Cloth vs Disposable

At a recent mom-baby play group in my community we were discussing ways to save money with kids.  Eventually cloth diapering over disposables came up.  Quickly followed by a argument that with the cost of laundering (soap, water, running the washer and dryer) disposables were much cheaper than cloth. 

Side note: since when is 'cheap' better. And why do people brag about cheap food and diapers, but cheap cars and cheap dates are bad.  What my baby sits on all day, and what he eats kinda seem important and worth spending money on to me!

So anyway, disposables are cheaper and thus better!  Now, I am much to shy and stutter during confrontations to have said anything really at the time.  But now I am on the Internet and have found bravery!

First off, cloth is cheaper.  You need a big initial start up, but after that you need to only buy soap.  I can see if you google an online diaper store and look at there up to $40 for an all-in-one diaper, you would be scared right back to the newspaper looking for huggies coupons.  But fear not, I have never paid more than $15 for a new diaper.  I bought half my stash used and skipped the fancy diaper pails (garbage can people, same thing!)

Secondly, it is fairly easy to sacrifice some convience to save money in almost any living situation.  I hang dry all my diapers and even all my clothes, there isn't even a dryer in the house, so that saves us lots of electricity.  I do use a lot of hot water to wash my diapers.  I try and ease my hot water guilt by only using hot water for diapers, cold for regular clothes. 

If you are one of the lucky moms to whom money is no issue, please think about this: your baby's great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren would be able to, in theory, go to the dump and find your baby's diapers.  Those disposable diapers take longer to break down than the house you are living in.

Minus the money aspect, and minus the environmental impact, there are more issues of what exactly is in disposables, hormone disruptors right next to baby's hormone factories, BPA in recycled paper pulp, etc.

I for one cannot, in good conscience, use disposables for any frivolous reason.  While pregnant, and continuing, I researched diapers.  I tried to read as many blogs, and articles as I could to do this one part of my job as best I could.