Before I start this post, I have a big disclaimer to take care of first.
I do not pass judgment on other people’s choices for diaper care. Different situations call for different solutions. Washing cloth diapers when you live in an apartment with no easy laundry access is something I would probably not want to undertake. I understand that my choices are supported by my current lifestyle and I’m able to make choices I might not be able to make otherwise. I will probably be able to work from home, so I’ll be home during the day to put things in the washer. Because I’ll work from home, we probably won’t need much daycare, and if we do, Portland seems like a good town to find daycare willing to do cloth diapers. I know a lot of daycare places require disposables. We’re committed to producing less waste, so I’m all excited about jumping on the cloth bandwagon. You do what’s best for you and let’s all be happy, ok? My only request is that your decisions be informed ones. Just do a little research, due diligence, that’s all I ask. And so when you read this, do not pass judgment on my choices, as I do not pass judgment on your choices.
I believe that informed decisions are the best kinds of decisions and I’ve chosen to share the knowledge I have been gathering about cloth vs. disposable in the hopes that I might inspire someone else to try it, and in the hopes that more people share their experiences with me. It seems that those who choose cloth diapers are more than happy to share their knowledge, and for that I am grateful.
I’ve decided to do cloth diapers with our baby. I looked into all sorts of options and because I’m 1. crafty, and 2. a cheapskate, I’ve decided to make many of our diapers out of recycled and clearance sale fabrics. I found a few patterns on the internet and for most of mine, I’m doing Poo Pockets. I’m also buying some unbleached prefolds to use both as diapers and as burp cloths, etc. And since I have all this fabric, I’m going to make baby wipes from the scraps so I can use my own solution of baby wipe liquid. My friend Cassie pointed me to the Green mountain diapers website and I’ve been absorbing all the information on the site like a sponge. I also got a tip from Alisa to get a sprayer hose for the side of my toilet for when the baby starts eating solids. I’m sure I’ll also take advantage of some of the many convenient flushable diaper liners as well. I’m not sure if I’m going to presoak or not. I’ve heard advice for both presoak and dry. Tom seems more keen on dry, since it’s much more “hands off” than presoaking. But I have a feeling our whole relationship with poo is going to change soon enough, we might not end up minding presoaking all that much. We shall see how it goes. This is Cassie’s dry method:
We just use a dry pail with a cloth liner. On wash day, I turn the liner inside out into the wash and do 1 cold rinse, 1 hot wash with Charlie’s Soap and Oxyclean Free, and follow with an extra rinse. The first cold rinse takes the place of scraping and dunking in the toilet.
According to The New Parent’s Guide cloth diapers usually only add about 2 extra loads of laundry a week to your schedule. For those of you who don’t have the option of doing all that laundry at home but still want to do cloth diapers, research the diaper service places in your area. As Alan pointed out, many diapers services bleach the bajeesus out of their diapers. In most towns you’ll be able to find diaper services that are more environmentally friendly, so just shop around before deciding on one. Laura used flushable liners for the first year of her kids life, when she had no laundry at home, and swears it was barely more work than disposables.
I’ll keep a few disposables around for convenience. Though my friend Laura swears by storing diapers on the go with dry bags. She says she stopped using disposables all together. And so maybe except for when we go on overnight trips, I may pull out my small rafting dry bag and use that instead.
I’ve chosen to go cloth for several reasons. It keeps stuff out of landfills, has less of an energy footprint, babies who wear cloth diapers are more aware of when they eliminate and are easier to potty train. In general we try to have less of an impact on the planet, of course not in all things of our lives, no one is perfect, but slowly each year we adopt new ways of cutting back on waste. Choosing cloth diapers is an easy choice for us so we’re going for it. Really, the only difference I see, is that we’ll be doing more laundry. For us, we have a washing machine in the basement, so laundry is easy. Once we get our system down, it really doesn’t seem like a whole lot more work, and I personally can’t stand the though of adding a half ton of garbage to landfills each year that my baby is in diapers. Right now, we don’t even fill our garbage can to the halfway point each week. With disposables we’d be throwing away about 70 diapers a week! Yikes.
Finally, the general consensus among cloth diaper wielding friends is that it’s really not much work. So why not? With the money we save, we can start the college fund.
Good luck to you in your baby poop and pee management!