Cloth Diapers are Easy & Inexpensive!!

As most of you reading this already know I LOVE my cloth diapers!  My favorite cloth diaper store, Cottonbabies, is putting on a contest for people to share why cloth diapering is easy and inexpensive...this is my entry and my story...enjoy!  At first I loved Cottonbabies because they had lots of great products, free shipping, and I was able to visit one of their retail stores in St. Louis and was SO impressed with their helpfulness as I sought to figure out the best options for me and my growing family!  With continued newsletters and updates from Cottonbabies, i've looked further into the company and it's owner Jennifer Labit and I have only grown to LOVE Cottonbabies all the more after seeing the many ways they seek to help low income families, provide high quality jobs in their manufacturing plants, and overall run their business with integrity. I am not receiving any compensation for this blog post, but if I win you could win too...so check out the contest and leave me your comments!

The thing that first attracted me to cloth diapers was the financial savings!  I had heard how much less expensive cloth diapers were as well as better for the environment.  While I love helping the environment (i'm a middle school science teacher), this was not really my motivation.  Being a teacher and my husband working for a church, our monthly budget is pretty tight.  All the expenses that come with having a baby can really add up!  We were already living at the maximum of our budget and thinking about adding hundreds of dollars a month in baby expenses like diapers and formula wasn't a possibility (for this reason, and many others, I also decided to breastfeed).

So, now the research began!  I was convinced of the benefits of using cloth diapers, and my husband was mostly on board, but now I had to find a husband-friendly cloth diaper to use in real life!  Realizing changing diapers is something we are going to be doing on average 8 or more times a day for the next 2 years (at least) left me thinking..."this cloth diaper thing has to be easy and convenient or this isn't going to work!"  There are SO MANY brands and options out there that it is quite overwhelming at first but I was able to narrow it down to the main modern cloth diapering options...

1) Sized cloth diapers - These are cloth diapers you buy in different sizes (like disposables) to fit your baby as he grows (for an example check out bumGenius' newborn all-in-one diaper).  Realizing you'll need more newborn sized diapers than larger ones, this is a good option to get a custom fit without too much added bulk.  Sized diapers can include "fitted" cloth diapers (simply meaning it has elastic leg openings and some sort of closure at the waist) or prefolds that each require the use of a waterproof diaper cover to go over it.

2) One-size cloth diapers - These are one cloth diaper that adjusts in sizing to fit babies as they grow.  The same diaper your baby wears as a newborn will fit until they potty train (usually from about 8-35 lbs.)  Depending on the brand, they adjust in size using either snaps on the front of the diaper or elastic around the legs and back of the diaper.  These can come in a pocket-style diaper, where absorbent inserts are "stuffed" into a pocket built into the diaper between the soft, wicking layer against baby's bottom and the waterproof outer layer (Example:  bumGenius 4.0).  You could also find a one-size diaper cover that you use prefolds with or a hybrid diaper that has a variety of absorbent inserts you could use, including a disposable liner (Examples:  Econobum or Flip System).

3) All-in-one cloth diapers - These come in sized cloth diaper options or one-size options but rather than being 2 separate pieces requiring a diaper cover or having a pocket that needs to be stuffed with absorbent inserts, these diapers are all one piece.  The waterproof shell and absorbent inner portion are connected, allowing for an easy and more babysitter-friendly option.  However adding absorbency may be more difficult and drying time will be increased.  (Examples:  bumGenius Elemental & Freetime)

(If you can't tell I love to teach...hopefully this overview has helped you to understand what options might be a good fit for you and your family, it took me months of cloth diapering to figure all of this out!)


Back to my story...

After some research, we decided on the bumGenius 4.0 one-size pocket-style cloth diaper!  This diaper sells for $17.95 (decorative prints sell for $19.95).  That may sound like a lot of money for one diaper, but remember our son will wear this diaper until he potty trains (and hopefully future brothers or sisters will wear it too!)  We have about $450 worth of cloth diapers and diaper supplies (cloth wipes, wet bags, diaper pail & liner).  We were blessed to receive many of these as baby shower gifts, so our cost was actually much less.  However, considering the few packages of disposable diapers I have purchased (for extended trips and such) it is easy to spend $20 a week on average (depending on the age of your baby) for disposables.  So, by 25 weeks old we had already easily recovered the expense of what our cloth diapers cost.  And for those of you who are saying, "What about the cost of all the extra laundry," we have only had to buy two boxes of cloth diaper detergent (just $12 each and our son is 10 months old), and the water cost of doing an extra couple of loads a week is miniscule!  Add in the savings for using cloth wipes and financially this is by far the best decision we could have made!

But, like I said...this has to be easy too!  I've had tons of questions...What do you do with the poopy ones? How do you wash them? What are all the different inserts and how do they work?  Do you have leaks?  Is it really as easy as disposables?

For starters, i'm a full-time working mom and I have a very helpful husband, but he works full-time too and I do all the laundry at our home!  My daycare provider has no problem using our cloth diapers (I provide ready-to-go clean diapers for her every day and a wetbag for her to send the dirty ones home to me in).  For me, the only "extra" part about cloth diapering compared to disposables is the laundry.  So, here is my laundry routine...and for the record, if I can do this, anyone can!  I have 22 bumGenius 4.0 cloth diapers (some with snap closures and some with hook & loop closures - there are pros and cons to each, but thats for another blog post).  Because I have to have an entire days worth of diapers ready to go the night before (My husband gets our son up and to daycare each morning, so I pack his diaper bag the night before) I wash a load of diapers every 2 days.  I simply throw the load in the wash after I put my son to bed at about 8pm and after they're clean I throw the inserts, wipes, and wetbags into the dryer and hang the covers to dry on our drying rack overnight before I go to bed.  Everything is dry by the morning.  I like to have my diapers pre-stuffed and ready to go when it comes time to change my son's diaper, so I will usually wait till I get home from work that evening and while my son is playing I will sit on the floor next to him and take about 5 minutes to stuff the diapers with the absorbent inserts...that's it, they're ready to go!

As far as actually using the diapers, they go on the exact same way as a disposable (especially if you have the hook and loop closures).  The only difference is when you change the diaper, instead of throwing it in the trash, you put it in the diaper pail (which for me is just a trashcan with a pop up lid and a reusable waterproof diaper pail liner in it that gets washed with all the other diaper laundry).  When we're out of the house the same thing applies, except you put the dirty diaper into a smaller wetbag that I carry in my diaper bag.

The handful of times I have used disposables I cannot wait to get back to my cloth...here are a few of the reasons why:
- They are WAY cuter (I know it seems silly and superficial, but the colors and prints brighten my day!)
- They smell WAY better (Disposable diapers stink the moment my son pees in them...I hardly ever have any smells with the cloth - only his morning diaper after 12 hours of sleeping)
- They are gentler on my son's bottom (He has never had a diaper rash in 10 months!)
- And most important they contain his poop WAY better! (Especially that newborn breastfed poop. We almost never have a leak with the cloth, but EVERY time we have used disposables for more than a day we have had a blow out! Yuck, who wants to deal with that all the time?!)

So, what about the poopy diapers?  When my son was exclusively breastfed it was great because no rinsing was required...it all went in the wash and came out clean with no extra effort.  Now that he has more "solid" poop, before putting the dirty diaper in the pail you have to either dump the poo in the toilet (sometimes it just falls right out of the diaper) or rinse it off into the toilet (My husband installed a homemade diaper sprayer that attaches to the toilet, but you can also buy one at cottonbabies...I would highly recommend getting this, it makes clean up a breeze).

One final "gadget" i'd highly recommend is a cloth wipes warmer.  We have a Prince Lionheart brand wipes warmer that keeps the wipes ready to go when we need them.  I use just plain tap water to moisten the wipes and put them in the warmer...that's it!  You can use a bottom cleaning solution or any number of bottom sprays, but I found that to be more than I wanted to deal with (remember this has to be easy!)  We use the wipes up within a couple days so mildew has never been an issue.

Our diaper changing station:

We attached a small shelf to the side of the changing table to put extra wipes and wipe warmer on and diaper pail fits conveniently below the shelf.  Diapers, wetbags, and extra inserts (the diaper comes with 2 sizes of absorbent inserts) fits easily in the top 2 drawers.

Our entire stash of cloth diapers hanging to dry...aren't they cute?!

I could go on and on, but with a little knowledge about what type of cloth diapers are best for your family and a few essential diapering products, using cloth is truly as easy as disposables with so many added benefits!

...and because I can't resist, here are some photos of my little man in his cloth diapers over the past 10 months!

1 month old - my big healthy baby!

2 1/2 months old - so happy!

4 1/2 months old - cloth diapers w/o the absorbent insert works great as a swim diaper!

6 1/2 months old - snuggling with momma!

6 1/2 months old - smiley!

9 months old - growing up too fast...glad the diapers grow with him!