kids, they didn’t seem to notice any difference. Their baby bottoms were still smooth whichever diaper we used I’m just glad we are so over that stage.

So my point? Nothing really, it was nice to just think back of them diapering days. But I guess if a new mom asked me which way is better, I would say the better way is that which keeps you sane. Environmental implications aside, of course. Have I already mentioned I’m glad to not have to deal with diapers anymore?

As of this past weekend, Trent has an Update on the Disposable vs. Cloth debate.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 12:46 pm and is filed under children, family, parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.