How Many Cloth Diapers?

When we started cloth diapering I did a little research on how many cloth diapers you should keep in your stash. We were tight on money so I decided to scrimp and buy less than the average recommendation. I wanted to hold out and buy some cuter, more expensive diapers later on so I figured I would just tough it out and do a lot of laundry. That didn’t work out very well and I ended up getting peed on a lot and having to make some emergency trips to the store for disposables. We slowly built up our stash and now I keep some gdiapers around for emergencies.

If you can’t afford to buy all of your cloth diapers at once, start with one day’s worth at a time. This way your disposables will last you longer so you should have some extra money on your next pay day to invest in a few more cloth diapers. Just keep working towards a full stash and before you know it you’ll be cloth diapering full time.

When deciding how many diapers you’ll need you want to take a few things into consideration…

How often do you want to do laundry? Every day, every other day, or every three days? You shouldn’t store wet or dirty diapers for more than three days. They can end up with gnarly stains and smells that may never go away and the urine breaks down the fibers, shortening the life of your diapers. We have about 18 diapers for our 3 month old, plus a few prefolds to use while the others are in the washer, and these will last us a good 2 ½ to 3 days. Our daughter is not a particularly heavy wetter though, which leads us to our next point to consider.

Is your child a heavy wetter? Our son is an extremely heavy wetter. He’s always gone through a ton of diapers per day and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it. Obviously if your child is a heavy wetter you will want to have more diapers in your stash than we have in ours. If you don’t know whether your child will be a heavy wetter, you can keep several infant prefolds in your stash. This way if it turns out you don’t need all the diapers you can use the prefolds as doublers for your other diapers or even for an older sibling.

How old is your baby? This makes a huge difference in the amount of diapers you will need. Newborns are peeing or pooping every time you turn around and since their diet is exclusively fluids they tend to have more “blowouts”. Toddlers tend to require less diapers as they get older and their bodies prepare for potty training/learning.

Newborns – we recommend a stash of 24-36 diapers. This should hold you over for 2-3 days. If your diapers require covers you should have 1 cover per 4-6 diapers, but for newborns I would recommend more because they tend to poop on the covers. So for this stash we would recommend 8-12 diaper covers.

6 to 12 Mos. – Most babies in this age group have started sleeping through the night or are at least sleeping for longer periods of time, therefore requiring less frequent diaper changes. We recommend 20-30 diapers, laundering every 2-3 days.

12 to 24 Mos. – By this age babies are typically eating more solids than breast milk or formula, so again there will be a decrease in the amount of diaper changes needed. We recommend 16-24 diapers, laundering every 2-3 days.

Potty training/learning – Usually during this time you can cut back to 8-12 diapers, laundering every 2-3 days.

Aside from diapers you will also want to invest in a diaper pail (you can store diapers in a dry or wet pail), 12-24 doublers, and since you are doing laundry anyways you may want to get 2 -3 dozen cloth wipes. Remember that these are only guidelines. Combine this information with your child’s specific needs and your preferences to come up with the right number of diapers for your stash. Don’t be afraid to buy too many, having a larger stash means that each diaper is used less in rotation and this will lengthen the life of your diapers.