One of the coolest parts of this whole baby thing so far has been diapering. I know that sounds strange. Diapers are, by definition... poopy. But we made the decision to use cloth diapers, and the whole thing has been downright fun.
When I was pregnant, Andrew and I went to a "Cloth Diapering 101" class to learn all about it- and wow is there a lot to learn! The class was a good introduction, and sealed our decision to give it a try.
Andrew, being the more practical of the two of us, was on board for cost reasons. I, on the other hand, thought the money-saving was a nice bonus... but I mostly liked how adorable they are and how cool I sounded when I told people we'd be cloth diapering. I mean, if we're being honest.
So exactly why would anyone choose to cloth diaper. Well...
- It's much cheaper, especially if you plan to have more than one child, which we do. Cloth diapering can be a kind of scary investment, initially- you're going to spend at least a couple hundred dollars. But compare that to the $1000/year you'll spend on disposables and it doesn't seem so bad! Not to mention that if you take great care of them, cloth diapers retain their value and can be resold to recoup the cost once you're finished with them.
- CDs are much better for the environment. They are used over and over and when you're done with them, you can sell them to the next person. Every disposable diaper used sits in a landfill somewhere for who knows how many years!
- They're gentler on your baby. Disposables have all kinds of stuff in them, cloth diapers are just cloth. I imagine they feel better on skin, and no exposure to yucky chemicals!
- They're adorable! I just love all of the patterns and colors available, and fluffy bums are irresistible. ;)
- Community. I love connecting with other cloth diapering moms (and dads!), talking CDs is fun and interesting. And they make for an interesting topic of conversation with people who don't have little kids anymore (CDing has come a long way in recent years), or people who can't imagine why anyone would ever want to reuse diapers. :D
Whenever someone asks me for advice on how to start or what types of diapers there are, I immediately link them to those videos, because they are awesome. She manages to explain things in a way that makes perfect sense, and she covers a lot of information but keeps it simple enough to understand.
That picture above was the bounty of our very first cloth diaper purchases. After spending a lot of time researching, I headed out to a couple of different stores. First a baby consignment store, where I bought the brown diaper with the monster on it and the dark blue diaper (both pockets, both used, both cost about $4- a steal!). Then I headed a few doors down and bought the rest of the diapers pictured, all brand new. There's a cover (the light green- Flip brand), a GroVia All-in-2 (the lime green), a GroVia all-in-1 (dark grey), and a BumGenius 4.0 pocket.
Lots of people told me (and I'm glad they did) that it's hard to tell what kind of diapering system (covers, pockets, AI1s, or AI2s) and what brands you're going to like best until you try some different ones. Andrew and I were sure the all-in-2s were for us. They come with snap in inserts and they're very straightforward. However, we found that the two GroVia diapers are actually our least favorite, and we're planning on reselling them. They're quite narrow (we have a nice chunky baby) and they don't seem as absorbent as the pocket diapers. Plus the snaps on the dark grey diaper are all kinds of stupid. Now, all we want to use is pockets. Even the couple of covers that we have don't get as much use. Pocket diapers are easy, they're quick, they fit Caleb really well, they're super absorbent and they get the job done best for us.
After we figured out what we liked, I got on Amazon and ordered a bunch of diapers using my registry completion code. I'm glad I saved it! Because I'm an Amazon Prime/Amazon Mom member, we got 15% off our entire purchase, the only restriction was that the items had to be sold by Amazon and not a third party. So I filtered my searches to find only items sold by Amazon, filled my cart, and two days later, I had a lovely box of diapers. We bought a few different brands and found that Charlie Bananas are our favorites (though unfortunately they are quite expensive).
Here are some photos of some of our current stash. We'll be ordering another ten diapers or so this month to round it out and I'm really excited about that!
Here's my routine- do a spin and rinse with no detergent on Cold/Cold. This agitates the diapers and gets the gunk out. Next, wash on Hot/Cold (with the extended rinse on) with 1/3 of a scoop of Country Save powder detergent, which we get at our local Food Co-Op for $12-ish a box. No dunking diapers in the toilet (ew, I will not be doing that ever), no spraying the poop out (yet... we will be doing this when the time comes). Easy peasy.
Then we hang the actual diaper part to dry on a sweet rack that Andrew made, throw the inserts in the dryer, and bam! Clean diapers. We haven't had any issues with stain or smell yet, which means we haven't had to worry about stripping our diapers or changing up our laundry routine at all (diapers can start to build up detergent and have an awful ammonia smell as soon as the baby pees in them, or they can get a funk if you aren't using enough detergent).
Here's our drying setup. This is in our laundry room over a vent, so they don't take very long to dry.
At home, we have a large wetbag in the nursery as well as a diaper pail in the laundry room, which was given to us by an awesome family member. We just throw the diapers in until wash time, and so far I haven't noticed any stink. Yay!