Cloth Diapers

theletlers · October 2017

hi ladies, thought I would just pull the trigger here and start the thread!
PS...I loved cloth diapering! It saved us so much money. Plus there is this super awesome store in my town called The Green Nursery (they have an online store too!) but we were able to actually register and my MIL and grandma in law went in together and just got us a huge starter package. You can try looking on Facebook too if there are any local groups that do cloth diapering and you can probably just ask someone if you can see different styles. We were able to just go to the store and "play" with all the different types. I took my DH and had him mess around with different ones to see what he thought was the easiest for him of the kinds I liked. We settled on GroVia hybrids where you snap inserts on and off the shells.
Another thing to consider is if you will be using a daycare or babysitter, you should check on their policies. Most I know are okay with the all in ones where the function pretty much the same as disposables, you just put them in a wet sack and take them home each night.
Also I highly recommend a diaper sprayer. It will save you so much hassle in the end!

theletlers · October 2017

Here's a helpful link for any FTM or first time using cloth mom's.
https://thegreennursery.com/cloth-for-newbies-videos/

ivyvines6 · October 2017

@theletlers I've bought so many diapers from that store online! My local cloth diapering store has only has decided to only keep carrying groovia diapers which is the one brand they have that I never use. It's very sad for me... I've started to become a huge Abby's Lane fan because of that.

theletlers · October 2017

That's weird they only carry the grovia's! I'm definitely going to need some more for this next kiddo. I received one bum genius and really liked it. So I'm thinking I might check out the cloth diaper trader site and keep an eye out before this LO comes.

Kaysquared2 · October 2017

We cloth diaper my toddler and love it. I’m weird and love old school flats and covers over more modern types.

JNCPro3130 · October 2017

We cloth diapered DS and it was great! He potty trained REALLY easily and I credit cloth diapers! I'm looking forward to using them with this baby too!

We ordered a lot of ours from Nicki's diapers. If you buy one of their brand, they donate one to a needy family. Their diapers are cute and not as expensive as some.

tincupchalice · October 2017

I never used a diaper sprayer, just a cheap spatula I keep in a small jug of water and bleach out every week.

I use a mix of flats/covers and pockets. I love the rumparooz patterns but I don't really recommend them. They're super expensive and the elastics are hard to replace. BG pockets have super easy to replace elastics (That's what I need to do before this new one is born). Kawaii are really inexpensive, and I love their NB pockets.

My flats are all flour sack towels that I used to practice my tie dye on.

charlestonchew · October 2017

I'm teetering on yes or no right now but I wanted to ask you ladies, is cloth diapering feasible with working parents and child going to babysitter?

ivyvines6 · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

I'm teetering on yes or no right now but I wanted to ask you ladies, is cloth diapering feasible with working parents and child going to babysitter?

I don't work, but as far as baby sitters go you're paying them to do what you ask so I don't see what the issue could be

(I say this as my mother won't use them if she can come up with any reason not to /eyeroll) If you're enrolling them in daycare you'll have to check with their policies because some have specific types they prefer, and some won't use them at all.

tincupchalice · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

I'm teetering on yes or no right now but I wanted to ask you ladies, is cloth diapering feasible with working parents and child going to babysitter?

Yes, although as with anything it depends on the particular situation and/or caregiver for your child. I know people who CD full time with kids in daycare and others who use sposies in daycare and CD at home.

Guillerma · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

I'm teetering on yes or no right now but I wanted to ask you ladies, is cloth diapering feasible with working parents and child going to babysitter?

Yes, we had two working parents with busy jobs and a babysitter (although babysitter came to our house). Totally reasonable and LOVED it. the key for us was making sure we had enough diapers to go 3-4 days because I didn’t have time to do laundry EOD. Getting a diaper service would help too. it actually was easier because there was no almost running out of diapers and someone having to run to the store!

Kaysquared2 · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

I'm teetering on yes or no right now but I wanted to ask you ladies, is cloth diapering feasible with working parents and child going to babysitter?

Totally! Especially if it’s a private babysitter and plenty of people cloth at day care. My son is still in cloth at 22 months and goes to grandmas the 2 days I work. We use flats and covers at home and I just fold the flats in a rectangle (pad fold) for at grandmas and use covers that have flaps to hold them. We tried pockets but DSs skin doesn’t agree with the fleece on them so we have to use all natural fibers on him.

abbykm7 · October 2017

We love cloth diapering! I mostly use Bumgenius pockets but my favorite are Blueberry Simplex which are an all in one with a pocket option. I also have Smartbottoms AIOs and Thirsties shells with inserts which I like when we are camping. We initially tried GDiapers and they leaked constantly.

My husband made a sprayer from hardware store parts and it works awesome. I don’t know what I would do without a Spray Pal. Looking forward to EBF non-spray diapers again!

My babysitter was totally on board with cloth because she wanted to cloth diaper when she had kids but the grandparents struggled a little more. I even only ever gave them Velcro ones but my MIL ended up just buying disposables to keep at her house. We use a daycare now and they are cool with cloth and there are a couple clothies in each class so we don’t even have to explain it to the teachers.

charlestonchew · October 2017

@Guillerma how much of a stash are we looking at to be able to go that long without doing laundry?

I'm a cloth diapering novice here.

JNCPro3130 · October 2017

@charlestonchew, both DH and I work full time and we CD full time. It was important to me to find a daycare that allowed me to cloth diaper DS. Most facilities in my area are cloth diaper friendly. I washed every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. I got into a good routine.

justsuzie · October 2017

We plan to CD. Thanks for all the useful info. I’m hoping to register for a “starter pack”. I checked out the bum genius and really like those. My mom will be out childcare the first year and she used cloth and huge safety pins on us.

charlestonchew · October 2017

JNCPro3130 said:

@charlestonchew, both DH and I work full time and we CD full time. It was important to me to find a daycare that allowed me to cloth diaper DS. Most facilities in my area are cloth diaper friendly. I washed every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. I got into a good routine.

How big of a stash do you have? If I decide to do this I want to have enough and my mom will be the babysitter but as she has made it clear she thinks it'll be too much for me, I'd like to make it easy on her because she probably won't want to be bothered. Are there certain diapers or ways to clean up that would be easy on her?

justsuzie · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

JNCPro3130 said:

@charlestonchew, both DH and I work full time and we CD full time. It was important to me to find a daycare that allowed me to cloth diaper DS. Most facilities in my area are cloth diaper friendly. I washed every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. I got into a good routine.

How big of a stash do you have? If I decide to do this I want to have enough and my mom will be the babysitter but as she has made it clear she thinks it'll be too much for me, I'd like to make it easy on her because she probably won't want to be bothered. Are there certain diapers or ways to clean up that would be easy on her?

Prove her wrong!

gildah · October 2017

@charlestonchew IME newborns need a lot of diapers. I have around 36 newborn prefolds and 12 covers. After that they tend to lighten up a bit and you can get away with 24-30 and 8-10 covers. That should get you through at least 2 days. Are you planning to breastfeed? Breastfed poop is really easy to wash (I’m not sure about formula poops) I just do a heavy load with tide and a little bleach and an extra rinse. Some people are against using bleach, as it wears out the diapers faster. I use it because I think it helps keep rashes away.

charlestonchew · October 2017

gildah said:

@charlestonchew IME newborns need a lot of diapers. I have around 36 newborn prefolds and 12 covers. After that they tend to lighten up a bit and you can get away with 24-30 and 8-10 covers. That should get you through at least 2 days. Are you planning to breastfeed? Breastfed poop is really easy to wash (I’m not sure about formula poops) I just do a heavy load with tide and a little bleach and an extra rinse. Some people are against using bleach, as it wears out the diapers faster. I use it because I think it helps keep rashes away.

Thank you, yes I am planning on breastfeeding. Is a sprayer required? I just don't think my mom's willing to do that. Maybe I should send disposables to her house but I feel like why bother cloth diapering then if I'm buying disposables for half the time. Bah.

tincupchalice · October 2017

Most people who aren't comfortable with cloth prefer pockets or all in ones as those are most similar to disposible diapers.

JNCPro3130 · October 2017

@charlestonchew, most of mine are packed because DS is fully potty trained. If I had to guess, I probably have 40-50. Plus we bought cheap wash cloths for wipes. I tried to have enough for 10 a day at daycare. Most of my stash is bumgenius and Nicki's. My bumgenius went to daycare just to keep it consistent. The lady who watched him admitted later she was nervous about cloth but LOVES them. She says they're just as easy (if not easier) than disposable diapers. She loves the cloth wipes too. They clean WAY better than disposable wipes.

People were really quite rude when I told them I was going to CD. I had a lot of people laugh at me. I remember being so embarrassed at my baby shower when everyone was laughing and saying things like "just wait until she has to clean that first poop diaper... she'll beg for disposables!" However, it took 3 days (one accident a day) to potty Train my son and then he asked for underwear at night. Now at 2.5 he's completely potty trained and it was easy! It could be a coincidence but I LOVE to tell people who made fun of me how much I loved cloth and how easily he potty trained!

JNCPro3130 · October 2017

One thing to add, I used arm & hammer powder plus oxi to wash them. It's super cheap and works well!

Kaysquared2 · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

gildah said:

@charlestonchew IME newborns need a lot of diapers. I have around 36 newborn prefolds and 12 covers. After that they tend to lighten up a bit and you can get away with 24-30 and 8-10 covers. That should get you through at least 2 days. Are you planning to breastfeed? Breastfed poop is really easy to wash (I’m not sure about formula poops) I just do a heavy load with tide and a little bleach and an extra rinse. Some people are against using bleach, as it wears out the diapers faster. I use it because I think it helps keep rashes away.

Thank you, yes I am planning on breastfeeding. Is a sprayer required? I just don't think my mom's willing to do that. Maybe I should send disposables to her house but I feel like why bother cloth diapering then if I'm buying disposables for half the time. Bah.

I think a sprayer is necessary but only when you start solids or if you are feeding formula because EBF poop can go straight in the washer. If your shower is next to your toilet you could get a shower head with a removable head and spray with that into the toilet. The removable shower head is super useful for rinsing baby hair too! My mom uses cloth on my son but if it’s poop she just tosses it in the wet bag and I spray at home.

JNCPro3130 · October 2017

@Kaysquared2, same with us. I never had anyone clean up. They put the dirty diapers I need the wet bag and I cleaned them later.

I thought I could get away without a diaper sprayer... nope! I'm cheap but I highly recommend the sprayer!

charlestonchew · October 2017

Okay thanks everyone, so BF poop can go straight into a wet bag it sounds like.

JNCPro3130 · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

Okay thanks everyone, so BF poop can go straight into a wet bag it sounds like.

Straight into the washing machine!

abbykm7 · October 2017

JNCPro3130 said:

charlestonchew said:

Okay thanks everyone, so BF poop can go straight into a wet bag it sounds like.

Straight into the washing machine!

charlestonchew said:

gildah said:

@charlestonchew IME newborns need a lot of diapers. I have around 36 newborn prefolds and 12 covers. After that they tend to lighten up a bit and you can get away with 24-30 and 8-10 covers. That should get you through at least 2 days. Are you planning to breastfeed? Breastfed poop is really easy to wash (I’m not sure about formula poops) I just do a heavy load with tide and a little bleach and an extra rinse. Some people are against using bleach, as it wears out the diapers faster. I use it because I think it helps keep rashes away.

Thank you, yes I am planning on breastfeeding. Is a sprayer required? I just don't think my mom's willing to do that. Maybe I should send disposables to her house but I feel like why bother cloth diapering then if I'm buying disposables for half the time. Bah.

charlestonchew
Thank you, yes I am planning on breastfeeding. Is a sprayer required? I just don't think my mom's willing to do that. Maybe I should send disposables to her house but I feel like why bother cloth diapering then if I'm buying disposables for half the time. Bah.

@charlestonchew a sprayer isn’t required if you are exclusively breastfed so we didn’t get one until he started solids around 5-6 months and by then we were cloth experts. Even then there are ways around using a sprayer but a sprayer and a spray pal make life muuuuuuch easier. We used disposable liners when traveling.

I think pocket diapers (if you pre-stuff them) with Velcro are exactly as easy as a disposable.

We we washed every 2-3 days with a short cold wash with 1/4 amount of regular powder tide and then a heavy duty wash on hot with a full amount of powdered Tide. I did a TON of research on wash routines and this was a very popular wash routine and we found it very effective. I air dried my shells and dryer dried my inserts.

Breastfed poop will leave a yellow stain on diapers which is normal and not dirty. It is resolved by drying them in the sun. The sunlight magically erases the yellow stain.

I would invest in 2 large wet bags (we put them inside a step-on-lid trash can), and 2 small wet bags for the diaper bag. You wash the the wet bags with the diapers.

I had 24 diapers at first and was washing almost every day. Now I have about 40 (they’re addicting) and plan to wash every 2-3 days with the little and then every 3-4 once he is bigger.

My diapers are all “one size” which means they fit when they are about 10lbs (until potty training). I haven’t decided if I am going to look for some newborn diapers on our local bst yet or not. My first gained a pound a week for his first 8 weeks so it didn’t take long for him to fit into the one size.

charlestonchew · October 2017

@abbykm7 Thanks for all the info! When you say you had 40 diapers, do you mean inserts or the actual diapers? I'm not even very familiar with the set up or the differences in them. I'll probably start googling like a mad woman and if anyone has any links or resources for me I would appreciate that as well.

tincupchalice · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

@abbykm7 Thanks for all the info! When you say you had 40 diapers, do you mean inserts or the actual diapers? I'm not even very familiar with the set up or the differences in them. I'll probably start googling like a mad woman and if anyone has any links or resources for me I would appreciate that as well.

The number of diapers is per whole diaper (inserts and outer shell) for pocket and such. If you're doing prefolds or flats, the number is for the prefold/flat, not the covers.

ivyvines6 · October 2017

tincupchalice said:

charlestonchew said:

@abbykm7 Thanks for all the info! When you say you had 40 diapers, do you mean inserts or the actual diapers? I'm not even very familiar with the set up or the differences in them. I'll probably start googling like a mad woman and if anyone has any links or resources for me I would appreciate that as well.

The number of diapers is per whole diaper (inserts and outer shell) for pocket and such. If you're doing prefolds or flats, the number is for the prefold/flat, not the covers.

Also, depending on the brand of prefolds/flats you'll need one cover per three of them.

abbykm7 · October 2017

ivyvines6 said:

tincupchalice said:

charlestonchew said:

@abbykm7 Thanks for all the info! When you say you had 40 diapers, do you mean inserts or the actual diapers? I'm not even very familiar with the set up or the differences in them. I'll probably start googling like a mad woman and if anyone has any links or resources for me I would appreciate that as well.

The number of diapers is per whole diaper (inserts and outer shell) for pocket and such. If you're doing prefolds or flats, the number is for the prefold/flat, not the covers.

Also, depending on the brand of prefolds/flats you'll need one cover per three of them.

Yes since I mostly use pockets and AIOs I mean 40 diapers. I have extra inserts too because after they’re about 1 year old they out pee one insert pretty fast. Like I said they are addicting and I acquired a little here and a little there after my initial investment of the 24. The bumgenius pickets cone with two inserts - a newborn sized one and a regular one, so usually I could just use those two together when he was a toddler. I also got some hemp inserts to try and they are very absorbent. I used those in my covers because the microfiber can’t go against baby’s skin. And I had some prefolds and gdiaper inserts from when we were trying fsiapers which I ended up using too. Prefolds make great burb cloths and resuable swiffer cloths too.

ivyvines6 · October 2017

We have 8 BG (Bumgenius) elementals 3.0's, 4 BG elementals 2.0's (we use them as overnight diapers with a rumparooz hemp soaker between the layers) 1 SB (Smart Bottoms) Dream 1.0, 8 SB 3.1's, 1 Thirsties natural fiber all in one, 1 Bambino Mio AI2, 17 Flip covers and no where near that many inserts.

I like variety, but I quickly realized that if you buy aio's you can get more prints... I also might be getting a BG 4.0 (pocket) in an exclusive, hard to find print, but we'll see. FX

We have a bunch of wet bags for on the go purposes, and we use water and wash cloths for baby wipes. I also liked Le Petite Creme, but I found it to be an unnecessary expense.

Our wet storage is in four rumparooz kept in the bathroom. If the diaper is wet it goes straight into the bag, if it's poopy it gets sprayed then it goes into the bag. At the end of the day the bag goes into the laundry room. (For the newborn phase we'll go back to using our back of the door wetbag and it stays in the nursery)

Our wash routine, which I wouldn't follow, because our water is stupid here between the sulfer and the hardness, and our washing machine is terrible, so I can't wait to move! Rambling sentence... Anyway, I run a rinse cycle, then a wash cycle with regular Tide, and every other Monday 1/4C bleach, with two rinse cycles. Then I run a second wash with regular Tide, and two rinse cycles, and an extended spin. The covers, and diapers get hung up to dry on our drying rack, and the wet bags, wash cloths, and inserts go in the dryer.

Guillerma · October 2017

charlestonchew said:

@Guillerma how much of a stash are we looking at to be able to go that long without doing laundry?

I'm a cloth diapering novice here.

For a newborn, estimate 10-12 diapers a day and for an older infant/ toddler 6-8 a day. We used prefixes and covers as newborns because they’re much cheaper than AIO’s and they fit in them earlier, so had probably 40 prefolds and 6-8 thirsties covers. We switched to BG 4.0’s and initially had 16, but needed 24 to do laundry less frequently. We got another 12 Charlie Bananas/ Rumparooz that I got on sale but never liked or used as much, and the 24 BG’s usually got us trough 2 days and we could do laundry on the third.

Check out the Green Mountain Diapers site. They have some great tutorials and info.

ivyvines6 · October 2017

@Guillerma That sounds about how many flour sack towels we'll be getting. (Cheapest inserts ever!) I still have snappies from when J was tiny. I'm not a huge fan of the Thirsties covers though...

Any one have any ideas on different brands for newborn covers?

tincupchalice · October 2017

@ivyvines6 what didn't you like about the thirsties? I'm trying to think if I used any other brands at the NB stage.

ivyvines6 · October 2017

tincupchalice said:

@ivyvines6 what didn't you like about the thirsties? I'm trying to think if I used any other brands at the NB stage.

I was new to cloth diapering, so I may not have known any better, but I didn't really like the fit of them? Every baby is shaped differently, so I might still pick up a couple... They seem to be the most popular NB covers. I definitely hate rumparooz fit J. The elastic in the front gave J a rash on his belly.

tincupchalice · October 2017

BG covers are nice now that we're pad folding but I didn't love them when I was origami folding because there was no elastic on the front so it gaped.

tincupchalice · October 2017

I think all of my covers are bg, rar and thirsties though.

tincupchalice · October 2017

Aaand I just went out and bought a BG cover that I've wanted for a long time. No more diapers! I have enough!

artlea2013 · October 2017

Missed this thread over the weekend. I'll throw in my 2 cents about a diaper sprayer. I didn't start CD with DS until he was 9 months old. I decided to test the waters before getting a sprayer and 7 months later I still haven't gotten one. What I do have is a cheap spatula and a cup of bleach that stays locked in the cabinet. What I can't shake out of the diaper into the toilet gets scraped off with the spatula, and then the spatula sits in the bleach until next diaper. I do make sure I add a couple of tablespoons of oxi clean to my diaper load each time to help with stains, but so far it works like a charm

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