How many diapers does a baby use?
How many diapers do I need?....How many diapers does a baby use in a year?...How many diapers for a year? Frugal Penguin Engineering is going to figure it out (so what if this is more of a business case than engineering problem).
It seems like a simple question but in the midst of trying to quell terrible tantrums and cleaning up toys that never seem to get put away, who really has time to count. Without knowing, how do you figure out if it makes sense to go with cloth diapers (usually $0.05 per diaper change + purchase) or disposable ($0.165/diaper - an average based on how many of each size we used)?
Don't worry, we counted
You need a minimum of 4040 diapers which will cost you about $675. That is what it took this little monster to make it to year 2.
We started potty training about a month later (4215 diapers in), terrifying, right? But, the whole reason I started counting is not clear. Based on a typical starting cost for cloth diapers of ~$450 it's a wash (bwahhhhhhh, I couldn't help it) with the break-even point at ~3914 diapers.
Either way, you are facing about $700 dollars worth of diapers and another $175 in wipes for changes in the first two years. If you think your costs are lower, you can figure out your own break-even point (and factor in child #2).
where
N: is the number of diapers at the break-even point
I: is the initial cost for your cloth diapers
D: is the average cost of a disposable diaper (usually ~$0.165 for a mix of cheap and quality brands)
C: is the average cost to change a cloth diaper
In this example
It seems like a simple question but in the midst of trying to quell terrible tantrums and cleaning up toys that never seem to get put away, who really has time to count. Without knowing, how do you figure out if it makes sense to go with cloth diapers (usually $0.05 per diaper change + purchase) or disposable ($0.165/diaper - an average based on how many of each size we used)?
Don't worry, we counted
You need a minimum of 4040 diapers which will cost you about $675. That is what it took this little monster to make it to year 2.
Either way, you are facing about $700 dollars worth of diapers and another $175 in wipes for changes in the first two years. If you think your costs are lower, you can figure out your own break-even point (and factor in child #2).
N = I/(D-C)
where
N: is the number of diapers at the break-even point
I: is the initial cost for your cloth diapers
D: is the average cost of a disposable diaper (usually ~$0.165 for a mix of cheap and quality brands)
C: is the average cost to change a cloth diaper
In this example
3914 = $450/($0.165-$0.05)
Now, this does assume you will change the same number of diapers for both cloth and disposable diapers; but even if you assume a few more changes for cloth diapers you are not going to save thousands of dollars per child going with cloth diapers. If you have free access to a set of cloth diapers you can come out a few hundred dollars ahead. However, for most parents with a few children, preference or aversion to manually removing poop from each and every putrid diaper should be the deciding factors.
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