This is one of the most common questions asked and, of course, the answer is that every woman varies.However, to make things easier, we can generalize a bit. The Short Answer: To wash just once at the end of a cycle, you will probably want about 2 dozen pads, in a variety of lengths and absorbencies.The Long Answer: Let’s take a typical textbook cycle and assume day 1 is moderate to heavy, day 2 is heavy, day 3 is moderate, and days 4 and 5 are light. Let’s assume our textbook lady gets up at 7am and goes to bed at 11pm. She changes her pad every 4 hours she is awake, beginning at 7am. She will use 5 pads (say 3 moderate, 2 heavy). Day 2, we’ll assume her cycle is fairly heavy and with the same every 4 hours changing of her pads, she’ll use 5 heavy absorbency pads. Day 3, she’ll use 5 moderates. Day 4 we’ll assume she still keeps the same changing routine, but is using light absorbency pads (5). A textbook day 5 will be quite light and she will likely go longer without changing a pad, so we’ll say 3 light absorbency pads.In this scenario, she has used a total of 8 light absorbency pads, 8 moderate absorbency pads, and 7 heavy pads (including 2 overnights) for 23 pads altogether. If she finds her period is dragging on a bit into day 6, she might go through a few liners on this day as well.But, of course, you are not necessarily average!  You might have a very different cycle with very different needs.  As much as we'd love to sell you a whole whack of pads in one go, what we'd really love is for you to be a devoted cloth pad user for life and we find that women are happiest with their cloth pad stashes when they take time to build them up over several months, allowing them to fine-tune to their needs.