7 Great Reasons to Use Cloth Diapers with Your Baby ...

One of the reasons to use cloth diapers is because dirty disposable diapers can take anywhere from 200-500 years to decompose! The average baby can go through about 5,000-8,000 diapers before toilet training. Not to mention the 1.3 million tons of wood pulp and 82,000 tons of plastic it takes to make the diapers! I read these figures on treehugger.com and was quite taken aback.

Did you know that cloth diapered babies don’t get diaper rashes very often? Cloth diapers also rarely have blowouts! These bits of info come from my own personal experiences with cloth diapering, as well as discussions with fellow mothers who cloth diaper. Cloth diapers are also chemical free, which is better for your baby health-wise, as well as comfort wise!

It’s no secret that you will save a bit of money if you choose to use cloth diapers. Cloth diapers are expensive initially, you can spend anywhere from $4.00 to $20.00+ on one diaper depending on the brand you choose. However, your diapers will pay for themselves in the long run! If you spend around $100 initially on say, 25 diapers, and that pays for 2-3 years of diapering, you have saved yourself money! $100 would only pay for 3-4 boxes of diapers that would only last you a couple of months versus a couple of years.

I love discussing cloth diapers! There is SO much info to be covered. I am constantly learning new techniques, ideas and ways to use, store, or clean cloth diapers. Anytime a family member, friend, or even stranger sees my daughter in a cloth diaper, they ask about it. And that opens the door for me to explain why I love cloth diapers and what is so great about them! It has also “broken the ice” at play dates!

Another thing to love about cloth diapers is how much easier it is to potty train your child when the time arrives. Cloth diapers don’t absorb bowel movements the way a disposable diaper does, so it’s easier for a child to tell when he or she has “gone.” Cloth diapers are also much harder to take off than a disposable, so less chance of a mess being made.

Back in the day, cloth diapering involved sterilizing and scrubbing and folding and pinning. Nowadays, it’s a matter of stuffing and snapping, and that’s it! You may not even need to stuff if you choose a diaper that doesn’t use inserts. With modern conveniences, cloth diapering is 10 times easier than it used to be, and not much extra work at all! An extra load or two of laundry and a few minutes to stuff the diapers and you’re good to go!

Who can resist the urge to coo over a cute cloth diaper on a sweet chubby baby? Cloth diapers are way more adorable than disposables. And you can get nearly any pattern or design your heart desires! It’s hard to keep from going on a diaper shopping spree for me at times!

I also read on treehugger.com that 80% of parents use disposable diapers, which accounts for the United States alone producing 18 billion dirty diapers annually. That’s a lot of waste! What are your thoughts on cloth diapers? Please comment below if you would or have ever tried using cloth diapers and what impact you felt that would have on the environment and your wallet!