I am CLOTH DIAPER ready!!!

So, this seems a little late in the game since our new addition will be baby #5 but I recently decided to cloth diaper our new little one.  The last time I looked into this was before the twins were born over 11 years ago it just seemed like too much trouble and I didn't know enough.  The only cloth diapering I knew of involved a diaper service which was nearly as expensive as buying the disposables.  With that said I have ALWAYS felt very guilty for all of the disposables we were throwing away and the huge amounts of trash that hit the street every week.  Our first 4 children were all so close together that those early years seemed to kind of blur by and I never even thought about researching cloth diapers again.  Now here we are 6 years after the birth of my last child and we are expecting #5 in less than 3 short months.  This time I started to ask do I want to throw all of these diapers away?  Is there a better way?  Lets look into cloth one more time.. I was amazed by what I found, Cloth diapers that are built EXACTLY like a disposable so they are easy to use and many of them are SO cute.  So I started researching and researching and researching some more.  I asked questions, joined cloth diapering boards, and then bought just 4 diapers in 4 different brands and types.  I loved the way they looked and felt but how would they work?  Our baby was still months away from being born.....  What to do?  What to do?  I called a friend up who had a baby and we played baby dress up or rather I did..lol.  They seemed to fit great and were easy to use.  I did have concerns that a newborn would be swallowed up in the All in one type diaper so I researched and decided to invest in a few prefolds with covers for the newborn days.

Anyway, here is my stash in preparation for Baby B.....

The entire contents of my cloth diaper collection.

12 Newborn Prefolds, 10 Small Fitted Prefolds, 2 Newborn Bummis covers, 2 Small Bummis Covers, 1 WAHM cover and 2 snappies(not pictured)

16 All-In-One Diapers for 10-35 lb babies and 24 Micro Fiber inserts ( I plan to sew more instead of buy )

Aren't these simply Adorable?!?!?

And...  here is a picture I have thrown in of my 6 year old wearing a All-in-one diaper for bedtime. I was quite surprised that these fit him as he is over the 35 lb weight but they fit quite well.  He still has some trouble with wetting the bed a few nights a week and instead of spending the money on the disposable Good Nights we tried these.  They work very well..  No leaks and he doesn't have to worry about washing his blankets and sheets everyday.

Now, you might ask..  How much did all of this cost?  My calculations put us at right at $234 Wow that's a lot of money you might say but I looked it up, first my kids have always had bad reactions to generic diapers so we have ended up using name brands such as pampers or huggies.  Second, a box of 160 diapers in my area is about $40.  Say a newborn uses 12 a day, this would probably be a minimum 12 divided into 160 comes to just under 14 days.  So every 2 weeks you would spend another $40 so in less that 3 months you would spend more than the $234 that I have spent but now after 3 months we will have broken even.  I have even found that the smaller prefolds that I bought for the newborn stage can be resold and I will get most if not all of my money spent on those back and can use them towards large sizes if needed.  Also I will be keeping several thousand disposable diapers ( that it has been estimated will take 500 years EACH to biodegrade ) out of the landfills.  That all by itself makes me feel good about the cloth diapering decision.

BTW-  I didn't believe it at first but Cloth diapering can be quite addictive  ;)