A lot of people are really skeptical of cloth diapers. They leak, I’ll stick myself with pins, how will you have time for all that laundry. In reality I think they are a heck of a lot easier than disposable diapers. We did disposable diapers for the first couple weeks to make sure the meconium poo was well behind us. I’ve heard that poo can change your cloth diapers forever and being a newbie followed that advice. I was so ready to get him in cloth diapers though we actually didn’t even use all the disposable diapers we bought so I’m going today to go donate them. We decided to go with Rumparooz, a mom owned local company which sat well with me. They are pocket style diapers meaning you stuff an insert in them and the insert holds all the pee while the soft fleece stays nice and dry against your little one’s rump. My son is what you would call a heavy wetter, his diapers are frequently 3 to 4x as heavy as older babies we know and yet the diaper holds it all. Last week we had to switch to double inserts, as his pee was getting too much for one poor liner to handle. But other than that no leaking and no issues.
What about laundry? I use Charlie’s Soap it’s amazing and I run diapers every am. I’m neurotic and like routine, otherwise I would just do them everyday. I throw them in and run a rinse, a heavy hot cycle and then another rinse and spin, it takes 1 hr and 20 min in the wash of which I actually do about 5 minutes of paying attention. Then I pull them out and hang them up to dry.
I got this bad boy from Ikea-I call it the diaper chandelier, it’s $5 and I’ve got two and it may be the most amazing thing ever! My diapers smell, look and feel so much better since using this and I’m not using my dryer for an hour and a half everyday so I’m saving money and energy. Every morning I just pull these off the hanger and dump them on my couch for stuffing the inserts.
It really only takes about 10 minutes tops to stuff the inserts but I’m always hoping my husband will do them while he gets ready in the morning so I like to leave them. So there you have it about 15-20 minutes a day for clean, eco-friendly and safe diapering of your little man/woman. We also do cloth wipes just because it’s easier. You just throw them in with everything else. But using cloth wipes requires cloth wipe solutions. I use bum drops-you drop one of these in 1 cup of hot water, let cool and put in a container-I like peri bottles, they work great. When I was pregnant and dead set on cloth diapering I was a little nervous that I would get lazy and not want to do it and end up selling my diapers. But so far I love it, it’s easy and I feel really good about my decision. Honestly I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t use cloth diapers and I didn’t even talk about the huge cost savings associated or how stinking cute they are.
Oh how I wish I was good like you and did a load every day! I tend to wash every 2nd day which isn’t too bad, but I’ve managed to build up a big enough stash that I can put off the putting-back-together-again stage for four or even five days. Then I suffer the consequences of having a MASSIVE mountain of nappies and bits to put back together again.
But I also love cloth to bits – cute, fluffy, cheap, green….what’s not to love?
I like Rumparooz as well, although we’ve only got two. We’ve graduated from the microfibre inserts to bamboo though as my child is a champion wee-er. I love your diaper chandelier! We have a clothesline outside but it’s been so rainy that I find myself hanging diapers up all over the dining room to dry. I’ll have to see if our Ikea has the same .
I did want to mention though that we use cloth wipes and no solution of any kind, just water. Works a treat, cheap & easy. I’ve got a little plastic box from Ikea (a tupperware container would work just as well) and I keep a handful of wet & squeeze out wipes in it and just refill a handful at a time as needed.
It sounds like you are an Ikea junkie as well, thanks for the tip on the wipes solution, the stuff we have is so cheap but sometimes we do get low and there is a massive blow-out in between making a new batch so I’ll keep that in mind-thanks!
I’m interesting in your washing routine – since you allow the diapers to air dry, I assume you have two ‘batches’ of diapers that you alternate? I’ll be cloth diapering two this fall, so I’m looking into a more efficient (and energy saving) way to do things. Where do you find Charlie’s soap? I’m having issues with diaper build-up and leaking… any advice?
I do have two ‘batches’ of diapers. I have 25 diapers and my son uses an average of 8 for a given 24 hour period, so I’m never too low. Charlie’s Soap can be found on amazon, or in your local cloth diaper store. Diaper build-up/leaking is a tough one. We had some smell issues so I started using 1/4 cup of vinegar in the fabric softener compartment and have noticed a huge difference. Also I have an HE washer so I started using the heavy setting to really soak the diapers and that has also helped. I hope this helps, if you have any more questions, please let me know!