Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Crunchy Momma Takeover and Why We Use Cloth Diapers

In the months since I last posted, life has changed rather dramatically. A new tenant has taken a room at the Townhouse Homestead. Now six months old, she shares a name with a famous First Lady. Our own First Lady, Abigail,is now six months old.

We've always tried to live a green life, and we have found that our goal has become even more important to us now that Abby is in the picture. (And such a cute picture it is, taken by Melissa Keys of Keys Photography).

The biggest step we have taken is using cloth diapers instead of disposable diapers. At first, it seemed really intimidating. I was stunned to find out the changes that have been made since I wore cloth diapers as a baby. Pins have been replaced by something magical called a Snappi and that's if the diaper even uses pins at all! There are all kinds of newfangled diaper gadgets, which I will get into later.

So, why use cloth diapers?

1. For us, we started looking into cloth as an earth-friendly option. A child will go through about 6,000 diapers before being potty trained. That's a lot of waste to sit in a landfill.

2. Cost was another huge factor. Remember those 6,000 diapers from a moment ago? That can add up to $1,500 thrown in that landfill.

After we had already decided on cloth diapers, I learned that there were many other reasons: fewer occurrences of diaper rash, fewer blowouts, and earlier potty learning, just to name a few. Plus, many of them are super cute.

At this point in Abby's life, we have just about broken even on our up front investment* (as in what we have saved by not using disposables). And, as cloth diapers have great resale value, I have even sold two diapers for 80% or more of what I paid for them brand new. We also have the satisfaction of knowing that there will be very little cost to diapering subsequent children. Try that with disposables!


Tune in for our next entry to learn about how we cloth diapered our newborn.
*As for those who will argue that we would have an increase in our utility bills, there has not been a noticeable difference.

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