My 1 Year Cloth Diapering Anniversary

This week marks one year for me of cloth diapering.  So I thought I'd take a look back and reflect on this past year of diapering for me.  Oh the joys of being a mom!

Elissa in her pretty BumGenius 4.0

MaryBeth talked about clothing diapering here, in the fall, and what her families reasons were for choosing to go this route.  But I have never shared my story of cloth diapering, and why I chose to do it.

A year ago, Elissa was almost 3 months old and Cameron was turning 2.  I knew at some point in the next year, he would probably start potty training, but really had not clue as to when that would start.  My husband was also, in between jobs, and I was pinching every penny and becoming quite the coupon queen.  I looked at every corner of our budget and did what I could to cut things out and save.  But that diapering budget was staring me in the face. Let me break it down for you here,  it always makes me feel so good to see how much I'm keeping in my pocket every month.  I was spending an average of $9, every week, for diapers for each child...that's $18 a week....that's $72 a month!!!!!  And then I realized I was going through an entire box of wipes as well in about a months time.  And that's the king size box from Sam's club.  So tack on another $10 every month, and you can round my diaper budget to a whopping  $80 every single month!  I thought that was ridiculous.  You can do a lot with $80.   Then I remembered my friend who cloth diapered.

Now, when I first heard my friend was cloth diapering, I laughed.  I thought she was crazy.  Then I saw her cloth diapers.  And realized they don't look anything like they did when I was a kid.  They were actually really cute!  But I still thought she was nuts and that it was probably really gross!

But the thought of saving $80, caused me to start doing a little research into cloth diapering.  I read a few blogs, watched a few YouTube videos on how people changed cloth diapers, washed them, etc.  And the more I looked into it the more excited I got about it.

Now I had two kids to cloth diaper and I knew I couldn't afford a full supply of the "cadillac" of diapers up front.
So I order a few of the BumGenius 3.0's  for convenience 'on the go' or at church.

BumGenius 4.0's

Then I ordered the Flip System for Elissa to use as her main diaper.  Which are still fun, colorful and easy to use.  But much cheaper!  My husband actually preferred to use the Flips over the BumGenius.

Flip Diaper

For Cameron, since I knew he wouldn't be diapering too much longer, I went with the cheapest route, their Econobums.  This 1 box was less than $50, and had enough diapers and covers to last me 2 full days for Cameron, before I had to do laundry!  That's amazing!  You can cloth your kid for life, for what it would cost you to buy disposables for an entire month!

Econobum

After a week or so to get in the routine, I  found how easy it really is to cloth diaper.   I really feared in the beginning, that it would be such a hassle.  But honestly, it's easier than washing baby bottles.

During the summer, Cameron began the potty training adventure, so Elissa has quite a stocked supply of cloth diapers now.  I've collected a few more Bum Genius 3.0's and some of the newer 4.0's.  So I use mostly the BumGenius with Elissa on a daily basis.  They are sooo easy to use, even a dad can do it.  I use the Econobums for just overnight now on both kids.  They are super absorbent.

I'm thankful I made the switch to cloth.  It has saved my family a lot of money (making it easier for me to be a Stay at Home Mom), they are cute, they are friendly to the earth God has given us, and it's healthier for my children (no chemicals).   So Happy 1 Year of savings in my pocket to me!!!

Does anyone else cloth diaper?   Have you ever considered cloth diapering?  What brand/type of cloth diaper do you use?

Cloth Diapering for a Modern Era?

Laura and I (the women behind The Blue Ladybug) are going to be working hard in the coming weeks to open up our lives and let you get to know us better! We each have a story that brought us to the place we are at now as working-at-home-moms! We have unique challenges and joys in our lives, but we also have found that we have alot in common. And it was those commonalities that drew us together to do this business!

We were pregnant at the same time and gave birth to our little ones just one day apart, without realizing how those two little lives would bring us together on this exciting journey of starting an online business! Not only did we both (separately) begin our future crafting careers by making cute things for our new babes, but we were both looking for ways to save money! And one huge way we did that was when we both discovered the wonderful world of modern cloth diapering! Here's the brief version of my decision to cloth diaper:

I was pregnant with my first, and was doing LOTS of online research on all things pregnancy and baby! When I first approached the subject to my husband, Tim, it was kindof jokingly. I had read of women still cloth diapering, but all we could think about was diaper pins and plastic covers that leaked everywhere. As I learned about all the benefits to cloth diapering and was encouraged my a friend of mine who also cloth diapered, Tim and I talked seriously about it. We were so impressed with how far cloth diapers had come from the days our parents and grandparents did it. We were primarily convinced based on the amount of money that we would save. We crunched the numbers and figured that we would save approx. $1200 in the 2 1/2 -3 years we would be diapering our first child. (Plus we figured we would also end up diapering two children at the same time eventually) But financial savings weren't the only factor that swayed us. They are also environmentally responsible! Environmental issues were never a real concern to me until I learned that billions of pounds of landfill waste are created every year just from disposable diapers alone! Cloth diapers are also healthier, with no risk of chemical reaction and less risk for diaper rash and dryness. Cloth diapers are also EASY- easy to use, easy to care for! Many of them are designed like disposables! Everything I do when changing a cloth diaper is the same as when I change a disposable. All that's different is I toss any solids into the toilet and then toss the used diaper in the diaper pail. When its time to wash them, I just take the pail liner downstairs to my washing machine and throw it all in! And I can't forget to mention how CUTE cloth diapers are! They come in a variety of colors and prints!

There are SO many different brands and styles of cloth diapers, but the ones we finally settled on and love are BumGenius made by Cotton Babies. (You'll have to hear from Laura about her experience with other Cotton Babies products.) So now I've been doing this for 8 months, and I'm loving it (if that's not too weird to say about diapering choices!). It's way easier than I thought it would be, it's saving a couple tons of landfill waste, and keeping a lot more money in our pockets!

cloth vs disposable facts

Top Ten cloth diapering myths

Top Ten reasons to cloth diaper