Rotormommy: Cloth Diapering- Our Stash So Far

This is a post I’ve been thinking about doing for a while but finding the time (and motivation) to actually write it has been a problem.

I recently bought the last of what I am going to buy of the cloth diapers until after Dot arrives. I was talking to someone at work about my latest purchase off diaperswappers she was asking about why I didn’t just buy everything brand new. I got to thinking about it and I came up with a couple of reasons.

First off if you ask W he will tell you one thing. I am cheap. He made the comment one time that he thought when they give you an engineering degree you automatically become very cheap. The truth of it is that I have bought a lot of these diapers used and have been able to make minor repairs for very little. Things like sewing on new aplix tabs and putting on snaps don’t cost much. It just takes me getting the motivation to do it all at night when my exhaustion level has hit its high point of the day.

The second reason is that some of these things are expensive at first. As much as I love the BumGenius and Happy Heiny diapers one of them costs between $17 and $18. The upfront costs add up so I started doing daily searches of craigslist.com and diaperswappers.com to see what was available. In addition, I found a good online store moms milk boutique that does free shipping and recently started stocking “pre-loved cloth diapers.” Now this might sound a little odd or gross, but when I get these in they get washed like the other diapers and also stripped (adding a little bleach to the wash cycle and an extra rinse). I have yet to have a problem with doing this so far.

So after thinking about all this I totaled up what I’ve spent on all of these things so far. The cost was right around $315. This includes:
5 BumGenius 3.0’s ( new)
4 Happy Heiny’s (used off craigslist)
20 Bum Genius 2.0’s used (needed new aplix which was free from the manufacturer)
1 Bummi’s wet bag (came with the Happy Heiny’s)
6 Babyland (used.All with snaps)
12 Gerber 3 ply prefolds (new)
24 Gerber flat fold diapers (new)
1 snappi (new)
6 Gerber 6 ply prefolds (new)
2 large thirsties covers (new)
1 size 2 thirsties duo cover (new)
2 size 1 thirsties duo covers (new)
1 Bummi’s organic prefold (used)

I was pretty impressed when I actually looked at how much I got for around $315. I then went and took a good estimate of what everything would have cost brand new. Here is where the shock came in to play. I looked and if I had bought all of these new, the total would have been $760! This amounted to a savings of around $480. For this cost I now feel that we have enough diapers and supplies for baby Dot and Butters together.

We do still occasionally buy disposable diapers. W tends to want to use disposables at night and when he is out, which is fine with me. Generally doing this we go through one box of size 6 Huggies every 2 months, which is far better than going through a box every 2 weeks! For me this is an acceptable compromise considering the overall cost savings.

Also, to make life easier on all of us when I go into the hospital to have Dot we will be packing disposables with Butters then too. Partially because the people keeping Butters aren’t too familiar with them yet and because I don’t want to come home and have to do a load of diapers right away.

So all in all I’m pretty happy with the stash so far. I know that when Dot arrives we will find more of what works and what doesn’t with an infant but for the moment I am happy with what we have and feel prepared for her arrival.

Now for some pictures!