adventures into cloth diapering.

I'm patiently waiting for my prefolds, AIOs and inserts to come in the mail to start my CDing stash. My husband is semi-excited about starting cloth diapering (except for cleaning them-that's my job). I basically sold him on the idea when I shared my estimate on the amount of money we will be saving. I've been looking into ways to start saving, diapers and wipes seem like the best place to start. They are basically just trash you pay for in essence, you can only use them once. I mean I can spend $20 per box, another $3-ish for the wipes and have that maybe last us a week. So in my mind I can spend that money to have that last us a short amount of time or I can spend a couple hundred dollars and use those last until our son is potty trained, and the fact that we will be saving approximately a ton of garbage going to the landfill appeals to my inner hippie.  

I found a recipe for detergent for cloth diapers:

1 c. Borax

1 c. Washing Soda

1 c. Oxy-Clean Free

*I made 6 batches (24 cups total) which is 384 Tablespoons for $11.97 with some leftover.

If you use a washer you are supposed to use 2 Tablespoons per small load, but since I am hand washing I'll be using about 1 Tablespoon per wash. 

I'm so excited to test it out instead of spending $19.99 for detergent that would last 128 loads making it $0.15 per load, I made enough for 384 loads for just under $12 which equals out to be right around $0.03/load. I just started and I'm already saving!

When I was at Wal-Mart gathering the ingredients for the detergent I found a laundry bag that is almost exactly the same as the diaperpail liners all the CDing websites try to sell you for around $20, for exactly $7.97, I felt very accomplished. 

So far to date I have spent right around $100 for the diapers (including 1 on-the-go wetbag), $13 for 18 cloth wipes & solution, $11.97 for the detergent and $19.97 for a "heavy-duty" drying rack for the diapers. Oh, and $7.97 for my "diaperpail".  Which in total is: $152.91. And hopefully *fingers crossed* that's all we will have to purchase on the diaper front.

I plan to handwash and air dry since we live in an apartment and the washers and dryers cost $2.75 a piece per load!! So needless to say I am determined to start saving.