The Ease of Cloth Wipes

I did not plan on using cloth wipes when I began my search for cloth diapers. My primary motivation for using cloth diapers was (and still is) saving money, and I really didn't see that using disposable wipes would be that expensive. A friend had told me that her family had gone through less than a Costco case of disposable wipes in her daughter's first 11 months. I had no frame of reference for that comment, so I just assumed that was normal. If so, that was about $20 for wipes for one year, which didn't make cloth wipes seem like an economical option to me. Now that I'm four and a half months into parenthood, I have no idea how on earth my friend stretched those wipes so far. Obviously, my daughter is far messier than hers was. We are halfway through our second case of wipes, and we primarily ended up using cloth wipes after all.

Ultimately, we switched to cloth wipes for convenience, not financial reasons. Although I do think cloth wipes will ultimately be cheaper, it ended up being a pain to have to sort dirty wipes from dirty diapers at a diaper change. All parents know that, regardless of cloth or disposable diapers, when you change a dirty diaper, you wrap the dirty wipes up inside. If you're using cloth diapers with disposable wipes, you can't really do this. You have to sort the wipes into the trash can and the diapers into the diaper pail. This goes against a parent's natural instinct. Many is the time that I have fished shredded and partially disintegrated disposable wipes from the interior of my washing machine after a load of diapers. It's gross and inconvenient. If you use cloth wipes, you can stick the wipes inside the diaper and throw them both in the diaper pail, without having to try to remember to put the wipes in the garbage. I know this seems like it shouldn't be a big deal, but after fishing for the tenth disposable wipe in my washing machine, I realized it was. Twenty dollars later (the cost of a case of wipes from Costco), I have enough cloth wipes for full-time use, and it's so much more convenient. As a surprise bonus, I typically only use one or two wipes per poopy diaper. With dispoables, the typical poopy diaper took around five to six wipes. And those cloth wipes will last basically forever, which is much better than having to shell out $20 every three months.