Why Choose Cloth Diapers?

Honestly, I never really even considered disposable diapers. I wore cloth diapers, my siblings wore cloth diapers, and my husband wore cloth diapers-- it used to be normal. Before "being green" was fashionable, being economical was a way of life for average Americans. I chose to cloth diaper my daughter for an old-fashioned reason: it's cheap. By most estimates, the cost to diaper the average baby in disposable diapers from birth to potty training is around $2000 (According to Consumer Reports). An extravagant, top-of-the-line cloth diaper system runs less than $1000 (closer to $600-$700; I'm just trying to be generous), and it can be used again on subsequent children. Although you can argue that cloth diapers are easier on the environment (I personally feel this is fairly obvious), disposable diapers just seem generally wasteful to me.

I live in a townhouse complex, and every Sunday evening, our neighbors put their overflowing garbage cans out for pickup the next morning. Every row of units has a row of cans that are too full for the lids to close properly. For the life of me, I do not know how these people generate so much garbage. We live in such an affluent suburban American culture that it's even financially possible to throw that much stuff away. Reusable plates, napkins, and diapers are so much cheaper. Yes, they require a little more time and a little more work, but if money's tight, it's completely worth it. Everything in those garbage cans had to be paid for at some point. If you're throwing away less, you're probably spending less.

Although cost was the deciding factor in cloth diapering for us, there are other benefits. We've never had to run to the store in the middle of the night because we ran out of diapers. We rarely have to deal with blowouts (On our brief stint using disposables, we had to change her outfit every time we changed her diaper). Our daughter has never had a diaper rash. There are studies that show disposable diapers may be linked to a higher risk of asthma also, so cloth diapers are probably healthier for babies' respiratory systems, but I can't claim to have reaped that benefit in any tangible manner. I was cloth diapered, and I have asthma, so clearly other factors are involved as well.

I have heard some people object to cloth diapering because they don't want to have to deal with poop and pee too much. Reality is that having a baby means your life revolves around bodily functions and fluids, whether you use cloth or not. To me, washing poop out of cloth diapers is no different than having to wash poop off her bottom every day. As a mom, you just have to deal with poop. And if you have a dog (which I do), baby poop is no big deal at all.

As I said, I never really considered disposables. We use real plates and cloth napkins. We cook most of our own meals, and we don't get fast-food very often (although we do fall prey to the lure of Costco's hotdogs for $1.50 about once a week). Cloth diapers just make more sense for us. And we're probably the only family in our complex who could easily have our garbage picked up every other week and still fit the lid on our can on garbage night.