Re:Why are diapers so expensive?
by NoGravitas on Friday April 06, 2018 @08:25AM
(#16772637)
Cloth diapers are fantastic, but they're a case of "Sam Vimes' Boots"[0]. Over the course of a year, they're a lot cheaper than disposable diapers, especially if you can get hand-me-downs from a friend or eg. a local parents group on Facebook. BUT, the initial outlay is still way too much for most working-class people, and they're really only practical if you have a washing machine at home. We ended up buying a used dryer when we had our first child, just because the diapers didn't dry fast enough on the line during the winter. The article mentions that a lot of coin laundries don't allow you to wash them there, and besides, you'd be at the laundromat at least once a day.
[0]: http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Sam_Vimes_Theory_...
Therefore, the cost of diapers is probably quite a bit less than $1000/year even in the worst case.
We've also invested in decent reusable cloth diapers. To buy "enough" of them so we aren't running out or doing laundry on a small set of them every few hours, we spent around $600 or $700 for a good bunch of them. These are reusable for years, and even across children. There's even a decent resale market for them if you can believe it. By far they are the cheapest means of diapering children, especially multiple children over time. However, the downside is quite an increased amount of laundry logistics. And, in some cases, it doesn't obviate the need for disposable diapers. For example, if you're going somewhere for the whole day, it might be easier to use disposables since you don't have to carry around soiled cloth diapers. Or if the kids visit other family... sometimes just simpler to rely on disposables.