How many burp cloths you actually need
The honest answer is that it depends on one thing you already know: how often you get to the washer. Everything else is arithmetic.
The arithmetic
A newborn feeds eight to twelve times a day. Each feed uses one cloth, or two if things are going badly. So a day is somewhere between eight and twenty-four cloths in theory, and rather fewer in practice because most feeds only need a shoulder covered rather than a full clean-up.
What that means is that the stack on the shelf is not sized by the baby. It is sized by the gap between loads of washing, plus enough spare that you are not waiting on the dryer.
Where most people land
| Your week | Cloths | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You run a load every day | 6 to 8 | One day of spit-up plus a spare. |
| You wash every two or three days | 12 to 16 | The number most parents land on. |
| Baby spits up after most feeds | 15 to 20 | Reflux burns through a stack fast. |
| Twins, or laundry once a week | 20 to 30 | Two babies, or seven days between loads. |
Run it against your own week and it will give you one number instead of a range.
Two things that change the number
Reflux is the big one. If most feeds end in spit-up you are using two cloths a feed rather than one, and the stack has to be half again as big.
The other is where the cloths live. One stack by the chair and one in the caddy means you own two stacks, not one, and people routinely buy for a single pile and then wonder why they are always out.
