Loving cloth!

I’m sure many of my readers are dying to know whether we decided to use cloth diapers or not (kidding). I decided that if anything might sway Sean to be supportive of CDing, it would be showing him how much we would save. I remember vividly the day I first brought up the subject with him. I was about six months pregnant and we were sitting at BW’3 because I was craving wings. I had found a website that had done all the math for me and had printed out some information along with calculations about how much we’d save – times two!

He barely even took the time to hear me out. He was very much against it and wasn’t interested in hearing anything more about it. We still had plenty of time before the babies were due so I just continued to read about them and research them online. A little closer to their due date, I broached the subject again. I talked about how we could get a starter kit of prefolds and covers and even if we only used them for a few weeks, we wouldn’t be out any money. I also suggested we wait a few weeks after the babies were born to start. As much as I wanted to do it, I wasn’t in any hurry either. I was nervous about whether we’d like it and if we could handle it.

When the babies were three weeks old I ordered two starter kits of prefolds, snappis and covers. Once we’d gone through all the diapers we came home from the hospital with and had to BUY some, AND Sean saw how quickly we went through them, he was MUCH more open to the idea. Not to mention, all those times when you put a brand new diaper on a newborn and in the pee in it WHILE you’re putting it on them, yeah, well that helped too.

It’s funny, after I’d done all this research about which diapers to start with, I was paralyzed with fear about washing them. I finally found a detergent I could wash them in, we prepped and started our journey. At first, we didn’t have enough to CD full-time. But after a couple weeks, we decided we were ready to do it full-time and ordered enough prefolds for a full day. I was really surprised by how easy it was and how into the whole process Sean was. Before I knew it, he was telling other people about how easy it was.

A month or so later, we did a trial of an assortment of cloth diapers. Even though I’d decided we wanted to use one size, I was interested in seeing what else was out there. I liked some of the diapers in our trial but also didn’t want to invest a lot of money. In the end, we only kept a Blueberry one-size cover and a Bum Genius 3.0 one size diaper from the trial. I came across some OS Fuzzibunz on Craigslist so I got four of those and one Happy Heiney’s OS in Silly Monkeys (I was dying to have a fun print). That HH is the most expensive diaper we own and it’s my least favorite. Granted, we’re rough on our diapers because we wash every day and dry on low.

I only buy BG’s on sale so I’ve never paid for more than around $15/diaper.

This is our stash:
BG’s – 10
FB OS – 4
Nubunz – 6
Monkey Snuggles – 3
SmartiPants – 1
Tot Bots – 1 (we got this free for being a tester)
Infant PF’s – 30+ (these STILL fit Madeline)
Regular PF’s – 18
Covers – 2 Flip, 1 Blueberry OS, 1

We like to send our pockets to the sitter and since we don’t have a lot, we do laundry every day. Our house is small so it’s very easy to do this throughout the evening while we go about our lives. Since our babies wear different sizes, we have 2 baskets on our changing table and we just keep them separated.

I tell everyone I can about cloth diapers. I would say the majority of people think of cloth diapers as they were 30 years ago. They’re always surprised by the pockets (even the prefolds and covers). They also think about dunking. People don’t realize that poo from an EBF baby is water soluble. Plus, they make diapers sprayers. We have one but and only really used it when the babies were first start solids. Now, we only use it occasionally.

Cloth is entirely too bulky to travel with with twins so we still use disposables when we travel. I hate doing it but it’s just not practical.

I could go ON and ON. And I probably will. I still need to talk about our routine, our awesome current sitter and our awesome soon-to-be sitter and how they fit into the mix. I LOVE to talk about cloth diapers so please don’t hesitate to ask question.