For This House
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
Every Season. Every Space. All for Him.
March 23, 2024 | 6 min read
Katie Vaniman, guest author
I’ll never forget the day I started cloth diapering.
My 3-month-old daughter was squirming on the changing table, I lifted her bum and slid on a pink “Soft-bums” diaper. I velcroed the straps, I checked for any gaps, made sure the fit was good. And then took a deep breath.
I had done it… I had put on my First. Cloth. Diaper. EVER.
It was a feeling of excitement mixed with some nervousness.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t actually decide to cloth diaper because of any money saving or environmental concerns (both are huge pros to cloth diapering), nor was it because of the oh-so-cute cloth diaper prints (also a huge bonus, who needs pants when you have such a cute diaper?!).
No, my decision to cloth diaper came long before I knew any of these benefits. I was 17 and my cousin was pregnant with her first and she told me she planned to cloth diaper. I looked up to this cousin like a big sister. And so there it was, without even realizing it, my decision was made.
I didn’t need to know the ins and outs of cloth diapering at that point. I’d figure it all out later.
When I was pregnant with my first and had my ambitions set on cloth diapering, I did have to do some soul searching.
I would tell friends and family that I wanted to cloth diaper and they would look at me like I was literally insane and say things like, “but then you have to deal with the poop in the diapers” or “I think it’s way too much work.”
Were they right? Could I really do it?
But I was convinced that this was the right route for our family.
So I set a date when my baby girl turned 3 months old, then we would start using cloth diapers.
I researched. I ordered the diapers. I prepped them. I did my “Fluff Love University” reading. I texted my cousin so many questions. I felt empowered, and yet I was anxious.
Finally, the day had finally come, I could hold off no longer. Over the next few days I learned that cloth diapering was SO much easier than I would have ever thought possible.
In fact, I’m seriously surprised more people don’t do it, or attempt to cloth diaper at least 50-70% of the time.
So I wanted to debunk some common cloth diapering myths to encourage you, if you are leaning toward cloth or even wondering why in the world anyone would choose to cloth diaper their child.
While—yes—poop is gross, I can confidently tell you that you deal with poop no matter what, whether you use cloth diapers or disposables.
In fact, during the first 6 months, if you breastfeed, the poop is water soluble so you don’t even need to rinse the diaper, you just throw it in the diaper pail and wash it as normal. I even found that cloth diapers contained the blowouts better because of the elastic legs and waists that held in the poop.
Then after you introduce solids, you’ll easily get a cleaning system down, like dunking it in the toilet and flushing it away or installing a sprayer, spraying it and flushing it away. It just becomes a normal part of your routine. So if you’re going to be changing poopy diapers no matter what, you may at least save a little money and benefit the environment while doing it.
Cloth diaper startup costs can range, typically costing anywhere between $5-25 per diaper. So let’s say you spent about $250 on brand new cloth diapers for your child, which is about what we spent (even though you could easily find used ones for sale online if you’d rather buy some pre-loved diapers).
I bought new cloth diapers for our first, planning that it would be for multiple children (although they were all girly prints, so when our youngest rolled around and was a boy, I sold the girly ones for used boyish prints for $50). So the total I have spent on cloth diapers is $300.
Alternatively, disposable diapers are typically $0.30/diaper (or more, depending on the brand and size of the diaper) and if you go through 5 or 6 diapers a day, it costs anywhere between $550-$650 for one year of disposable diapering. You would break even on what you spend on disposables in less than 6 months or shorter depending on how much you spent on your cloth diapers. And that’s only for one year with one child, if you diaper for 2+ years and have multiple children, cloth diapers will cost a fraction of the cost of disposables.
I will admit that cloth diapers do require a little extra time and care. Personally, I do two extra loads of laundry each week and then prep the diapers before I put them back away. And because they don’t have that oh-so convenient yellow to blue line that most disposables have, I change the diaper typically every three hours.
But do I personally believe that they are too much work? Of course I don’t (which is likely just my bias talking). They have to be laundered every 2-3 days, so just keep an airtight step can in your nursery to keep in the smell between washings.
I think that the rhythm of laundering your cloth diapers and the frequency of changing a diaper may take a little getting used to at first, but once you find your rhythm, it is not a heavy burden to bear, but just a part of daily life. So yes, I will admit that the myth is partially true, they require a little more work but not an overwhelming, unbearable amount of work. Plus the amount of money being saved makes the extra work feel worth it.
I am 6 years and 3 kids deep into my cloth diapering journey, and I can say that, yes, cloth diapering can feel harder when you have more children running around, more laundry to do, more messes to clean, etc. But as I said above, building in the rhythms of cloth diapering is what makes it doable.
Beyond that, the biggest lesson I have learned when parenting (especially multiple children) is how important it is to give yourself grace. Giving yourself grace when cloth diapering means it’s okay to use disposables… whenever you feel overwhelmed by laundry, the poop just grosses you out, at night, when you’re sick, on trips, day trips, etc. It’s okay to even pick one day of a week where you just do disposables and do cloth the rest of the time. It’s okay if the cloth diaper wasn’t on right and there was a leak, or you waited too long to change it and there is a leak. It’s okay.
I will go so far as to say that if you cloth diaper, you will mess up. What a comfort to know that no one does it perfectly. That’s right where God will meet you.
A few years ago I was introduced to the book Every Moment Holy—a book filled with liturgical prayers concerning the everyday moments of life. This book has not one, but two prayers dedicated to diaper changing. Hallelujah!
The first prayer resonates so deeply with me, it starts out by saying:
“In such menial moments as this,
the changing of a diaper
I would remember this truth:
My unseen labors are not lost,
for it is these repeated acts of small sacrifice
that like bright, ragged patches are slowly being sewn
into a quilt of lovingkindness that swaddles this child.“
And then goes on and ends with these remarkable words:
“So take this unremarkable act of necessary service, O Christ,
and in your economy let it be multiplied into
that greater outworking of worship and of faith,
a true investment in the incremental advance
of your kingdom across generations.
Open my eyes that I might see this act for what it is
from the fixed vantage of eternity, O Lord—
how the changing of a diaper might
sit upstream of the changing of a heart;
how the changing of a heart
might sit upstream of the changing of the world.”
What a beautiful reminder of God’s sovereignty, especially in the messy diapering moments of parenthood, that when you’re with your child, caring for your child, changing that diaper, you do it not only because you love your child, but in changing it faithfully you are serving God’s child and serving his kingdom.
Ultimately whether you choose to use a cloth diaper or a disposable one, it is your personal decision, and while I believe that you are more than capable of cloth diapering, I can’t force you to do it.
If it’s not right for you, that’s okay, but thanks for being here, reading these words and resting in the fact that God meets you right where you are, full of so much grace for you.
Katie resides in the Pacific Northwest in the small town of Lynden, WA and currently serves in her church’s Preschool Ministry. She is married to an amazing husband and they have three beautiful kids. When she isn’t folding laundry or doing dishes you might find her exploring outside, reading a book, or baking.