I Purchased a used lot of cloth diapers, but I am lost! (pregnant with twins!!)

cls78 · November 2014

So I have a bag full of stuff that I got for $135! 25 cloth diapers...some Bum Genius, Rump a Rooz, and Blue Berry A bunch of inserts, reusable wipes, wet bags, and even some Country Save detergent.

The plan is to start with newborn disposable diapers and then switch to the cloth. I believe the ones I got are good to start at 8 pounds. I am having twins, so I am assuming my girls will be on the small side to put them in them right away.

How do I wash them in the HE washer the first time? They are clean with no stains, but I want to freshen them up. Can I wash everything together or should I separate by color? Also do I wash the inserts separate?

Also will 25 diapers be enough for twins?

TIA!

CLLDLL · November 2014

Once anything new has been prepped you can wash it all together. No need to separate inserts from pockets or by color. Just do a normal wash on hot with 1-2 TBSP detergent cold rinse followed by second cold rinse to get out all the detergent residue. When you're washing for real start with a cold or warm rinse and spin to rinse out pee and poo.

I personally would throw 1/8 to 1/4 cup of bleach in the first freshen up wash to get rid of anything the previous user might have left behind. If you do that you need a couple more extra rinses to get out all the bleach.

For twins 25 will work for washing every day once you get past the pooping all.the.time stage. ( usually around 3-4 months) If you want to wash EOD you'll want around 48 diapers. Although it might be tough to wash 40 ish OS diapers at once and get them clean. So you might need to wash every day.

Also even though they say 8 pounds a lot of OS diapers don't actually fit until closer to 10-12 pounds. They need to bulk up in the legs. So even a 10 pound NB might not fit OS right away. You might want to consider getting a cheap NB stash (we love flats and/or prefolds with some GMD workhorses thrown in for MOTN changes around here.) It could end up lasting you a good 2-3 months on twins. Way cheaper than disposables.

Kelly11235 · November 2014

I'll just say...if you live in a cold climate, you may want to make the cold rinse at the end a warm rinse. I'm in Ohio, and in the winter our cold water is like ice water, and wouldn't be good for rinsing diapers in, or any other laundry.

Congrats on the twins!!!

TJ1979 · November 2014

You might Consider starting another post with twins in the subject. We have a few twin mamas, and they might be abke to give you better advice regarding number of diapers and wash schedule, etc.

And do everything @clldll said about prepping them.

Smallllmin · November 2014

I started with 20 diapers for one baby... at 3.5 months, we now have 25, and I still feel like I am washing diapers constantly (EOD)... I would want at least 40 if I were you. But maybe you should start out with what you have, and buy more if you decide you really love cloth! Plus, once you start using them, you will know which type you like the best, so you will know which type you want to buy more of.

cprice02 · November 2014

Smallllmin said:

I started with 20 diapers for one baby... at 3.5 months, we now have 25, and I still feel like I am washing diapers constantly (EOD)... I would want at least 40 if I were you. But maybe you should start out with what you have, and buy more if you decide you really love cloth! Plus, once you start using them, you will know which type you like the best, so you will know which type you want to buy more of.

She makes a good point that you'll see repeated around here a lot. Although it's really tempting to buy.all.the.diapers, especially when you're pregnant, you will definitely find you have preferences and they may not always be what you expected or what is the most popular. My LO is 3 mos and there are some I thought I would love that I'm thinking of selling to buy more of something else. So, maybe plan on washing a little more at first if possible, then expand your stash from there. Of course, lots of people have fun buying and selling. The great thing about CD's is you can do that easily.

cls78 · November 2014

Thanks everyone! I did end up ordering today some Kawaii pure and naturals for when they are smaller. (Kawaii just put a Black Friday sale up today!) My MFM is hoping I have at least 5 1/2 - 6 pound babies in Jan and so far they have been on track. (Knock on wood!).

SmallCityLiving · November 2014

I have almost 8 month old twins and we have CD'd full time from about 2 weeks. My smaller one was 5lbs 5 oz at birth and she was in newborn diapers for 3 months. We had at least 48 changes when they were in newborn. Now I wash about 40 diapers every other day.

Hope that's helpful. CDing is totally doable with twins and I don't think it's any harder than with one, you still wash every other day, you just wash a full load every time.

I agree with what everyone else said about prepping and not settling on a diaper type until you know their size. I like different diapers for each. My little one is still in kawaii p&n's at almost 8 months and probably around 17 lbs. my other one has been out of them for months so it totally depends on how they are built.

4510heather · December 2014

I had twin girls, too, and I wish I hadn't bought so many of one brand at the beginning. I stocked up on rumparooz because they had newborn sizes but they just didn't work with my girls' skinny legs. I think your bag of a variety of dipes is good - I would honestly wait to see what works with your kids and then stock up on the dipes that work.

Also, I did flats and covers at the preemie/newborn stages. I used bummis and thirsties because those fit pretty early on. I started out with 48 flats and 10 covers and that was doable. When we finally switched over to mostly bumgenius dipes, we had about 55 BGs and about 5 other random dipes, as well. We needed 60 to survive because honestly with twins, even getting laundry done every other day just didn't happen.

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I Purchased a used lot of cloth diapers, but I am lost! (pregnant with twins!!)

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