I've had people give me every reaction under the sun when I tell them that we use cloth diapers. Some of them include- "Gross! I could never do that!", "Why?", "That must take you a lot of extra time.", "Is it really better to do all of those extra loads of laundry than to just throw away a diaper?". The list goes on from there. Some people are really interested though and it's for those people that I write this post.
Where to start. Well, I guess I'll tell you why we switched to cloth almost 4 1/2 years ago. Luke was about 6 months old. He was a great pooper. And by great I mean he could blast it out of his diaper and onto his clothes in a matter of seconds. The boy had skills, I tell you! I started researching cloth because I had a couple of online friends that used them. I figured that I was scrubbing out poopy clothes anyway. Why not at least try cloth. At least then I wouldn't have to scrub. We bought a starter pack of several prefolds, covers and 2
Bum Genius One Sized pockets and starting using them. To our surprise he amazingly didn't blow out of these diapers. No more scrubbing onesies!!! I was hooked, so off we took on our cloth diapering adventure.
Over the years we've used them on all three children. We've tried
pockets, all in ones,
prefolds,
fitteds. We've used PUL covers and wool ones. The only thing that I can think of that we haven't tried are pins. I just refuse to have anything pointy near a squiggly baby.
Snappi's work just fine! We've had some of our diapers for all three children and they are still going strong. We've tried some and they just didn't work for our kiddos at all. Those were quickly sold off to a new home where they could be used. We've bought new diapers and used ones. We've even been given some. Oh, and I made some, but that was a while ago.
All that to say that we've tried them all and now have the perfect stash of used, pooped in, but great working diapers. My laundry routine is usually to wash them every other day. Some times it's 2 days in between. I throw them in the washer, either dry or hang dry them and fold them or stuff them back together. Nothing difficult. We use natural laundry soap so there aren't any brightners, etc in the diapers. Those can cause stink in diapers or rashes on baby's bum. We would use that soap anyway though. If baby (or Eliza) poops in the diaper we simply dump it in the toilet. (Did you know you're supposed to do that with disposibles too? Throwing away poop is against the dump laws.) If the diaper gets wet we change it. None of that "It's not that wet" stuff. Pee is pee. Change your baby!
Now cost. Well, you can definitely go to both extreme's with cloth diapering. You can do bare essentials and spend next to nothing. You can buy all the latest cute diapers and spend LOTS. Or you can be like us and every so often get a new diaper, but mostly just use what you have. Starting up is the biggest cost. It's hard to spend all of that money at one time. Do a little math though and add up how much you're going to be saving every single month for at least 2 years and you'll quickly realize that it's worth it. $9 a week (for chlorine free disposible diapers) for 2 years= $936. That's of course not thinking about sick weeks when you go through more than one pack. $20 for 1 Onesize BG X 20 diapers= $400 (and you can well them when you finished with them and make back some of the money. Oh, and these aren't the cheapest by far. You could easily spend only $100.) And if your child's not trained by 2 years old? No problem. Just keep using said diapers.
Benefits:
Saving money.
Super cute diapers :)
Less rashes and problems with asthma.
Usually faster potty training.
Negatives:
Extra laundry.
Upfront cost.
Having to dump poop in the toilet (though you're supposed to do this either way)
I hope I was a little informative for those who have little ones in diapers. I have tons more that I could say, but don't want to overwhelm you. There are lots of sites that I use and like for more information. If you're interested just leave a comment :)
