I had thought a little bit about cloth diapers before getting pregnant and then early on in my pregnancy, but I never really understood how they worked and whether or not they would be a good fit for us. Once I started looking into things, I was ridiculously overwhelmed by the options – diaper covers, all-in-ones, disposable inserts, pockets, oh my! It’s almost too much for a pregnant woman’s brain to digest.

When this post on cloth diapering was published on Hellobee a few months back, I started to breathe a little bit easier. Emily explained things really well, and while I know she primarily focused on the pocket diapers and not on the other varieties, the more I read the more I thought this would be a good fit for us. After having looked into other types of cloth diapers between then and now, I still feel confident that pockets are the direction I want to go.

I settled on the BumGenius 4.0 one-size pocket diaper, which overall seems to be well-liked on a variety of sites I’ve looked at. I also wanted to stick with the diapers with snaps instead of Velcro. I’ve read that the snaps can be a bit harder when you’re dealing with a squirmy baby, but I know that the Velcro wears out after awhile and I wanted minimize the amount of maintenance I’d have to do on the diapers.

Once I decided what I wanted, I put a bunch of diapers into my registry. And then I decided I didn’t think I’d get enough diapers as gifts to give me enough of a stockpile. My guess is that people want to buy cutesy baby stuff over diapers. So…I turned my attention to eBay.

Within a period of 2 weeks I had purchased a stockpile of 37 gently-used diapers. The top dresser drawer in the nursery is filled to the brim with diapers and the newborn inserts.

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The bottom drawer is filled with even more diapers (cloth diapers take up a lot of space!) and the larger inserts that are used for older babies. Our pup Charlie has loved checking out all of the diapers.

Now… let’s get down to the cost of these diapers! If I had purchased them new (at full price with no sales or deals), it would be about $664.15 for 37 diapers (not including shipping costs, as many sites ship for free), or $17.95 per diaper. That’s quite an investment! Purchasing all of these diapers gently used was a cost of $434.50 (including shipping costs) from three different eBay sellers. That equals $11.74 per diaper and an overall savings of $229.65!

The downside, I guess, of purchasing used cloth diapers is that you don’t know exactly what condition they’ll be in when they arrive. You have to trust that the seller is being truthful when they describe them as “gently used” and “no stains.” But, the upside is making far less of a financial investment and knowing that if these don’t work out for us, I can at least break-even on my investment by reselling them. If I paid full price for all of these, there’s no way I’d get all of that money back!

I’m excited to see how these work out with Baby H and hopefully my instincts are right and that these will work out for us. I still haven’t completely decided what I will do for the very early days with Baby H. I know there are sets of newborn cloth diapers you can rent (until baby’s umbilical cord falls off and until they are big enough fit into the one-size diapers). I’m leaning toward just using disposables during that time in the hopes that we won’t need to use them for very long, and to minimize the amount of laundry we’ll have to do in the first couple of weeks until we get settled into our routines.

If you have decided to cloth diaper, how will you build up your diaper stockpile?

Cloth Diapers part 11 of 17

1. Cloth Diapering by parenting
2. Washing Cloth Diapers by parenting
3. Cloth Diaper Update and Potty Pail Review by parenting
4. How to choose a cloth diapering system by Mrs. Superhero
5. Real Registry: Diana's Cloth Diaper Registry by Real Registries
6. On Cloth Diapering a Newborn by Mrs. Superhero
7. Cloth Diapering Update by Mrs. Hopscotch
8. Easy Cloth Diapering by Mrs. Superhero
9. Who, What, Why, and How: Cloth Diapering by mrs. tictactoe
10. On Cloth Diapering at 4 Months by Mrs. Stroller
11. Building a Cloth Diaper Stockpile by Mrs. Hopscotch
12. Confessions of an (Ex) Cloth-Diapering Mom by Mrs. High Heels
13. Cloth Diapering Diaries by Mrs. Sketchbook
14. They really are genius! by Mrs. Tea
15. Wool, the Other Sleep Sheep (and Adventures in Early Toileting) by Mrs. Twine
16. Adventures in Cloth Diapering by Mrs. Lion
17. Cloth Diapering: We're back! by Mrs. Deer