Wednesday, May 28, 2014

cloth diapering: how it's going

Since I last wrote about our cloth diapering journey, we've gotten a few more supplies.

We now have 12 BumGenius pocket diapers with snaps, 2 Thirsties duo covers, and about 12 oso cozy prefold diapers. We also have two hemp doubler inserts, but one is currently MIA.

We use flannel cloth wipes which we squirt with a little water/tea tree oil mixture from a peri-bottle (left over from my early postpartum days...). We have been using one big planet wise pail liner in a metal trash can with a foot-pedal. Yesterday I bought one more pail liner so we won't have to wait for one to wash/dry before we use more cloth wipes or diapers.





Since Charlotte fit into the diapers around one month old, we've been using cloth regularly, with some days and weeks where we just use disposable. Here are some current pros and cons of our cloth diapering situation.

Pros
- Very infrequent poop blowouts. The elastic does a good job keeping the messes inside.
- Not a single bit of diaper rash.
- In over 4 months we have only bought one small package of disposable diapers, which we purchased right before Charlotte started using cloth and didn't fit into the size one dipes people had given us.
- fun fun fun colors
- less waste put into the garbage can
- we can use these if we have another child someday, which is our hope

Cons
- the kind of diapers we use are on the expensive side; $16 bucks each
- the washing and drying takes some time
- stuffing the inserts into our pocket diapers takes some time

Here's our wash routine:
1. Dump everything,including the pail liner and our small wet bag, into the washer with a tiny bit of "hard rockin green" cloth diaper "detergent" and about a quarter scoop of tide HE powder. Run through light cycle with warm water
2. Add Tide HE powder to the 2 line, then turn the water to HOT, normal load with extra rinse and heavy duty agitation. I also add an old bath towel to make the load heavier so our HE washer will include more water.
3. Dry diaper covers and wet bags/pail liners on the drying rack
4. On medium heat, dry the inserts, prefolds, and cloth wipes in the dryer.

Anyone else using cloth? Good, bad experiences?!

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