So I was just curious to see how much money we could be saving by switching to Geico using cloth diapers and wipes. Though we're not spending money on disposable diapers, there is still the cost of water and electricity for cleaning the diapers on a regular basis. Essentially the trade-off is in using up landfill space, or natural resources. I put together a quick and dirty graph, making a million assumptions on water/electricity usage, as well as the cost of these utilities, diapers and wet wipes. Your mileage may vary depending on a lot of factors, including how much your baby poops!

By going with cloth diapers, we had to make a huge initial investment as each of these Fuzzi Bunz diapers costs about $20 shipped. We bought 24 of them, which means we do laundry about once every 2-3 days. The above graph shows that we won't break even on our investment until somewhere between the 8th or 9th month.

Assuming that babies aren't potty trained till around 3 (boys take longer), our total cost at the end of three years (including utilities) should be around $1400 less than if we went with disposable diapers. Now, I didn't take into account the fact that babies use less diapers as they get older, nor did I account for any possible increases in the cost of diapers as you buy bigger sizes. All of these will change the value of the final numbers.

Ultimately, what the graph doesn't account for is the extra time that it requires to use cloth diapers. It takes time and effort to clean the diapers after each changing, and to load up the washer/dryer on a regular basis. So there's definitely trade-offs on both sides.