29 Diapers

Available for $19.96 for the book and just $5.99 for the e-book, Ecofrugal Baby can save you $7000, or 70% off baby's first year.

Hi everyone! I have exciting news for those of you who like to save money on baby gear. The 29 Diapers money-saving tips from the Ecofrugal Fridays series, which taught you how to save $7000, or 70%, off baby’s first year, are now available in a book and e-book!

I looked into the offerings out there for baby gear money-saving guides, and I’m afraid it’s slim pickings–mostly books that teach you about couponing and garage sales. But you readers already know about all that! What new parents need today is a resource to teach them how to REALLY save money on baby’s first year. So, I compiled the Ecofrugal Fridays series into book form, so busy parents like you can find all of this info in one place, and keep it handy when you’re on the baby gear hunt.

In addition to teaching you how to save 77% off baby’s toiletries, 85% off organic baby food, and how to get your baby’s first-year wardrobe completely for FREE, this book contains the actual baby gear buying checklist and spreadsheet that I used to track my savings. So, you can figure out what you need to buy for baby, what it costs, and how much you are saving, all in one place.

I have developed a reputation for getting great stuff without paying for it (my daughter’s adorable hooded Speesees jacket with ears, Boon feeding gear, Adiri nurser bottles, Haba toys, cloth diapers…), and you can do the same–without doing the hundreds of hours of research I did to find the best deals out there. So, please support this blog and purchase the book or e-book download of Ecofrugal Baby today, for yourself or a friend. The book makes a great shower gift for new parents. Thanks, and many blessings!

You’re super excited about trying out your fluffy new stash of cloth diapers, but where do you start? Aren’t prefolds supposed to be fluffy? And the pile in front of you is flat and huge. Do you need to wash your pocket diapers before using them? And what’s this you hear about washing hemp and wool separately?

Don’t worry. 29 Diapers has got you covered. Here is how to prep your cloth diaper stash for use:

Pocket Diapers / AIOs / AI2s

Each pocket diaper or all-in-one/all-in-two diaper usually comes with its own washing instructions. Typically, that involves washing the diaper and terrycloth inserts once and possibly throwing them in the dryer once to seal the edges of the PUL waterproof cover material where it has been punctured by stitching or snaps. Many brands claim that the dryer is not necessary, though, and that their PUL should be completely waterproof from the get-go.

If you bought a diaper in a very dark color, you may want to throw a color catcher in with the first wash to make sure the dye won’t run, though this is an unusual problem. BumGenius Brights had a problem with the dye on the stretchy tabs running when they first came out; this is most often a problem with new products that haven’t been tested in the marketplace very long.

Once you have washed your pocket diapers or all-in-ones/all-in-twos once, they should be ready for use. If the insert includes hemp, however, you may want to run it through several wash cycles to thoroughly strip the material of its natural oils. Hemp blend fabrics could probably be thrown in the wash with your other diapers to prep, but if you have inserts that are 100% hemp, you should initially wash these separately to avoid getting those oils spread to your other diapers and causing them to repel moisture.

Prefolds

Yeah, so about that big pile of non-absorbent-looking prefolds in your dresser drawer. Those need to be washed at least 4-5 times, and dried in the dryer after each washing, to fluff them up to their absorbent ready-to-use state. You should be able to avoid leaks after 4-5 initial washes, but prefolds won’t reach maximum absorbency until their 8-10th washing and drying, so if you have leak issues just throw them back in the wash again. Prefolds shrink down significantly when you fluff them up this way, so you will also need to prep them just to get them to fit on your baby’s bum and in a diaper cover.

Because cotton prefolds also have natural oils in the fabric, you should wash these separate from your covers and pocket diapers, particularly anything made of fleece, until they are fully prepped and the oils are removed. Then, you can wash them with any other kind of pocket diaper, all-in-one, or PUL diaper cover and dry them in the dryer or hang them out to dry.

Fitted Diapers

Fitteds need to be prepped like prefolds to remove the oils from the cotton or hemp fabric and make them absorbent, but you don’t need to wash them as many times. Many fitteds can be washed just once or twice before use and will contain leaks just fine. Fitted diapers should come with instructions for prepping, so follow the instructions on the diaper packaging.

If you just have one fitted diaper to prep, you should be able to get away with just throwing it in with your normal wash to prep it, but if you have many to prep, or if the fitted is 100% hemp and contains more oils than a cotton fitted, you should wash it separately from your other diapers for the first wash. Fitteds can always be thrown in the dryer with your other diapers, or air-dried.

PUL Diaper Covers

PUL diaper covers can be washed with any other prepped diaper right from the moment you buy them. Some companies suggest you run these through the dryer at least once before use to make sure any gaps in the PUL around stitching or snaps have been sealed by the heat of the dryer, but other companies insist their diaper covers are waterproof from the very first use without putting them in the dryer. Just make sure that you fasten any velcro tabs down to their “laundry tabs” before throwing them in the wash. Laundry tabs are little squares of fabric or the soft side of velcro that keep your velcro fasteners from getting stuck on other diapers in the wash. If you forget to do this during a wash cycle, you’ll end up with a “diaper chain,” or a string of diapers stuck to each other by their velcro fasteners. Wouldn’t be such a big deal if it didn’t snag fabrics and make your stash look prematurely worn.

Wool Diaper Covers

Wool is the only kind of diaper that always needs to be hand-washed separately from your other diapers. People who love wool swear it’s not a hassle and wouldn’t do it any other way, especially because wool doesn’t have to be washed as often as other diaper covers. Wool covers require lanolizing before you start to use them, which just means soaking them for a few hours in a bowl of warm water that has a teaspoon of lanolin dissolved in it. Then, after you have pressed out the extra water and hung the cover to dry, it’s ready to use and re-use until the lanolin wears off from hand-washing. Then, re-lanolize and your covers are waterproof again. If you buy a wool diaper cover, it may come pre-lanolized, in which case it’s ready to use right away. But never, ever throw your wool diapers in with PUL diaper covers and pocket diapers or prefolds, as the lanolin will wash off your wool covers (and onto your other diapers, making them repel moisture). And if you throw those wool covers in the dryer, they will come out doll-size and felted, so don’t do that either. Wool covers need to be air-dried every time. If you use many wool diaper covers, you can save a little time drying them by running them through a spin cycle together in your washer to wring some water out, but they still should be air-dried.

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Did I cover everything? I hope so. If you still have questions, please leave a comment below and I will answer it and update this post to be a permanent page on this site with all the info. Thanks for helping me make this the most complete source of info on the web for cloth diapers!

Double horizontal snaps give this diaper a snug and comfy fit that even toddlers can't unfasten.

Hello again! After a great Night Diaper Event, I took a week off from the giveaways while I worked on some new series for the blog, but now I have another good one for you: a Tiny Tush pocket diaper. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to write about yet another pocket diaper before I tried this Tiny Tush–a pocket diaper is a pocket diaper, right?–but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this diaper is one of the best pockets I’ve tried.

The biggest plus for me was that this diaper is generously sized, so I can actually see this diaper working on bigger toddlers. Baby girl maxed out the one-size settings on her BumGenius and Happy Heinys months back (they still fit, but there’s nowhere to go from here), but this Tiny Tush easily fits her on the second to largest rise setting and on the smallest waist setting. The snaps don’t overlap like a Happy Heinys, so this might actually not have fit her when she was smaller. I would expect waist gaps for a tiny baby in this diaper. But, as many of you know, most one-size diapers don’t fit tiny newborns OR larger toddlers, so since you’re probably going to need to buy newborn diapers anyway if you use one-size pockets, this one will at least cover you through the larger end of the size range.

Second plus: this diaper is super soft, inside and out. I feel like I’m pampering baby girl’s bum when I put it on. I don’t know where Tiny Tush gets its PUL or its fleece, but it’s good stuff. The inserts are a nice fluffy terrycloth, too, and the larger insert is extra long to match the length of the diaper. I got plenty of absorbency through double-stuffing this diaper during the day. At night, I would use the longer insert doubled with a hemp insert to make sure it made it all night.

One thing I didn’t get the chance to test was the ability of the pocket opening to keep poop out of the pocket. The pocket has an overlapping flap at the pocket opening, but the upper part of the flap is toward the middle of the diaper, not on the back waist area like with BumGenius. I’m not sure why, but the BumGenius way of overlapping the pocket opening seems to keep poop out of the pocket better than other designs, so you may be in for a mess when removing the insert if baby poops in this diaper. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see if this was a problem or not. I told baby girl to poop when we were testing, but she never listens. All I can tell you is that when I tried a GADBaby pocket with a similar pocket opening, we got poop in the pocket regularly (though that was a side-snapper that also pushed poop up on her hips–gross!–so the design of the snaps might have been part of the problem).

And one final note: Many of you know that baby girl has a thin waist and super chunky thighs, so I often get waist gaps with snap diapers that don’t have two snaps that fasten vertically, to give me the option of angling the fit in at the waist (i.e. snapping the top snap at a smaller setting). Somehow, we didn’t have any waist gap issues with this diaper, despite the horizontal snaps. I wonder if this is because the waist elastic is super stretchy like Happy Heinys. It seems like this diaper hugs baby girl’s form when I put it on her, both at the waist and legs. I’m curious how this diaper fits babies with skinny legs: are the leg holes just big on this diaper, or is the fit more flexible?

Here’s how to enter this giveaway:

Tiny Tush has offered one 29 Diapers reader their own one-size pocket diaper in their choice of color. To enter this giveaway, tell me which color you will pick if you win (choose carefully, because this will be your prize if you win!). Remember, this entry is mandatory, so you must do this before any of your other entries count.

Extra Entries:

Hooray for extra chances to win! Leave a separate comment for each of the following things you do (e.g. “I blogged about your giveaway #1, I blogged about your giveaway #2,” etc.) Please be sure to include your email address in your comment so I can contact you if you win.

You can get extra entries in this giveaway if you:

1) Tell me one other Tiny Tush product you would like to try (1 entry).

2) Follow @29Diapers on Twitter (1 entry) and @TinyTush on Twitter (1 entry). Please include your Twitter ID in your comment. Current followers count, too!

3) Tweet this giveaway w/ @29Diapers included in the tweet: include a link to your tweet (1 per day).

4) Post this giveaway to your Facebook status: include a link to your status update (1 per day).

5) Blog about this giveaway: post a link to your blog post (3 entries).

6) Post this giveaway in an online forum or blog linky: please include a link to your forum post or the linky (2 entries).

7) Become a Tiny Tush Facebook fan (1 entry) and a 29 Diapers Facebook fan (1 entry). Current fans count, too! Please include your FB user name in your comment so I know who you are.

8 ) Add a link to 29Diapers on your blog/website (1 entry) or grab my button from the 29Diapers.com homepage sidebar and post it on your blog (2 entries).

9) Subscribe to 29Diapers via email at the bottom of this post (1 entry). Don’t forget to confirm your subscription. Current subscribers count, too!

10) Comment on a non-giveaway post (1 entry).

Contest is open to U.S. residents and ends at 11:59 p.m., September 4, 2010. Winners have 72 hours to respond to my email, or another winner will be drawn. I can’t be held liable for lost mail, prizes that don’t arrive, etc. but if you have a problem receiving your prize, please contact me so I can make sure the sponsor has mailed it to the correct address. Good luck!