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Cloth and disposable diapers have many pros and cons. They are both great options for different families. Some families even choose to use both.
This post is not intended to sway you in one direction or the other. I’m simply laying out some pros and cons that I have seen to help you make your decision. As I said before, I really do like both, so it can be a hard choice.
Cloth · Disposable
1. Learning Curve
With cloth diapers, there is a learning curve that goes along with it. The biggest learning curve with cloth, in my opinion, is how to wash and care for cloth diapers. The actual diapering part is pretty simple. With disposable diapers, there really isn’t a learning curve at all. Put diaper on baby. Baby uses diaper. Throw away diaper. Repeat.
2. Rashes
This one may not be the case for everyone, but I have heard it enough to think it’s fairly common. For us, switching to cloth diapers ended are rash problem. After months of battling constant rashes, they disappeared within a week of using cloth. Disposables are pretty notorious for causing rashes. Sometimes it’s just certain brands that cause rashes for your child. If you’re dead set on using disposables, you may end up needing to do some trial and error to figure out which brand works best for your baby.
3. Blowouts
After switching to cloth diapers, we didn’t have a single blowout. We used to have them every day in disposables. You could count on it. I attribute this to the elastic back of cloth diapers. It just really helps contain those messes.
4. Laundry
Cloth diapering does bring with it extra laundry. For us, that is an extra load every other day. It greatly depends on your stash size and your environment (dry, humid, etc.) to determine how frequently you need to wash. We have a small stash and live in a humid environment. I don’t want moldy diapers, so I wash them every other day. Disposables don’t require extra laundry unless you count the pants and onesies that receive the lovely blowouts.
5. Expense
Sometimes, people cloth diaper as a way to save some money. There are a lot of variables in cloth and disposables that make comparing a little bit complicated.
- Type of diaper (cloth and disposable)
- Well water or city water
- Hang dry or tumble dry
- Cloth diapering one child or more than one
- Your utility rates
- The size of your cloth diaper stash
- Etc.
Check out my Cloth Diaper Expense Calculator.
6. Overnight Diapering
If your child is a heavy wetter (a term I hadn’t heard until I started cloth diapering), using cloth diapers overnight can be a bit of a challenge. When babies are smaller and still being changed frequently, it doesn’t matter as much. But once a baby starts sleeping longer stretches, it’s nice to not have to wake them.
Since cloth diapers rely solely on fabric for absorption, it takes a lot of very absorbent fabric to hold up overnight. This can mean a lot of layering inserts and experimenting to figure out what works best for your baby. There are some overnight options for cloth diapered babies, but most are a bit pricey and are rather bulky as well.
Disposable overnight diapers are a good option for long sleepers. There are a lot of different brands to choose from. Many are designed to last up to 12 hours!
7. Trash
One of the most popular pros to cloth diapers is there ability to be reused over and over. Cloth diapers are 100% reusable, so you don’t have extra trash to dispose of.
On the other hand, disposables do make a lot of extra trash and take a significant amount of time to biodegrade in a landfill.
8. Diaper Size
Cloth diapers are more bulky than disposable diapers. As mentioned before, cloth diapers simply use fabric to absorb. This gives cloth diapered babies a very full tush, which has been lovingly nicknamed “fluff bum.”
Disposables are very trim in comparison to cloth diapers. With disposables, there’s no appearance of extra fluff or padding on baby’s bum.
9. Clothes
Expanding on that last point here.
Children’s clothing is optimized for disposable diapers. Unfortunately, some pants, shorts, and onesies simply don’t fit over fluffy cloth diapers. If you have a girl, dresses can become your best friend. If you have a boy, you can look for specially made cloth diaper pants or grow-with-me pants. Finding clothes for your cloth diapered baby is doable, just a little more challenging. We did find these Hanes Flexy pants to fit over cloth diapers without any issues.
If your baby wears disposable diapers, you shouldn’t have any issue finding clothes that fit him or her properly. No problems there!
10. Smell
This one may be debatable. Personally, I think that cloth diapers smell less than disposables do. This can depend on how you store your dirty diapers, too.
We store our dirty cloth diapers in an open pail, and I don’t smell them until I’m dumping them into the washing machine. However, they do smell strongly if they’ve been stored in a wet bag. I don’t recommend that. The only time our cloth diapers developed an odor was when we had some detergent buildup.
Disposable diapers have a stronger smell to me when wet. I don’t completely understand why, but that’s just how it is. This isn’t a huge issue, but it does seem backwards to me.
11. Cute Factor
Cloth diapers can be really adorable. They become part of your baby’s wardrobe. Even just solid black and white look really nice. You can match them to your baby’s outfit of the day if you’re feeling fancy.
Disposable diaper designs are pretty similar over all. One added perk is no one expects the diaper to match the outfit. Low expectations.
Which Diapers Are Right for Your Baby?
So, how do you decide which one of these options is right for your child? After reading through this, are you leaning in one direction at all? I could talk for days, but ultimately, you have to decide what is the best option for your family. Don’t forget that you can change your mind. You could start off in disposables and switch to cloth later or vice versa.
Which Diapers Do We Use?
Our daughter is no longer in diapers now. However, we started with all disposables, and later switched to all cloth. Even later, we switched to using the best of both worlds. During the day, we used cloth diapers. At night, we used disposable overnight diapers. Our daughter is a heavy wetter and would soak through her clothes nightly (even with multiple diaper changes). Switching back to disposables for overnight was the perfect solution for us.
How to Cloth Diaper Your Baby on a Budget
If you have any questions about cloth or disposable diapers, please leave a comment below! I’ll do my best to answer it.
