(Happy Throwback Thursday! A version of this article was originally published Jan. 30, 2014. As an Amazon affiliate, I may receive a small commission if you purchase using my affiliate link.)
Yesterday I read an article about continuing shortages on things like disinfectants, toilet paper* and diapers. The piece suggested you could make emergency diapers out of T-shirts.
Couldn’t resist that notion, so I watched a YouTube video on how to turn that old 10k shirt into a COVID-19 hack. It sounds counterintuitive somehow, but cloth diapers are made of cotton, too, so it sorta-kinda makes sense.
Note: The diaper “shortage” is likely due to panic-buying rather than a diaper industry failure. Parents see emptying shelves, which makes them fear potential shortages, which in turn creates actual shortages.
It’s also led to a boom in the cloth diaper industry, according to an article in Today. These didies can be super-pricey. It’s a far cry from way, way back in the day, when I paid $2.99 per dozen for cloth diapers. Believe it or not, they were “slightly irregular.” Yes, I swathed my daughter’s butt in factory seconds.
What’s more, after moving to Philadelphia I had to wash the diapers by hand on a scrub-board and dry them on wooden racks. As a broke and exhausted single mom, I could afford neither the time nor the money to go to the laundromat. I hope none of you are ever that hard up.
Cloth diapers really aren’t as awful as people think. These days they’re prefolded like disposables, so you just tuck them into covers (no more plastic pants). In fact, these diapers are so well-made that they actually have resale value after Junior gets toilet-trained.
Yes, there’s a bit of an “ick” factor, but let’s face it: If you have a baby, you are going to have to touch some poop even if you use disposables.
Here’s how to save money on cloth diapers.
1. Buy them at consignment stores
Parents are doing the butt dance after their kids are toilet-trained, because they can make back some of the money they spent. Sometimes that’s at a consignment store, which means you can buy them cheaper than first-run, as it were.
2. Buy directly from other parents
Look on a parenting board, check Craigslist, put it out in the universe when you’re expecting.
Recently a mom in my Buy Nothing Facebook group gave away a lot of cloth diapers. So check there, too, or put out an ask on the page. (For more info, see “Need something? Buy Nothing.”)
3. Buy them with rewards points
Cash in from rewards credit cards or the MyPoints or Swagbucks programs, then use the gift cards to buy diapers. (And while you’re over at Swagbucks, check out the buybuy Baby coupons and cash-back shopping bonuses.)
4. Try the “no-diaper” movement
Also known as “Elimination Communication,” it means learning your baby’s cues about needing to void and putting the baby in a potty chair or holding him over the toilet. Either way, the practice greatly reduces the number of cloth diapers you use. Some parents say they don’t use any at all – that EC works so well you never end up washing diapers or throwing away disposables.
Note: If your child-care provider or day-care center won’t play along, just use EC at home to reduce your diapering costs.
5. Get a diaper service
This is surprisingly affordable in some areas. And if you want to use cloth but don’t have access to a washer and dryer (or a scrub-board), it’s pretty essential. (Pro tip: When relatives and friends ask what you want for a shower gift, ask if they’ll split the cost of a service for at least the first few months.)
6. Make your own
Do a search for “how to make prefold diapers” and another one for “how to make diaper covers.” People are crafting didies from items like yard-sale flannel sheets, thrift-store sweaters (which get felted) and all sorts of other thrifty things. Maybe even T-shirts, in a pinch.
Readers: Do you/did you use cloth diapers?
*A few days ago I noticed the first package of toilet paper we’d seen in the past seven weeks. Also the last package, as it was alone on the shelf. And yep, I bought it.
Related reading:
Had to laugh at your last comment. One of my favorite stories about my Mom is that Dad came upon her in the bathroom, doing the souse-the-diaper thing and bawling her eyes out. “What’s wrong, honey?” he asked. “I’m tired of being the middleman for a ball of $hit!” she wailed.
Of course, this was in the ’50s — there WERE no disposables!
My grandmother was the oldest girl in a big family. She told me that whenever she winced at dunking diapers (her siblings’ or her own kids’), she was told that it was good for her hands.
“If that’s true then I should have had the nicest hands in the world,” she snorted.
And speaking of old wives’ tales that get passed down…..when I had my babies in the ’70s an older woman, in her 70s, told me that you should wipe the urine soaked diaper on the baby’s face after you take it off of them. She swore it gave them beautiful skin.
Needless to say I was horrified and did no such thing.
For my first 2 children, my Dad gave me a gift of the diaper delivery service. We were in Philly then, and disposables had just come out. I remember the sign on the back of the diaper service truck which said,
“Would you put your husband in paper underpants?” Ha!
Since Dad believed that NO ONE should have more than 2 children (though he had 3) he did not provide diaper service for my following 3 children. I washed those diapers in the washing machine—and lived to tell the tale (no pun intended).
Hey, I washed quite a few in the sink and neither of us died. Not once.
It’s a different mindset these days, just as it is with eating so many meals out: Although it costs a lot more than doing these things at home, people seem to have the expectation.
I know that some people simply will not use cloth diapers, or cook consistently. Those are their choices, but they need to make those choices with a clear-eyed look at the bottom (ahem) line: If you routinely spend three or four times as much on food or diapers than you need to spend, it will have a definite impact on your budget.
End of lecture. Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.
Yo, Donna. Ya’ preachin’ to da choir. We are on the same page. As an aside, and not exactly on topic, but in my day (the ’60s) most Dads did not change diapers, and certainly not if they wrote for the Inky!
Most people throw out disposable diapers–contents and all. This is terrible for our landfills/environment. One is really supposed to flush the solids down the toilet–making cloth no more “yukky” than disposables.
We used cloth on two kids and I figure that cloth diapers plus breast feeding (and I worked full time–it can be done) provided the beginnings of their college funds.
I am quite passionate on the topic and hope I get some grandchildren so I can gift them with some cloth diapers!
We spent about $250 dollars on diapers, covers and a diaper genie (the sprayer that made diaper cleaning SO MUCH easier) when my first child was born. We used those same diapers for three kids and sold them for $40 on Craig’s List afterwards to a very thankful buyer. When the first diaper sprayer went bad during kid #2, we went to the plumbing supply store, told the guy what we were hoping to achieve, and he sleuthed out all the parts we needed – only $8 instead of $50 for that diaper genie! Cloth diapering is definitely the way to go, especially since those cloth diapers feel wet and uncomfortable once used and encourage those little cuties to start using the potty around age 2!
I used the diapers for years as cleaning cloths, once it became obvious (to me, anyway) that I wasn’t having any more children. They’re also great for waxing cars, I hear.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.
Thanks for the link! I would totally encourage anyone to do part-time elimination communication. It’s totally addicting and boy does it save money (and diaper rash). We actually use a combination of ec, cloth, and disposables, using whatever is easiest at the time. And EC means a LOT less of having to clean poo off a bottom. Pooing becomes a one quick wipe job. So much less disgusting.
There’s a small learning curve with EC, but nowhere near as big as we’d thought it would be, and it’s smaller the earlier you start. Babies really do have to be trained to use diapers. Part-time means whenever it gets to be a hassle, you just stick on a diaper.
We did something like this with my niece, way back in 1973. A sub-par babysitter left her in wet diapers a lot and she developed a nasty rash. My mom thought it would do her good to lie around without a diaper. Then she thought, “Why NOT put her on the potty?”
People scoffed, but my niece very quickly picked up on the “pee here, not there.” For some reason I spaced this when I was a mom myself, five years later. Maybe I was too tired to remember. But it’s a cinch that the child-care center wouldn’t have gone along with it anyway.
The beauty of part time ec is that it can be done at home but not at daycare. Though I gotta say we’re really happy that dc2’s new daycare potties the toddlers.
I guess that back then, as an overwhelmed 21-year-old single mom, it didn’t occur to me to think outside the box. Or the diaper pail.
We didn’t realize it could be done p/t until we read The Diaper Free Baby, which was published a long time after you were 21. We’d heard of it, but thought it had to be all or nothing, and we certainly couldn’t do all.
Another tip is that if you want to buy new diapers then 1) research & choose your kind early, 2) learn which sites sell them, and 3) be very very patient. We use BumGenius diapers and for the last several years they have usually done a Buy-5-Get-1-Free sale for a couple weeks in the spring & the fall. When you’re buying two dozen diapers @ $18 each (& two years later you need another batch of two dozen since you’ll have two in diapers) that can really add up to some savings!
Good to know. Thanks!
Cloth diapers are the best! Even when you go expensive, you beat the costs of disposable. I would probably save even more money if I didn’t think they were so darn cute, and buy more than I need.
I used cloth for the first one in the seventies, but seventeen years later in the nineties I used disposables for the second one, and the cloth diapers for burp cloths. Eventually I boxed up all the cloth ones and sent them with a missionary to Ethiopia.
We went cloth all the way in the 90s, and it could’t have been easier. He potty trained at 2, and she right before. I didn’t track the prices, but we were gifted with diapers from the baby shower (and ridiculed), but passed them on to a like-minded soul when we were through. Definitely cheaper than those awful disposables.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I did the cloth diaper route with the plastic pants, but I did keep a box disposable for when we had to go somewhere for the whole day like a doctor appt or visiting relatives. We live far from anything. Unlike you, I was able to use a washing machine for the diapers which was a god-send. I can hardly believe my daughter will be 47 this month! Where did the time go?
I was really wondering what I was going to do, if I didn’t soon get toilet paper, as I didn’t stock up and for 5 weeks I couldn’t find any. Yesterday I got a grocery pick-up at a small store and for the last 5 weeks I put down toilet paper on my list. The girl called and said I can’t give you a pack, but can give you 3 rolls. Success! Even Walmart still doesn’t have any. I order between those 2 stores so I don’t have to go in a store. We live in a small town and there are quite a few cases here.
I’m another 90s mum who cloth diapered both my daughters (2 years apart, so there was a time when I had two kids in cloth diapers). I have fond (?) memories of trucking down to the laundry room in my apartment complex with two steaming pails, but it really wasn’t a burden because it saved us a boatload of money and was better for the environment, to boot. I found the hardest thing about cloth diapers was finding someone who could teach me how to fold the darn things – they were the really old school ones that were just large squares of white cotton flannel – but I bet I could still fold one. Somethings you don’t forget!
I had to conduct a cloth diaper seminar at my daughter’s child-care center, because none of the employees had ever even seen one, let alone used one.
I used a baby sized teddy bear to show a friend how to use cloth diapers in the early 1990s. She went on to successfully cloth diaper twins. We used the old fashioned kind with our son, born in 1990, because we had a washer and dryer and could not afford to throw money away on disposables. They cost about as much then as they do now.
I used cloth diapers back in the day…the 1980s. I first thought about it in nursing school when one of my fellow classmates did a study to compare the cost effectiveness of cloth over disposables. The cloth diapers, including initial cost plus washing, drying and detergent, won hands down. When I was pregnant with my first child I heard of a floating Pamper Island in the ocean. I’m sure there was other trash in there too but apparently the disposable diapers made up the bulk. That clinched it. All three of my kids wore cloth diapers and my pocketbook thanked me.
I used cloth on my first in 1968 and on my second in 1970. Because the first, a boy just did not want to be trained, I had two in diapers for nine months. In 1975 I had to buy diapers for another baby. I did buy a box of Pampers for when we were going out of the house. My daughter refused to go cloth, so she used only disposable. That boy did not want to give up diapers. I think he did not feel the icky wet. I still have diapers I used in 1968 that I use now for dusting.
I used cloth diapers on all 3 of mine; this was in the 70s. At one time we were very broke, had just moved, no washer; I washed them in the tub and hung them on a clothesline. They stayed nice and white. After everyone was out of diapers, they made great dust rags.
I used cloth diapers on my kids, in the 80’s. It was always my intent to do it, since we had very little money. I was given a lot of Pampers when the first was born, and I was appalled at the volume in my garbage can each week. We used those up, then went to just cloth, unless we had to be out somewhere. Fortunately, when I returned to work, our sitter, an older lady, didn’t mind cloth diapers. I hung them outside on the clothesline when the weather permitted. I would wander through the remnant section of the fabric store and buy flannel, and make my own at times too. My oldest is now 31, and I still have a few of those cloth diapers, and use them for dusting.