Cloth Diapers - The Basics!

I promise this won't be a cloth diaper blog!  But I wanted to share some Q and As I often get from my friends who don't cloth diaper.

Q.  Why do you cloth diaper JD?
Mainly to save money, but also for environmental reasons.  When I was pregnant, I researched EVERYTHING!  I discovered this whole community of cloth diapering parents and they taught me that modern cloth diapers are functional, affordable, and cute!  I did a quick calculation on the "return on investment" of a cloth diaper stash and I got 8 months!  After 8 months we will diaper JD for FREE!  I was sold.
I won't bore you with all the statistics about disposable diaper trash, but I didn't want to contribute any more trash than I had to.  Cloth diapering, even part time, can drastically reduce your trash!   Full disclosure time:  we do use disposables at night, when we travel and when JD was a newborn (see below), but most days we use cloth.

Q: What did you do when JD was a newborn?

JD at 12 days in a Kissaluvs 0 and Bummis cover

A: For the first few weeks of JD's life, we used a case Earth's Best newborn disposable diapers because we didn't want to have to learn to be parents while trying to figure out the whole cloth diaper thing  (sign up for Amazon Mom and you can order a case of diapers super cheap!) .
We skipped buying a full stash of newborn cloth diapers because we knew he would outgrow them so fast!  A friend gave me 5 Kissaluvs, size 0 and a few Bummis newborn covers that worked great from the start, but I was too chicken to go full time with cloth until JD was about 6 weeks old!  Knowing what I know now, I could have gone fulltime cloth a LOT earlier.  Maybe we will for #2!

At 6 weeks, and about  9-10 lbs,we finally got a good fit with our one-size diapers and started diapering full time with Bumgenius One-Size All-in-One Elemental diapers and Bumgenius 4.0 One-Size Stay Dry Pocket Diapers.

Q. How to you wash the diapers and deal with the Poop!?

A. We have the washing routine down and it really isn't that much work.  We bought a diaper care kit to get us started.  It has everything you need to clean the diapers except the pail (any trash can with a tight lid will work)

Wet diapers just get thrown into a diaper pail that has a washable liner.  Poopy diapers get rinsed off with a diaper sprayer (comes with the kit) that is attached to the toilet, then tossed in the pail.  Every 3rd day, we take the liner out of the pail and toss the whole thing in the washer.  One cold wash Tide original powder to remove any remaining poop, then a hot wash with Charlies soap, followed by another hot wash without soap.  We dry the inserts and all-in ones on medium heat, then toss in all the covers on low heat.  It takes 2 rounds in the dryer to get the all in one diapers dry.

Q. Do you touch Poop?

A. To be honest, I think I have to deal with more poop with disposables because the are more likely to leak and I have to not only change the diaper, but his clothes too!  There have been so few leaks with the cloth diapers that I am tempted to start traveling with them! 

Q.  Don't cloth diapers cost a lot of money?

A.  We've spent about $350 on our diapers, laundry soap, and washing kit (we should broke even when JD hits 8 months! After that, it's all gravy!).  We bought most of our diapers on e-bay, as seconds or used.  This saved a ton of money.  Cottonbabies.com has clearance sales every few months that includes seconds and returned diapers.  Ebay is great and you can find new diapers for cheap (lots of people try cloth diapers and give up - then sell off their diapers for 1/2 the price).  From my flats challenge post you can see how you can cloth diaper for under $100!

Gently Used Diapers websiteshttp://www.jilliansdrawers.
com/products/clothdiapers/gentlyused
http://www.diaperjunction.com/
used-cloth-diapers.html


Other Websites to browse
http://dirtydiaperlaundry.com/
cloth-diaper-video-reviews/
http://community.babycenter.
com/groups/a16235/cloth_diapering
http://www.jilliansdrawers.
com/products/clothdiapers/tryclothfor10