One year in cloth, and doubling our money!

I'm a little late on part of this because Orren has been in cloth since birth, and he is 13 months old today. As of Christmas day, however, we have been exclusively cloth diapering for one full year!! I'm proud of us. A lot of people claim that trying cloth is stupid, that you'll just go to disposables after all, and many other nay-saying things. We proved them wrong, though, and handily at that. We love cloth diapering, find it EASIER than using disposables (totally eliminates the midnight run to Wal Mart because you're out of diapers!), and can't imagine any other way now that we've done it. Since Orren was not hospital-born, he's never been taken away from us, and did not even get put into a disposable diaper at birth. When Orren was not on me, he was with Thak, and when it was time to get him dressed, Thak pulled a little blue organic cotton fitted diaper out of our bag, and that was the first thing Orren wore.

In the past year, we have moved cross country, and taken a road trip from our new home on the Mexican border all the way up almost to the Canadian border. In 2009, we saw 16 states. Through all of that, Orren wore cloth. I have washed our diapers in coin operated machines, and at relatives' houses, but we always found a way to use cloth. It may seem a paltry accomplishment to many, but I'm proud of us.

Now, as for the doubling our money part, I'll explain that now. When I was pregnant with Orren, when we were researching cloth diapering, we wanted to know exactly how much money we would save by cloth diapering, and how long we would have to make it in order to reclaim our investment even if we hated it. We determined that in 6 1/2 months, we would break even, and in 13 months, we would have spent HALF on our cloth diapers as we would have on the number of disposables we'd have used in that time.

Orren's 13 month birthday is today, and as of today, we have officially gotten twice as much for our money as we would have if we had used disposables. If he potty trains at 2 (and he might. He's already really interested in the potty.) then we will get four times as much for our money as we would have with disposables. If the next baby does the same, then we'll get 8 times as much for our money.

Now, who would like to use cloth diapers for their next baby? I hope everybody does!! Cloth diapering is a joy. It's one parenting decision I will never ever regret, and for infinite reasons.