Cloth Diapers – the earth friendly choice and easier than you think

When I was pregnant with our daughter in 2008, the subject of diapers came up again and again. Both my husband and I wanted to use cloth diapers for the environmental and cost reasons, but everyone told us we were crazy. We heard:

• They cost too much to buy
• They smell
• You can’t use them when you travel
• They are too hard to put on
• The baby will get a rash
• You can’t wash them at home

And the list went on and on.

We wondered, was it really that bad? Could we handle cloth diapering? I set out to do some research to find out the truth.

I came to find out there was a ton on info on cloth diapering out there. The trouble was most of it was written by people who were either in total favor of it or totally against it. Those that were in favor of it spoke a language I couldn’t understand (CPF? AIO? What’s that?) And those that were against it made such a solid case that it sounded like cloth diapering was BAD for your baby.

Despite all the bad press, we did decide to cloth diaper. Cloth diapering is not for everyone in every situation and in fact we do not cloth diaper 100% of the time. I felt bad about this at first but eventually let go of the guilt and realized that every cloth diaper I use is a win for the environment and I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. You too will find the correct balance.

To Sew or Not to Sew

When we first decided to cloth diaper I entertained the idea of sewing my own. Trust me, if you can use a sewing machine you too will think about doing it when you see how much some of these diapers cost!

One of the best references for sewing your own diapers is diaperdivas.com . This is a message board for people that sew their own diapers. It is free to join and there is a bunch of info on here about needed supplies and even info if you want to try to sell your diapers you sew.

Another website to check out is: www.diapersewing.com. Of course searching the internet will bring up tons of others. The reason I liked diaperdivas is because they were friendly and are actually out there making diapers instead of managing a website.

There are lots of free patterns out there, supplies are easily obtained and the costs for fabric and notions is not too bad when you compare it to purchased cloth diapers.  If you use fabric from thrifts and yard sales you can really save money and do the environment good by upcycling.

So, did I choose to sew my own diapers? Nope.

Why not? The high initial costs for the better quality snap machine made this something I had to commit to doing. With working full time plus running around a teen, I wasn’t sure I’d really have time to make diapers so we did not choose this route. I probably could have sold the snap machine if I hadn’t used it, but we decided just not to take the chance.

I did, however, make diaper wipes for our babies. The wipes have been one of my favorite projects to date – and so useful. Much better for the environment and the babies than the purchased kind.

So, if you like to sew, have the time and perhaps want to make some money on the side, making cloth diapers is a great thing to do. Many women make good money doing it plus their kids have the cutest bottoms on the block.

Choosing the Diapers that are best for you

Cloth diapering has its own language. You must know the lingo to understand what is being offered.

For example, AIO I learned is “all in one” meaning a diaper that is both a diaper and a cover in one piece – very similar to a conventional disposible diaper. CPF stands for a Chinese Pre-fold which is the flat cotton diaper we’ve been using for decades.

Never fear, you too can learn the lingo and begin to understand what you’re reading. The trick is to start at the dictionary at http://www.diaperpin.com/dictionary.asp. This dictionary explains the lingo and also links you to reviews of the items being described. I found this site to be the single most useful site on the web for cloth diapering.

Once you’ve read everything on DiaperPin, start visiting the merchant sites. Many of them have wonderful references on them explaining the items they offer, care instructions and what works best in what situation.

My favorite diaper purchasing site is www.greenmountaindiapers.com. They have good prices, a large selection and a ton of info on their site. They show you pictures of their diapers on babies so you can really see what they look like. They also tell you what covers work best with what diapers (if you aren’t using all-in-one diapers) and that helped us out a lot.

So what did we purchase? Well, we started out with Cloth-eez flat prefold diapers (http://www.greenmountaindiapers.com/diapers.htm) from Green Mountain, but we really couldn’t get the hang of them.

Since this is by far the most frugal purchase option, we tried really hard to make it work but it just didn’t. We now use these diapers for changing pad covers and as spit rags for our son who has reflux. We could sell them when the babies grow up, but they are great all-use clothes so probably won’t.

We had purchased a small number of the GMD Infant Fitted Diapers shown on that same pagejust to see what they were like (they were pricier) and we fell in love. Once our daughter outgrew these we moved to the Snug-to-fit Supreme One Size fitted diapers (also on the same page.)  She is still wearing them at 19 months as is our very large son.

All of these diapers require a cover and we have tried a bunch of different ones. Our favorite has been the Thirsties Diaper Cover and we purchase them from Nicki’s Diapers because she offered free shipping on covers. It doesn’t appear that she still does that, but she does mark frugal choices on her website which might help.

You can see here http://www.nickisdiapers.com/catalog.php?category=216 that Thirsties come in great colors and their sizes are very forgiving. We bought two of each until we saw which sizes we needed most. Both of our kids are now in the large size even though they are 16 months apart. Just depends on how your kid is shaped.

So how do you decide? My suggestion is buy a few things and when your baby arrives, see what you like. Don’t buy a lot until you know what fits you and your baby. You can check eBay for deals on used diapers (don’t be scared, they will be in good shape) or some of the other sites do swaps.

All the Extra Stuff – what do you need?

When you make the decision to cloth diaper, there are a few extras you have to think about that you don’t need to consider with disposables.

Cloth and disposables both require a diaper pail (or diaper genie for sposies) of some type.  We use a flip top diaper pail for our diapers since we don’t store ours wet.  (Some people put soaking water in their pail and if you do that you need a tight fitting lid to keep the kids out of it.)  If you are not soaking though you can just use a plain old trash can.

We line our diaper pail with a wet bag (waterproof bag) that we got from Snap-ez.  They are no longer carrying them, but many people make these and you can read reviews of them on Diaperpin.  We have two of these bags so when one is in the wash the other can be in the pail.  You also will want a smaller wet bag to put in your diaper bag if you use cloth diapers when you are out.  They also are great to transport swimsuits and other wet clothes.

If you have chosen to use Pre-fold diapers you will either need pins or snappi fasteners.  There is a great tutorial on how to use these at Green Mountain Diapers. Be warned that the teeth on the snappis are sharp!

If you are doing cloth diapers, you may want to consider cloth wipes as well.  They add very little to the laundry and are far superior to the throw away kind, not to mention you can choose the type of soap you use to clean the baby with so you can avoid a lot of harsh chemicals.  I’ve sewn my own (you can see my post about it here) but if you aren’t into sewing, there are many places to purchase cloth wipes and again DiaperPin is the best place to get reviews.

If you are using cloth wipes you will need a cleaning solution.  Plain water works just fine, but you can view other products at DiaperPin.  You can read about what we use here.

Those are the major things you need to know about.  If you search around the diapering websites you will definitely find other things to buy, but before you do, make sure they are really necessary.

How to Launder Cloth Diapers

There are about as many different ways to launder a cloth diaper as there are types of cloth diapers themselves, but what is the best way? Well, the best way is to follow the manufacturer’s suggestions and then modify them to suit your schedule and budget.

We have not found cloth diapers hard to clean at all and they have added just a little work to our busy days.  Yes, at first it was hard to figure out the best way to deal with them, but now it is just part of our life.

So how do we do it?

Well, first we do not use a wet pail.  We keep our diapers dry until they are washed.  We do put solids into the toilet when possible, but not always.

When we have enough diapers and wipes for a load we do the following:

1. Put the diapers, wipes and covers into the washer and fill it with cold water to which we’ve added 1 Tablespoon Oxyclean.  (We find it helps with stains.)
2. We let the diapers soak for 15-60 minutes (or several hours when we forget they are down there.)
3. We spin off the rinse water and then wash with 1/4 C of our homemade laundry soap in warm water with a cold rinse. (No, we don’t use hot water.)  Sometimes we use vinegar in the rinse to help strip the soap and get rid ammonia smells, but not often.
4. We use an extra cold rinse with nothing in it.
5. We dry the diapers and wipes in the dryer on high with dryer balls and without softener sheets (the sheets reduce absorbancy and give our son a rash) and hang the covers.

That’s it.  Some of what we do we’ve read that you shouldn’t do.  But this is how we do it and our kids skin is fine and the diapers are always clean.

So follow the rules you are given and then change them to suit you and your baby.