A Bit of Math

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Gia, an artsy mathematician with a passion for produce. Especially seasonal produce.

I decided to sit down and actually crunch the numbers to determine how much (if any) we are saving by making our own baby food. Here are the results:

Acorn Squash — I paid $1.05 for a 1.33 lb squash. I was able to make the equivalent of about 6 baby food jars, which makes each serving $0.18. Compare that to baby food jars which are typically about $0.50 per serving. Savings? About $0.32 per serving. Not bad.

Green Beans — I paid $3.78 for a bag of fresh green beans (I think about 2 lbs). I was able to make the equivalent of about 16 baby food jars, which makes each serving $0.24. Savings? About $0.26 per serving. Again, not too shabby.

Carrots — These take the cake. I paid $1.89 for a 2 lb bag of carrots. I was able to make the equivalent of about 17 baby food jars, which makes each serving $0.11. Savings? About $0.39 per serving.

Summary:
I spent a total of $6.72 and got 39 baby food servings. Ordinarily to get 39 baby food jars I would have to spend $19.50. Instead, I only spent $6.72. Saweeeeet!

While we’re at it, I’ll just mention the cloth diaper savings I’ve calculated, as well.

For the prefolds and diaper covers that we currently use, it cost about $114. Disposable diapers that we have bought for trips tend to run about $10 for about 42 diapers. This usually lasts about 6 days, I think? So if you divide 365 days by 6, you get 60.83 packages of 42-count diapers in a year. Multiply that by $10…that’s $608 spent on disposable diapers in a year.

Now, I realize that you can also buy disposable diapers in bulk for slightly cheaper, but even if you saved up to $100 in a year…it’s still at least $400 a year cheaper to do cloth.

Realizing how much money our family is saving makes all that hard work SO worth it!