Yes, we cloth diaper

It started with a desire to save money. Jimbo and I were both a little hesitant about the mess and extra work, so I asked a mom at my moms group that is cloth diapering to teach me what she does, what she uses, and the pros and cons of cloth diapering. I learned a lot and she let me borrow two of her diapers so I could show Jimbo how they worked and so we could try them on Eliana.

After the test and a lot of research, we decided on Fuzzi Bunz. Mind you, these are not your grandmother's or mother's cloth diapers. They are pocket diapers (as opposed to pre-folds with diaper covers and all-in-one diapers). New Fuzzi Bunz retail for around $18 or $19 a diaper which was too much for our pocket book. So I began to search for discounted diapers.

I found a site that sold factory seconds, but wasn't too sure about those. I found lots on eBay, but they weren't much cheaper than buying new from an online store. And then I found a lot on Craigslist - 11 used small Fuzzi Bunz diapers for $100. I felt this was a reasonable price for trying cloth diapering out.

Fuzzi Bunz get rave reviews and they are very cute!

The only other thing I needed to decide on was whether to use a wet or dry pail. I wanted to make cloth diapering as easy as possible, so I opted for the dry pail, which meant using a plastic drawstring trash bag while we were in the testing phase. I was able to still store clean diapers in the diaper stacker.


Here is the process we used during the trial (and still use today):

1. Stuff and fold all diapers and put them in the diaper stacker
2. Once a diaper is dirty, dump hard poo in the toilet, and put the whole diaper in the trash bag and shake the insert out (the milk and formula poo can just go straight in the bag)
   
3. Once the bag is full, dump it in the washing machine
4. Run a cold rinse; a hot wash using a little detergent, a little vinegar, and a little baking soda; and a cold rinse
5. Dry on medium heat (or air/sun dry)
   
6. Go back to step 1

After our two week trial, we fell in love with cloth diapering. It was cleaner, cheaper, and the only extra work involved was doing 2 to 3 extra washes a week. We decided to stick with it, so I bought one extra brand new diaper from eBay and I bought a large zippered wet bag from Leslie's Boutique. Surprisingly, the zipper holds the smell in good enough to keep the bag in Ellie's room.

Leslie's Boutique puts out a quality product with lots of cute prints available!

I also decided to also make the move to cloth wipes so we could throw those into the wash right along with the diapers. I bought 12 hemp fleece wipes from the Fuzzi Bunz Store. You can use cotton or fleece wipes or washrags, but hemp is better because it has antibacterial properties and won't mildew if it stays wet for long periods of time. I make my own wipes solution using 2 drops of tea tree oil and a drop of Ellie's baby wash, Earth's Best by Jason, and about 2 cups of warm water. I fold them in half, put them in a pencil box, and pour the solution over them.

Pencil box with wipes inside and clean wipes waiting to go in

The two ingredients for the wipes solution

Lastly, upon the recommendation of that same mom from the mom's group, we bought some Kushies diaper liners. These flushable, biodegradable liners catch the poo and allow you to easily dump it and the liner into the toilet.

Here you can see the pocket and the liner

We have since moved up to medium diapers for Eliana. I found a great online forum called Diaper Swappers where moms post used cloth diapering items for sale at great prices. I was able to get 15 medium diapers for around $10 a diaper. To stuff the diapers, we use microfiber inserts, though we also have contour hemp inserts that came with the small diapers I bought from Craigslist. I like the fact that the microfiber inserts hold a lot of liquid and they dry fast. But they tend to be more difficult to get urine smells out of. I like that the hemp inserts don't smell, but they take forever to dry. Here is a picture of a diaper with a liner and two inserts. We use one microfiber insert during the day and a combo of the microfiber insert and the hemp insert at night.


We've now been cloth diapering for about 8 months and still love it. We've spent around $350 on our stash of diapers and accessories, and will save much more than that on not buying disposables - especially since we can use these diapers on any babies we have in the future AND we can resell everything for at least half of what we paid if properly taken care of. In addition, we are not contributing to filling the landfill with diapers and we are not putting a lot of chemicals on Ellie's bottom. We still use disposables when we go out or on trips because disposables are easier when away from home. But that equals out to maybe 10 to 20 disposables a month (as compared to 10 to 20 every two or three days!!).

That was a lot of information and I'm sure to have left something out or a question unanswered. Please feel free to leave a question or comment or send me an email if you have a question or story to share!! Oh, I almost forgot, here's my baby girl modeling a diaper for you.