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This is a hard question to answer. The number of nappies you need will depend on the age of your child, how often you intend to wash, how you intend to dry the nappies and your own baby's habits.
The basic rule is to calculate how many nappies you will need per day, and multiply by the frequency of washes. For instance, a newborn will need 7-10 nappy changes a day. So washing every second day will require 14-20 nappies. As your baby gets older, you will need fewer changes and therefore fewer nappies.
You will need a minimum of 2 covers at a time - one for the day and one for the night. However, it is very handy to have 1-2 extra covers to allow for washing time or accidents. We therefore recommend 3 covers as a minimum, and 4 as ideal.
Now, I'm the sort of person who resents spending money on useless baby gadgets, and when I started using cloth nappies myself, I went for the bare minimum. I wanted to use Tots Bots full-time, but wanted to spend the minimum. So I got the bare basics: 6 Size 1s and 14 Size 2s.
With this combination the baby spends most of his time in the Size 2s. These are bulky on a newborn - no getting away from it - but they work well. You still have enough for 3 Size 1s a day - which you can save for special outfits when a trim little fit is nicer, or for meeting someone special like the grandparents. But most of the time in the early days the baby will be in quite a bulky nappy.
However, when bub grows out of the Size 1s (typically around 9 months old), you still have 14 Size 2s left. At that age, you only do 5-6 changes a day anyway, so 14 Size 2s leaves you with enough to wash every second day. So this is an excellent way of spreading the sizes and getting a workable combination. The downside is that you have the bare minimum number in the early days, and most of the time it's a bulky nappy, which is really an aesthetic problem rather than a functional one. So if you are wanting to minimise cost, and especially if you don't intend to have another baby, then this is a good combination. (You will find it in our Early Arrival Package B).
Now, the weakness of all fitted nappies is elastic. There is absolutely nothing you can do about the fact that elastic wears out faster than the terry towelling does. In my experience, a fitted cloth nappy will typically last about 1 and a half babies and then it will be looking very tired indeed. At that point, most mothers would do what I did, which is top up with another 10 nappies or so for the second baby. (With good quality terry squares, this doesn't happen if you get good quality ones - they will go through several babies and for that reason are unrivalled cloth nappy value!)
If you get 20 nappies for your first and top up with 10 nappies with your second, then you're getting 30 nappies in total. Now, let's say you got 30 nappies from the start for the first. You could get 15 Size 1s and 15 Size 2s. That would mean that your newborn baby would almost always be in a trim-fitting nappy which looks nicer, and the bulkier Size 2s can just be used at night when the size is irrelevant. You have a more generous number of nappies which means you are not scrimping and saving, trying to eek them out until the next wash. And at around 9 months when baby moves out of the Size 1s, your Size 2 nappies have much less wear in them, because they've only been used to top up the Size 1s. This means that they then will last longer. It may therefore turn out that with 30 nappies you can get through 2 babies with the same set of nappies. (You will find this combination in our Early Arrivals Package A.)
Now, I can't possibly guarantee that you will get two babies through the larger set of nappies. There's a big difference between a child that toilet trains at 18 months (ie early) and one that trains at 3.5 years. That's a full two years longer in that set of nappies - which is almost like having gone through another whole baby! So how long the nappies last depends very much on how you wash them, how often you tumble dry, and obviously how long they are worn.
But the point of all this is just to show that there can be false economies in cutting the quantity too finely. I went for the bare minimum with my daughter and now wish I'd made my life a little easier at the time and got some more, because in the end I'll use them all on my second baby anyway. And if you found that you had bought more nappies than you needed, then the effect will be that they will be in better condition when you've finished with them and then they can go on to be used for another child.
So while I'm all for saving money with cloth, it is worth pointing out that being generous in quantities is not necessarily going to cost you much over your babies' nappying life.
If you would like specific advice on the best quantities for you, just contact us.
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