the cloth diapering report

Ahoy from the land of non-disposable diapers! A few of you asked how we were going with our diaper program, and I'm happy to report that we are doing most well indeed. They are so easy, you guys. So so easy. They are the same as disposable diapers, but you don't have to throw them out! And you have to wash them. So as long as you're up for doing extra wash, they are no big deal at all. And depending on how many diapers you have, you will wash more or less.



Here's what we've been doing:

We have prefolds, but to be honest, we've been using them less and less. We're pretty much 90% fuzzi bunz-ers and we love them. Now, I should also note that I am not a hardcore cloth diapering mom. Before Dashiell was born I mistakenly thought that you had to be either a die hard cloth diaper-er, or just give up and use disposables. Obviously not. We use disposables at night, (which is usually just one diaper), and I feel pretty okay with it. Anything to get the little love bug to sleep longer. "Through the night" is a phrase that we've stopped using around here because it seems sooooo far away. But longer. Longer is always good.

Also, when we go out of town (like last weekend), we bring disposables. We have taken cloth with us to my parents' house for the weekend, but I can't really deal with a bag full of poopy diapers at a nice resort for three nights. My rationale... I'm doing my part, people. And I think that's pretty good.

We ordered all of our prefolds and covers and extra supplies from Green Mountain. They have everything and anything (except Fuzzi Bunz) that you could need in terms of cloth diapering. And they have detailed reviews of every product which is nice when you know nothing.

Our Fuzzi Bunz came from BabyEarth.com, but you can really order them anywhere. Last week I saw them on sale at Diapers.com, which is amazing because I feel like they are NEVER on sale.

For those of you just starting, here's what we started with:

2 dozen newborn prefolds
3 covers (this, this, and this). The Imse Visme organic cotton being my favorite.
12 Small Fuzzi Bunz

Plus I bought 3 dozen cloth wipes, wool wash, 2 snappis, 2 diaper pail liners and a diaper sprayer toilet attachment thing.

The cloth wipes didn't work for us. Dashiell's butt is only happy with Seventh Generation wipes. I tried to go cloth, I did, but disposable worked better for us. Now we use them for other things around the changing table, like blocking mid-change pee from hitting the wall, etc.

Eucalan wool wash is great and super easy. Plus I have 2 sets of wool nursing pads that I wash with my wool covers. Highly recommend them! I wash them like once every 3 or 4 weeks, and they are nice and big, which is good because they look less obvious in clothes. Plus they'll last your entire nursing career.

The toilet sprayer was good in the beginning, but now I'm too lazy to actually spray poopy diapers off. I just toss them into the bin and the "solids" (not that there's anything solid about breastmilk poop), come off in the initial rinse cycle.

I've since added a few more Fuzzi Bunz and the next size prefolds. Not totally sure if we'll keep buying prefolds actually, though they might be nice for summer since they breathe much better than the 'Bunz, especially with a wool cover.

If anyone is curious about how we wash our diapers, here's the drill:

Cold rinse
Hot wash with 1 scoop of Charlie's soap
Cold rinse

So that's 3 wash cycles per load, but I actually looked at our water bill and it's only like $25 more per month. Which is much less than the number of disposables you'll go through.

Hmm. Is there anything else you all want to know?

The main thing is, cloth diapering is so easy! It saves sooooooo much room in landfills and it's so cute seeing your little baby in his big diaper and a T-shirt. There aren't any eco-friendly diapers, as much as you want to believe there are. Even the "biodegradable" ones would only biodegrade if they were exposed to light and air in a huge diaper compost pile. But as well all know, they get wrapped up into air tight diaper genie bags and tossed into the dark recesses of a landfill, where they have about as much of a chance to biodegrade as your old laptop battery.

And ask Jora! It's never to late to start. She started Little E on cloth when she was 5 months old.

One final note... if you do cloth diaper, keep in mind that bigger diapers = less room in clothes so don't forget to pull out your cute stuff early so you don't miss wearing it altogether. Dashiell has some 3-6 month things that barely fit with a Fuzzi Bunz, and he's not even 4 months old yet. But actually, baby clothes sizing is a whole different post. It's wildly unreliable. Dashiell can wear a 0-3 m sweatshirt from Gap and a 12 m onesie from Petit Bateau.

Okay, veering off topic. Please ask if you have any more questions!