How Expensive are Diapers - 10 Week Update

I was very worried about how much of a burden diaper changes would be, both in time and cost. Are they really that bad?

How long does it take?

Changing diapers seemed complicated at first, but it ended up being much simpler than I'd imagined. Since getting used to it (after a few days), I've gotten it down to under a minute for a wet (urine) diaper and somewhere around three minutes for a dirty (poop) one. The only real complication is if he needs to change clothes during it as the time then depends on the type of clothing, # of buttons, etc. Erring on the side of over-estimating it, a typical change takes around three minutes for me. Note that this is an overestimate because he pees much more often than he poops.

How much do diapers cost?

To start with, we need to know how many diapers we're using. That one is a bit difficult to track with great resolution. We could keep track of every diaper used in every change, but that becomes overwhelming. Thus, we tracked them in groups where a group was typically a package of diapers.

For the cost, we then just figure out how much an individual diaper costs. This varies with the size and type of diaper. The disposable diapers we're using cost $0.17 for a newborn size and $0.14 for a size one.

Results

I've combined all of that into interactive plots listed below. The plots show the total usage, total cost, and total time required as area plots. Hovering over them gives you details about that day along with the values that are being plotted.

What about wipes?

You do have to clean the baby once you take off his diaper, and diaper wipes are a handy way to handle this. We typically use either one or two wipes per change and wipes cost ~$0.03 each. I've taken that information and applied it to the previous plots and the results are below: