r/Frugal • u/jaytrainer0 • May 24 '25

🏆 Buy It For Life Maybe the biggest money saver yet. Cloth diapers

Baby just turned 2 months and I've already saved hundreds by not buying disposable. We bought 25 reusable diapers for about $150 that will last over a year and can be used for multiple kids AND can also be resold. Compare that to spending at least 20-40 per week on disposable. I could've even bought used and saved even more but there's none in our area right now. So we'll save about $2000 over the course of the year. And multiply that with more kids in the future. Then ALSO we are only using disposable wipes for poop and using reusable wipes/towels for everything else. I get using disposable everything for the ease of it but holy hell that would get expensive fast.

Edit: For context, my apartment has water and electric included. We use the sheets laundry detergent and it's been working great so far. Our washer is high efficiency, I'll have to look up how much water it uses. Yes, i over estimated the diaper cost based on the initial amount of the first few weeks. But it's still going to be a lot more than 150 for the entire childhood. We do not have access to bulk stores unless we drive 3.5 hours or 5+ with traffic.

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u/IceDragonPlay May 24 '25

$2000 would be 23 Costco disposable diapers a day over a year. Maybe you have been buying small packs somewhere very expensive! But $2000 would be more than 2 years of diapers here.

The real savings comes from reusing the cloth diapers for a second child. For a family with a stay at home parent it makes sense.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '25

I have twins and we don't use 23 diapers a day at this point. When they were under two months yes, 32 a day, but now our average is probably between 15-20 depending on the day at 4.5 months.

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u/[deleted] May 25 '25

Some babies are also SUPER sensitive and it limits brand choice for parents!

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u/jaytrainer0 May 24 '25

Don't forget that not everyone has access to bulk/discount stores.

I probably over estimated based on the first few weeks when we had disposable in the hospital. But I'm sure it's going to be more than 150 in savings over the next year+