Cloth Diaper Pointers
And now for a post that is a bit more “living” than straight up “home improvement” related. When people ask what question we get here at YHL most frequently, they are likely expecting it to be about paint or demo. Not so. It is, without a doubt, some iteration of the following:
How are you liking cloth diapers? How many do you have? What brand are they? Did you get the kind with the liners/inserts? Do they work? Does Clara like them? Are they difficult? Do you regret it? Is it annoying to wash them? Do they truly get clean? Are there times when you do not use them and opt for disposables? How long will they last? Are they bulky? What do you do when you are out running errands? How exactly do you wash them? What colors did you get? How do you store them when they are dirty? Does Clara have a lot of blowouts with them? Do they give her diaper rash?
Who knew it could be such a hot topic? But we are glad to address the many (many) questions that we have received right here in this surprisingly exhaustive post. So fasten your seat belts and get ready to read the word poop at least once. And by all means, if you are not a parent and have no interest in hearing about baby bodily functions, skip this post and stay tuned for more house-related fare tomorrow. You have been warned…
After a lot of research and chats with family and friends who went the cloth diaper route, we settled on the Bum Genius Elemental One Size All In Ones – the ones that are organic with snaps instead of velcro. They are so straightforward to use and should last us through multiple children. We have heard that velcro can wear out after tons of washings but snaps are good for the long haul so that is why we opted for that feature. As for inserts or liners, the ones that we chose do not have them. We figured if we were going to have to wash part of the diaper we might as well get all in ones and wash them all (instead of dealing with liners/inserts). It seemed simpler and so far we have found them to be extremely straightforward. Plus we enjoy that they are one-size-fits-all, which will save us a ton of money (they adjust with some straightforward snapping to accommodate Clara as she grows).
The dozen that we purchased should not only last us through Clara’s potty training days but we expect to use the same dipes for future bambino(s) as well. We picked up 12 and have never needed more than that thus far but we would not mind 18, which seems to be the magic number for many other cloth diapering parents. We might grab six more someday, but we are certainly getting by with 12 so far. Oh and as for diapering duty, you might be shocked to hear that John changes way more diapers than I do around here. He sweetly chose that if I would be feeding her multiple times a day, he could be the go-to diaper guy, which is such a big assist and in fact truly cute to watch (Clara loves to pee on him from time to time).
And as for washing them, we have found that with a baby you are consistently doing laundry anyway. So tossing in one big load of diapers every day-and-a-half or so is no trouble at all. Truly, we anticipated the switch from disposables to cloth diapers to be waaay harder (Clara did not fit into her cloth diapers for the first 9 weeks so we had some time to get used to disposables and were shaking in our boots about making the switch). Thankfully it was truly straightforward and lively. They are simply so darn cute on her, and she seems truly comfortable and glad in them too. Speaking of the aesthetic factor, we got three orange ones (clementine), three green ones (grasshopper), three light blue ones (twilight), and three yellow ones (butternut). That way they are gender neutral for any bambinos down the line.
How has our experience with cloth diapering been so far? In short: we enjoy them, they are no harder than disposables (the time we spend tossing them in the wash seems equal to the time we used to spend trudging out to the store to buy disposables before Clara could fit into her cloth dipes). Clara seems to enjoy them more than disposables too (she sleeps longer at night, never appears uncomfortable, etc) and she has experienced 95% fewer blowouts and zero diaper rash since trading up from disposables (where those occurrences were a tad more frequent). Oh and the only time we do not use them is when we travel overnight somewhere, since it is more of a challenge to wash them while road tripping.
And have we mentioned that they are hugely cost effective? Especially thanks to our Energy Star front loading washer and dryer (which make the cost of cleaning them negligible and keep our water/energy usage extremely low). We also frequently line dry our diapers out in the sun to save even more energy and keep them looking mint (more info on that in a minute). For around $265 (for a 12-pack of cloth diapers) we have unlimited dipes on hand for the rest of Clara’s diapering days. Plus we are not sending tons of disposable diapers to the landfill so that makes us feel good. In retrospect, the only thing we would have done differently is purchase some newborn sized Bum Genius diapers as well. The one-size-fits-all versions are a bit loose on most newborns, so they also make cloth newborn-sized dipes, which we opted to skip since we did not know how big Clara would be at birth (the doc estimated she’d be 10lbs (!) but she was only 7lbs 10 oz in the end). So since we skipped the newborn sized cloth diapers, Clara’s first nine weeks were spent in Seventh Generation disposable diapers- and we learned simply how pricey the non-reusable diaper route truly was.
We are in fact glad we experienced life with disposables so we have some point of comparison. If we hadn’t relied on them at first, we never could have kept track of the money we spent on them (and the money that we would thereby be saving moving forward). After nine weeks of disposable diapering we had spent more than $180. That is only a bit less than we spent on our whole stock of Bum Genius diapers that will easily last through the end of Clara’s diaper days and hopefully through future babies’ as well! And by our $180 for 9 weeks estimation, we could have easily spent another $3000+ on disposable diapers to last her until she turns two. Crazy, right? We also hope to make the change to cloth wipes sometime soon for even more savings in the future (we are right now using Seventh Generation ones, which we like a lot).
As for our dirty diaper system, we have a pail for dipes and a smaller pail for wipes in the nursery (we snagged both pails at World Market). We rinse the dirty (read: not simply wet) ones with the diaper sprayer that we mentioned a while back (pictured above). Some people say that you do not need to spray dirty diapers when a baby is exclusively breastfeeding but we have found that a swift spray helps them come out a lot cleaner and less discolored so it is worth it to us (and for what it is worth, our friend Katie Bower also had the same experience). What can we say, we are pro-spray kinda girls. And it only takes a second. It is kind of lively too (but I will not get into that as I am likely one of the weirdest people on the planet since I get an inordinate amount of joy from cloth diapering).
After spraying the dirty ones, we place them in the larger pail, while only-wet ones go right into the same pail without a spray. The dirty wipes go straight into the smaller pail for disposal (both pails are lined with “recycled” plastic bags that we have laying around from places like Target when we mindlessly forget our reusable ones). Note: we hung the pails off of the hard-to-see corner of the dresser with coat hooks and anchors, which keeps them much easier to reach than placing the pails on the floor. Then we brought in small strips of weatherstripping on the bottom edge of the pails (where they meet the dresser) to keep them from scratching the wood.
We have not experienced any issues with odor thanks to the lids (of course we hear that things can get stinkier once we transition to solid foods but we have a few family friends who still use the pail method so we do not anticipate having a problem as long as we continue to wash our diapers every day and a half or so). Which brings us back to dirty diaper laundering. As recommended by Bum Genius, we prefer to launder them at least every other day. We typically wash 11 of them in one big load every day-and-a-half while Clara wears the remaining 12th diaper- that way we are not washing simply a few at a time.
And as for our detergent, we use Seventh Generation Free & Clear (update: we learned our diapers would last even longer thanks to Charlie’s Soap Laundry Powder so that is now all that we use) and we simply wash them once on the warm heavy duty setting and either machine dry them or lay them out in the sun. We have heard that you can do a cold pre-wash before the warm heavy duty wash, but so far that has not been necessary (possibly because we pre-spray the dirty diapers into the toilet as soon as they come off).
Oh and we learned that occasionally one may come out of the wash with a slight orange tinge (quite rarely, this is not an everyday thing). The good news is that it is 100% clean and sanitized, sometimes one every few weeks is simply a bit discolored from breastfeeding poop (since the pure organic cotton liners are awesomely absorbent). It is kind of like how old tupperware containers can get stained from tomato sauce and even if you run them through the dishwasher and they are totally clean they can still have that tint. Luckily we learned if you lay them out in the sun while they are still moist from the washer it bleaches them white again- it is like magic! Seriously, you might want to cross your fingers for that tinge every once in a while simply for the lively of seeing the sun undo it in a few hours. We wish Clara was old sufficient to watch in wonder like we do. She’d likely make this Zoolander face:
Oh and they are also fairly straightforward on the go (we only use disposables when we are traveling somewhere overnight, but for day trips and errands and things we stick to cloth). If we have to do a diaper change while we are out – at Home Depot for example, haha – we simply slip the dirty cloth diaper into a plastic bag and rinse it when we get home. We hope to upgrade to a reusable zippered wet bag for dirty diapers while we are on the go (we right now simply reuse Target bags and stuff that we have laying around) since we have heard those work well and contain everything nicely (no smells or leaks).
Now for the bulkiness question. They are certainly a bit bulkier than disposables but nothing too terrible. In fact we think they are especially cute! Clara can still fit into a few newborn sized outfits with them on and she’s nearly three months old! So they cannot be that large, right?
So there you have it. Over 2,000 words on cloth diapering. Can you tell we are keen? Of course this is a fully personal parent-how-you’d-like-to decision, so we are simply sharing our experience when it comes to diapering. And we are not anti-disposable by any means! Tons of our family and friends opted to go that route because it worked best for their household and we still rely on disposables when we travel. If there is one thing we have learned in three months of parenting it is that there is no right way to raise your wee one, and it is all about sussing out what works best for you and your family. So go forth and diaper your beans and beanettes any way you’d like with a smile on your face. Or am I the only weirdo who grins every time I snap a fresh diaper on those cute little buns?
UPDATE: We switched from diaper tins to wet bags a while back (since they are especially straightforward to toss into the laundry with our diapers too keep things smelling fresh – here is that info for ya). As for how cloth diapering is going, we still enjoy and use the same 12 cloth diapers that we purchased over a year ago! That is it (we have not purchased any more or tried any other brands). They still look mint, work well, and do not smell or anything. Best money we ever spent.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Our cloth diapers are still holding up truly well two years later. Check out the update post here.
