How to Get Cloth Diapers for FREE

I’m a cheapskate. Every penny counts in our home because we live on one low income with 5 people. So when I have to pay for trash every single day for 2 of my children, it was time for a change. Diapers are expensive in the long run, but cloth diapers are expensive upfront. Thankfully, I learned how to get cloth diapers for free!

Cloth diapering isn’t for everyone.

It’s not because of the gross factor or the “ickiness” of it (I’m the most squeamish person out there, it’s not gross, I promise). It’s because there are just some factors that make it almost impossible to do.

You need to have a washing machine in your home. Having to go to a laundromat makes cloth diapering almost impossible. If you’ve cloth diapered and used a laundromat, you’re my hero!

But if I’m being honest, that’s really the only thing that I’d ever consider a make-or-break factor in cloth diapering.

Check out the whole story of how I clean my cloth diapers the easy way:

If you’re wondering about how to care for cloth diapers, make your own cloth diaper-safe detergent and where to get the cloth diapers that I’ve used on 2 kids for 2 years straight, here are my other cloth diaper posts:

The number crunching:

The cost of disposables diapers for a year for one child is $800 according to Mint.

But for all of my cloth diapering supplies, it cost me less than $300. There’s the additional laundry every other day, but line drying saves a lot of energy cost. So let’s call the additional laundry $100 extra.

So $800 per year per child for cloth diapering, versus $300 just once and $100 per year total in laundry cost.

Add into consideration that if you have more than one child in diapers at the same time, that number for disposables could be doubled!

“But $300 to spend right now… that’s a lot more money than the $40 that I’d spend today on diapers for a few weeks.”

And you’re right about that! But here’s the best part: you can get cloth diapers for free! And before you think it’s a scam, it’s not. No selling, no signing up for scammy sites. Nothing like that.

How to get cloth diapers for free.

1. Don’t automatically look for the cloth diapers that are $20 per diaper.

Just because something costs more doesn’t always mean that it’s worth more. This is true for many things in life, but definitely for cloth diapers.

We’ve used the same cloth diapers that we got from Amazon 2 years ago. They wound up being about $5-6 per diaper, and they’re still going strong!

The “best” number of diapers to have is 20. So imagine if you needed to pay $20 for each diaper as well as the rest of the supplies (diaper pail, wet bag, extra inserts, etc.). You’d be looking at a $450+ bill!

Instead, the diapers that you can get from Amazon that aren’t name brand are $30-36 for 6 of them and they include freebies like extra inserts or wet bags. Compare the $90-108 bill for the “off brand” diapers, and you’re looking at a much easier number to get for free.

Plus, these same cloth diapers will work for a baby from the time they are just born until they are potty trained! Not too bad for a $100 investment.

2. Earn Amazon gift cards

When I earned my Amazon gift cards, I was using Swagbucks all throughout the day to get the most points. I was able to fund my entire cloth diaper purchase through my Swagbucks earned gift cards in just a month.

So what is Swagbucks?

Swagbucks is a site that pays you to watch commercials and movie trailers, listen to music, and discover new products. It’s a great and really easy way to earn extra money from home.

Here’s my super quick (and awful! I’m SO not a vlogger!) Swagbucks run-down and how I make money with Swagbucks.

I used Swagbucks to pay for all of my cloth diapering supplies and it really made it possible for me to cloth diaper my children. With the lower price of the Amazon diapers and the free Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks, I didn’t pay a single penny out of pocket to cloth diaper my children.

We started cloth diapering in November 2014 and still have the same diapers that we bought back then. We have no need to buy new ones, but if we did, all I’d have to do is hop onto Swagbucks and earn me some more free gift cards!

Have you ever cloth diapered your children?