The Cost of Diapering: Disposables

*I'd like to start by apologising for the coloring of my text here. I had tried to simply highlight subtitles using colored text and for some reason, half of everything is red, and I cna't change it back:(

Disposables

Disposables have some pros and cons, just like any other system. I have used them, I have brands I like and brands that you'd have to point a gun at my family for me to force myself to use. In fact there is a brand, that shall remain un-named that I would rather let me baby run around naked all day than put on him. Simply because they leak like nothing I've ever seen before. I actually have less messes to clean up and less laundry when I let my kid do his business on the floor (because it doesn't get all squished out the back and legs of a diaper before getting all over his clothing and whatever he's sitting on or in when he's wearing it!). However a brand I do like is Parent's Choice. For my math I will be using this brand.

Lets set some ground rules for math. I will assume you use 10 diapers a day, every day for three years. I will assume you either wash your cloth diapers or dispose of your used disposables every two days, as I do. I will assume you use only 5 wipes a day, rather than taking advantage of a convenience and using them to wash hands, faces, runny noses, dirty high chair trays etc. After all, we're calculating the cost of diapering, not cleaning. Just keep in mind that if you use your wipes for other things simply because they are available then you are adding the cost to diapering your child. I will assume that like me, you enjoy saving money and buy the best quality at the lowest price. These rules will apply to each part in this series.

The Math:

10 Parents Choice diapers per day (using size 3 96 pack for $13.97)
Cost of each: ------------------ $0.15
Daily Cost: ------------------ $1.50
Weekly Cost: ------------------ $10.50
Monthly Cost: ------------------ $42
Yearly Cost: ------------------ $504
After 3 years, you've spent:---- $1,512

The Wipes:

5 Parents Choice Wipes per day (using the 528 pack, regular wipes for $8.97)
Cost of each: ---------- $0.02
Daily Cost: ---------- $0.10
Weekly Cost: ---------- $0.70
Monthly Cost:---------- $2.80
Yearly Cost: ---------- $33.60
3 Years: ---------- $100.80

Diaper Pail and Liners:

Cheap $15 pail ----------- $15
Can Liners (40 per box @ $7
Cost of Each: ----------- $0.18
Weekly Cost: ----------- $o.54 (assuming you take the diapers out 3 x a week)
Monthly: ----------- $2.16
Yearly: ----------- $25.92
3 Years: ----------- $77.76


A few things we will not be adding into our cost is diaper cream (you'll likely have to buy that no matter what you use, and cloth friendly creams are not significantly higher priced) deodorizers as that is a personal choice. I don't feel the need to use them when we use cloth, but I can't stand the smell of a used disposable (some how it just smells like urine soaked chemicals to me and makes me feel ill). I also assumed you chose to purchase a very inexpensive trash can rather than putting $25 + into a pail that you had to purchase special liners for and deodorizing discs. After all this is a Frugal Friday. Costly Refills are not frugal.

Lets add up all the totals here:

Diapers: ---------- $1,512.00
Wipes: ---------- $0,100.80
Trash Can: ---------- $0,015.00
Trash Bags: ---------- $0,077.76

Grand Total for 3 yrs: $1,705.56

Just for Kicks here's the total for the Wipes, Pail, and liners so you can compare it to the cost of the reusable options:

Grand total for 3 yrs: $193.56

In Summary I"d like to remind you of a few things. I have used the cheapest option of disposables (which happen to leak the least in my experience, and be my preferred choice). I've cut some corners by calculating the use of a regular garbage pail. I have not included coupons (in my experience, coupons tend to make name brand items either more $$ or the same price as the store brand). With some excellent coupon skills you may be able to do disposables for much cheaper. If that's the case, kudos to you and let us know how in the comment section!

Be sure to check out next weeks Frugal Friday on how to eliminate the recurring cost of disposable accessories that are required in diapering.

Intro to the Cost of Diapering Series

Welcome to my first Frugal Friday! Part of my mission in business is to provide you an affordable way to raise your kids. As a maker of lovely woolies, my mission statement for The Sleepy Sheep is: Providing you a way to affordably diaper your baby in comfort and style! And I mean it! That's why my prices are low and my items are cute ;) In real life though, I want you to be able to provide the best for your family while staying afloat financially. So I will do my best at providing you the information to do that here on Frugal Fridays. What's first? Well, read on my friend.

I have been thinking about the cost of diapering over the last several months. There is more than a financial cost, regardless of the system you use to diaper your child. With disposables you have to make sure you always have them on hand, if you run out (with as spacey as I am, that would happen at least once a month) you have to make a special trip to the store. You have to take the time do the fancy pail thing (I found the diaper genie to be a little complicated and hard to deal with working in day cares and helping friends out). With cloth you have to make sure you always have a few clean ones on hand (so pretty much the same as making sure you're always stocked up on 'sposies) and do the laundry. It really doesn't take any more time or effort to actually change a baby depending on what style of cloth you use.

** I would like to point out that I am not a 'sposie basher as some die hard cloth users are. I may want to cloth diaper my babies for various reasons, but there are various reasons to use disposables as well. It is a valid system, regardless of cost, waste and what they're made of. I have used sposies on my children, and while I cringe every time I put one on them, I do not have anything against them or die hard sposie users. Thank you **

Here is a general outline that may change at my choosing for various reasons.

1. Disposables since it is the most widely used system
2. Various re-usable accessories needed for cloth diapers, including cloth wipes, wet bags (in place of garbage bags or pails used for sposies) wipe solution etc. This will set the stage and numbers to add to each consecutive cloth diapering system. I will also include an optional price of using cloth training pants instead of just going strait to underwear.
   
3. All in Ones and All in Twos because they are the most expensive and most similar to sposie use. They are also seen as the easiest form of cloth by many.
4. Pocket Diapers because they are the next most expensive and similar to sposies as well
5. Covers. This will set the stage for the various systems requiring an absorbent cloth diaper and a waterproof cover. This will include PUL covers, Vinyl pants, and of course, all things wool ;)
6. Fitteds are the most expensive absorbent, cover-less diaper.
7. Prefolds are next in line, being a mainstream 'cheap' option for cloth diapering
8. Flats, also the least expensive but less used than prefolds. Flats are also considered to be too complicated for most.
9. Making your own diapers and or covers
10. The cost of Laundering diapers. This will be complicated to do and will require some real math and experimenting. In fact it may become a mini series within this larger series. What I have planned is to test drive using disposables for a month and keep tabs on our water bill. This will even require me to 'log' water usage that is variable or out of the ordinary. Then I will do the same using cloth, again logging out of the ordinary water usage and things that vary like how much we water the yard and garden. This may not even work out, but if I decide to start I will blog on it week by week so you can see my progress and that I am doing it. This way if the cost of laundering actually makes the cost of using cloth more than the cost of using disposables I can't back out and not share ;) Hopefully that will ensure skeptical readers that I am being honest. I"ll even copy my water bill and post it here, after blurring some personal information.
    
11. A summary, giving you a short and sweet, to the point comparison from the various diapering systems.
    

At the beginning of each post I will give a short summary of the system, giving you any pertinent information. I will also give you my opinions on the various systems of diapering.

If you have any suggestions, see anything I"m missing or otherwise have some thing to add, please do!! You might notice, if you're keen on such things, that I have not touched on EC or Elimination Communication. At this point, I don't plan to include that in this series. I may post a separate blog on EC in the future, but at this point I am pretty clueless. If you EC your child(ren) and would like to be a guest blogger, please email me at thesleepysheep [dot] reckling [at] gmail [dot] com.

Check out this awesome blog post on the same subject as my series ;)

http://diaperfluff.blogspot.com/2011/05/1614483-vs-138505.html?spref=tw

Happy Frugal Friday!