Cost of disposies vs cloth nappies?

[meggles]

i realize huge variation out there... but...

as someone who doesn't have children yet, and is deciding between cloth & disposables. can you help me fill in the figures? i've done the following calculation based on my initial research.

let's say 2 1/2 years of disposables-
£0.50/disposable.
First 6 months- average 10nappies/day
Last 18 months- average 4nappies/day
that's £1980

let's say 2 1/2 years of cloth- using all-in-ones-
Need 24 or so. £15/each. = £360
Bucket & assorted supplies= £50
Total £410

i'm not going to try & estimate cost of doing an extra load of laundry every other day.

disposibles aren't 50p a day, are they?

When you have finished with your washables you can sell them on and get up to half your money back. You can't do that with disposables......

Pampers are about 19p each

no- i was calculating £0.50 per disposable. (i got that by taking a multi-pack and dividing it... realize there's variation- £0.20 - £1.00 depending on brand, sale, size of pack etc).

sorry I meant 50p each - thought it was more like 10p each...

Well just looked on Ocado, and the cheapest nappy is 13p, and the most expensive is 33 (which is a premium pull up)
So I reckon your annual cost is about 900 quid for disposables.

let's say 2 1/2 years of disposables-
£0.20/disposable.
First 6 months- average 10nappies/day
Last 18 months- average 4nappies/day
that's £792

let's say 2 1/2 years of cloth- using all-in-ones-
Need 24 or so. £15/each. = £360
Bucket & assorted supplies= £50
Total £410

good point about resale- or use for another child.

meggles i'm sure it's cheaper (that's one of the main reasons I do it)...

I think maybe 10 nappies a day for the first 6 months is more than you'll need. Think I was more like 8 for the first 2 months, 5 for the next 4...something like that!

I wonder how many people who use cloth "only" spend £360? Think lots spend whole lot more, and some use terries and spend much less.

We also always have disposibles around too for out and about, holidays, creche ladies (and with dd for overnight coz her skin's not great!)...I really resent spending money on disps when I've got so many clothies, but there you go!

A cloth nappy isnt £15 though is it??...brand new ones not bought as a special pack are about £8-10 each.

eg: onelife ones are £10.00 incl booster,
littlelamb ones are £7.00 and lots of others in that range.

Wraps are a similar price but you only need a few of these. I think ive only got about 20 nappies and 7 wraps.

My bucket was about £5 in mothercare, a mesh laundry net £3 in local hardware shop, liners are aprox £5.00 per roll and i cant think what else you might need.

therefore your costs would more realistically be:

let's say 2 1/2 years of cloth-

20 x nappies £10/each. = £200
7 x wraps £8 each =56
Bucket & assorted supplies= £20
Total £276

as well as resale you can buy your cloth nappies secondhand (or some of them at least)...then you will spend even less.

Some cloth nappies are £15 but they are generally night time heavier duty ones.

Hi, My baby is 18 months old. I started using cloth nappies when he was about 5 weeks old. I bought 20 nappies (TOTSBOTS), bucket, fleece liners, boosters and wraps and also use paper liners now. The intial cost was £225 and I have probably spent £10 on paper liners which I rewash once(little green earthlets) I have worked out that I would have spent about £60 on laundry liquid, water is free (well no extra cost), not sure about electrity. I have saved a fortune on baby wipes by using the juniorjoy reuseable wipes and washing them in with the nappies aswell. So I think your calculation of £410 would be a worst case scenario and my boy uses at least 5 nappies a day even at 18months. He never gets nappy rash so again I have never needed to buy creams and saved even more money and the nappies will be there for no. two (hopefully).
Hope this helps your decision.

Anyway, what about the cost to the earth of vile disposables?

another thought...what if your baby doesnt potty train at 2 1/2....with cloth it makes no difference cost wise but could add another few hundred cost wise if disposables.

I use washables and bought mine from a friend of a friend who tried them for a week and didn't get on with them, cost £100, probably spent another £50 on larger wraps etc. But don't forgot what you'd save on wipes too, I use fleece wipes with a tiny bit of baby lotion, you can buy cheap fleece blankets from somewhere like primark and cut them up, disposable wipes soon add up. I'd agree that disposables can cost 50p each, I brought disposables for my dd when we went camping they were huggies and cost £5.98 for 30 therefore 50p each, I know there are cheaper around though, and she uses 5 per day (including night times), she's 2.2. when she's potty trained I'll sell the nappies, and get some money back, and they are so much better for the environment, no landfill, use less enery, less resources and they look gorgeous(dd has wacky wraps now, shes wandering about with gorgeous fleecy wraps with fairies or suns etc on her bum, and they cusioned her when she started walking! Go for it!

ermm little b 20p per nappy then!

Ooops!yes 20p!

ps cheers for signing the survey list it will be mailed out in the morning!

the convenience of disposables.....priceless!

sorry but i fail to agree with that one- an extra wash every 3 days- we don't stand beating them with stones to get them clean you know!

we did real nappies for two weeks and just didn't get on with them.

am just giving the flip side of the coin!

Def works out cheaper no matter how you look at it.

Convenience - I find cloth more convenient because disposables always leak for me, but that is just me, others find it the other way round.

I have 18 one size pocket nappies which cost me £250. But we could of got away with properly 5/6 pairs as we ended up using a potty for most of the time but at the beginning we were using cloth nappies full time.
Bucket with lid £5 at local hardware shop
Mesh net (used to line bucket)£4 at supermarket.
Fleece for cloths/liners £1 for a piece of fabric I cut it up into rectangles.
We also have 6 pairs of trainer pants at £4 each = £24

Grand total of £284 plus washing costs and then I can resell the pocket nappies and trainer pants and recoupe some of the money back.

IMHO the laundry costs are about the same when newborn - we used disposables on DD for a week when we were away on holiday, yes no cloth nappies to wash, but the damn disposables leaked about 50% of the time after a poo (of which there were 4-8 a day....) so we ended up with loads of extra clothes washing instead.....

Also check if your local council has any real nappy incentive schemes. We got 16 nappies + bucket + 4 wraps + a roll of liners for FREE, so it's definitely worked out loads cheaper for us

ooh, I did this in a v complex Excel sheet to prove to DH how much we'd save, using prices from Ocado, allowing for changing sizes, fewer nappy changes as they get older etc.
I got it down to

Disposables (all inc one nappysack per chaage)
Pampers from Ocado £629.23
Nature Baby eco-ish disposables from Ocado £836.17
Moltex eco-disposables from TheNappyLady £1,151.22

Package as recomended by NappyLady (inc muslins for newborn nappies, two sizes of Tots Bots, three sizes of wraps, liners, booster, mesh, bags and bucket) £366.78

Package recommended by local nappy co near me (in Bimbles for newborns and Bumbles from 10lb, wraps, boosters, bucket, mesh, bags) £308