(So, this post is about diapers. That may interest some of you, but there's a good chance a lot of you won't care. It won't hurt my feelings if you don't want to read it. I get that. Come back later...I promise not to write about diapers regularly. Probably. We'll see.)
We committed to the cloth diapering route before Bear was born*, and I won't lie that we were a taddy bit apprehensive about how it would go. We decided to go with cloth because of the financial savings we calculated. In the long run, it's a substantial amount. Even with having to pay per load that we wash (I crunched a lot of numbers. Huge headache, for sure.), we would save over $1,000 if she potty trains before she's 3. That's just a savings that we couldn't ignore.
We went with this brand. Our diapers are one-size/all-in-ones. The one-size thing should allow her to grow into them without us having to upgrade to a bigger size (i.e. buy more diapers). I will say that this original plan didn't work out for us for the first couple of months because Claire is so not even a little bit chubby. The diapers swallowed her for quite a while, which probably actually worked out for the best, since my post-delivery recovery took a bit longer than anticipated and learning the cloth diaper routine took a few days of figuring.
The all-in-one part of the diaper means that our diapers don't have removable inserts; we weren't too enthused about having to reach into a dirty diaper and remove an insert. We did get a few of those, but I stitched those suckers in so that we avoid the reaching-yucky-gross situation. I stitched them on just one end of the diaper so that we can pull the clean insert out to dry after going through the wash. Oh yes...we're committed to avoiding contact with dirty inserts.
We were so blessed to have been given most of our diapers and then gift cards that we used to pad out our number. Currently, we have 23 diapers. Because of needing to pay $2.00 per load washed, we wanted to make sure that we filled out each load as much as possible. We've gotten our washing system worked out to where we wash 20 or 21 at a time. The diapers are supposed to air dry (which we do with all of our clothes anyway, except for specific situations), so we have to wait a bit for that to happen after each wash cycle. If we wash in the evening and dry overnight, we can usually get by with just 2 diapers during that time. If we have to wait for them to dry during the day, we sometimes dip into our disposable diaper stash. (We definitely have disposables on hand at all times for situations like drying diapers or going out for a while or when she has a diaper rash and we need to use creams that aren't compatible with the materials in the cloth diapers.**).
When it comes time to clean and wash them, we have a fairly simple system. First, we installed a life-saving sprayer. It's a sprayer (like the kind in a kitchen sink) that hooks up to the water supply on the toilet. When she has a dirty diaper, we take it to the bathroom, spray it off into the toilet, and flush. We are big fans of this process. It gets the diaper really cleaned off prior to washing. After spraying, we drop them in our wet bag (we got this one) where they hang out until laundry day (we wash diapers twice/week). The wet bag does an awesome job of containing odors. For washing, we just dump the wet bag into the machine (every few washes, we drop the bag itself in, too). We recently discussed how much those steps have NOT inconvenienced our lives. It's a little shocking, really, how easy it's been.
This is what the diaper looks like: lots of snaps! The two rows across the top allow for size adjustment around her waist. Currently, it's still pretty tight on our thin wee one. The three lower rows that are more spread apart are for adjusting the length. You may have guessed this, but yes, she's still in the shortest length. See what it looks like here:
When you open it up all the way, you have these two flaps that overlap each other, covering all the bases. So far, we've had no blow outs with the cloth diapers...that cannot be said of our disposables, unfortunately. Right, Kat?
These are the four colors that we have. We have exactly one pink one (although, I think it's adorable), 3 green ones, 5 yellow ones, and the rest are white. At first, we thought we wanted a bunch of fun colors, but we actually really like our white ones. They go with everything. #winning
This is one of the ways that we dry the diapers. Classy, right? There's a dehumidifier in our hallway, and that helps dry them SO quickly. I sort of stumbled across that solution accidentally and am so glad I did. #stillwinning
Here's Bearsy modeling one of her diapers while she was way of the wild. So cute, right? #winningthemostever
Anyway, that's the rundown on the diaper situation. We're really happy with them. Like, a lot. Yay.
*Please don't hear me making any commentary on anyone's diapering choices. We're big fans of both cloth and disposables and don't judge anyone on their diapering preferences. I've just gotten a lot of questions on how the cloth diapering is progressing and thought I'd tell you about it. Go forth and diaper as you see fit! No judgment here!
**Incidentally, we realize that there are natural options and organic brands of diaper rash cream that we could invest in, but we really like a specific brand and are willing to put her in disposables for a day or so for it to take effect. We are also aware that repetitive diaper rash should be checked into, and we're on it with our pediatrician, so no worries!
**Incidentally, we realize that there are natural options and organic brands of diaper rash cream that we could invest in, but we really like a specific brand and are willing to put her in disposables for a day or so for it to take effect. We are also aware that repetitive diaper rash should be checked into, and we're on it with our pediatrician, so no worries!
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