[USAmma]

Last year we were using cloth diapers and we used 11,000 gallons of water.
This year dd is potty trained and we used 7,000 gallons. The difference in price was $14, so we were spending probably about $14/month to wash cloth diapers. There were no other factors that might have made us use more water last year vs. this year.

I was using a small stash of diapers that I washed every other day, and I think I figured it was around 30 cents per diaper change factoring the cost of the diapers, water, electricity, and detergent. The bill today confirms my estimate on water. I was doing a double wash load to make sure they were rinsed well, and I did a strip about once a month b/c we have very hard water.

I figured that it was about 50 cents to dry a load with the electrical rates, and I had about 24 diapers in the load. I factored in the cost of the diapers and inserts and when they would pay for themselves (estimating how long they would last in that size-- turns out she PT earlier than expected). I also factored in the resale of the diapers at 40% of their new cost which is about what I got back when I sold them.

Just thought this was interesting.

Has anyone else done the math on how much it costs per diaper change with your system?

 

[LaughingHyena]

Yup

I'm sad enough that when we bough our new washing machine a couple of weeks ago I sat down and created a spreadsheet of how much each nappy change was costing.

Water, electricity and detergent came out to 97p per load.

So far I've done the costings for our system (mostly flats and motherease covers) from new and it works out about 10p per change, the cheepest sposies I can get are 11.7p per change (and don't fit DD that well!). It wasn't actually as much difference as I was expecting given that this is about the cheepest system I could have gone with. That siad I haven't facoted in any resalse value which would probably be much bigger with a more expensive system.