Road trip! How would you CD?

The Trail Home

Hi ya'll!
This summer DH and I will be going on adventure to visit friends and relatives up and down the eastern seaboard. We'll be traveling for a month and want to CD but would like to make it easy on ourselves. Currently we use GMD prefolds with wool covers and wash every other day. Baby will be 5 mo. Not everyone we will stay with will be ok with diaper laundry and we'd like to avoid visiting the laundrymat every other day too. What would you do? Buy a few Gdiapers? Sposies? I would consider us hard core crunchy so we are having trouble with the idea of using disposable anything. Trusting ya'll will know what to do...TIA!! (*permamobile*)

abby8279

AFwifelife said:

Flats, covers, and a camp-style wash bucket.  You will most likely be washing every day but it's a way to CD without having to use someone's washer.

Good idea!

The Trail Home

Would my wool covers work ok or would I need something with pul?

jcwinsto

Prefolds are rather forgiving with washing so maybe you could go to washing every 3 days or so if that would make it easier.

Robi1

I would say do prefolds and flats, stretch it out to three days between if you have enough, and wash every time you have an available washer. Handwash if you are unable to get to a washer for three days. 

I have no experience with wool, so I can't say how often you need to wash it or if you can easily do it by hand, but PUL covers are extremely easy to hand wash - you can basically just wipe them with a wipe and air dry very quickly unless they get very messy, and even then you can just spray off in a tub, sink, shower, with a hose, anything. 

I would say it's totally doable, and even if you only do cloth for part of the trip and have a disposable backup if you absolutely won't be able to wash for a few days, that's better than just getting disposables for the whole time. 

Good luck!

Chichigo

My prefolds take a long time to hang dry. Maybe you can hand wash and use someone's dryer?

The Trail Home

If they are ok with diapers in the dryer, I think they'd be ok with them in the washer too.

I'm going to buy the next size up in prefolds and rotate those in...they might be a bit big but baby probably won't be wearing pants anyway. That way I'll have double the prefolds (48 total!!) and we'll easily be able to go three days between washes. I have a pack of flats I'll use as backups and during wash times. Thanks ladies!!!

RachelCA29

I would say add some flats to your stash if you aren't sure how long you can go between washes, because they (and PUL covers) can be hand washed pretty easily and flats will air-dry a lot faster than prefolds. 

And, if all else fails, you can always pick up a pack of disposables while you're on the road in a real pinch.