29 Diapers

Have you been looking for a SIMPLE explanation of modern CLOTH DIAPERS? I was totally overwhelmed when I started researching cloth diapers, too, and I don’t think it should be that hard. Especially for such a great product. Not many things in life are as WIN-WIN as cloth diapers:

• They SAVE you up to $1000 PER KID PER YEAR! That money is going in a college fund for my daughter!

• They SAVE 1 TON OF TRASH PER KID PER YEAR from going in the landfill.

• They’re EASY TO USE and EASY TO CLEAN. These are not your grandma’s diapers.

• They’re SUPER CUTE! My daughter doesn’t have a single white diaper. Her butt is covered 24/7 with pink and yellow mod dot patterns and cow print. What’s not to love?

I wanted to make it easier for people to find a complete explanation in one place, so they could get on to the fun part: cloth diapering. HERE IS SOME BASIC INFO ABOUT CLOTH DIAPERS, and a few GOOD RESOURCES TO LEARN MORE. CHECK BACK SOON FOR MORE detailed information as I put even more valuable information all in one place for the fluff-curious. Have fun!

Types of Diapers

There are many kinds of diapers, but they all boil down to TWO PARTS:

• an absorbent cloth inside and

• a waterproof cloth outside.

Most modern cloth diaper shells/covers are made of a cool laminated cloth called PUL, which is breathable but waterproof, and machine washable and dryable. Awesome stuff. Here are your basic options:

All-In-Ones

The absorbent core is sewn into the diaper, and all you have to do is fasten the diaper on baby.

Pros: ease of use, which means day cares like these more than other diapers

Cons: you have to buy small, medium, and large sizes (and maybe newborn, too) because the absorbency isn’t adjustable, and neither is the size of the shell, and that they can take longer to dry.

People use these when they don’t mind spending more for convenience or a trim fit, or if they plan to have multiple babies of different sizes going through their rotation of diapers at the same time.

$$$ AIOs cost about $15-$25 apiece, and you will need about 24-36 to be able to do laundry every 2-3 days (any longer and you get big stinks and stains). This option can run you up to $1400-2000.

Pocket Diapers

Pros: adjustable absorbency and the fact that you can find adjustable size covers so you don’t have to buy as many diapers over time, and the diapers dry faster since you unstuff the insert before washing.

Cons: having to stuff these before use and unstuff a dirty insert (but Thirsties just introduced pocket diapers that unstuff themselves in the wash), and adjustable-size diapers can be bulky on smaller babies.

Both all-in-ones and pocket diapers have a microfleece layer of cloth closest to baby’s skin that wicks moisture away into the core, so these diapers are good for rash-prone babies or night-time. You can buy inserts made of bamboo or hemp to ratchet up the absorbency of these diapers. Cotton/terry absorb quickly, but hemp absorbs slowly but holds more liquid, so if you double up a terry insert with a hemp insert or doubler (inserts are thicker than doublers) you’ve got good overnight absorbency.

$$ Pocket diapers cost about $18-$25 apiece, and you will need 24-36. If you go for a one-size option plus newborn size (you’ll need newborn size unless you have a big baby), this option will run you anywhere from $860-$1500.

Prefolds and Wrap-Style Covers

Pros: low cost and the fact that you can toss a wet prefold in the pail and reuse the cover, which means fewer covers to buy (cheaper still!).

Cons: they take a little more time to put on a wiggly baby, and day cares might not want to learn how to use them, and the prefold sits right next to baby’s skin so it doesn’t wick moisture away as well (honestly this isn’t a big deal, usually).

$ Cost is about $1.75 per infant prefold and $2.30 per premium, and about $10-15 per cover. You will need about 24-36 infant prefolds, maybe 15 premium prefolds, about 8 covers of each size, and maybe 2 Snappis ($2.50 each). This comes to about $50 per batch of prefolds of each size and about $200 for covers. So roughly $300 for prefolds and covers.

Fitted Diapers and Covers

Pros: they hold messes much better than prefolds and are easy to fasten on a wiggly baby.

Cons: they are more expensive than prefolds ($15-25 apiece). We had a few newborn-size Kissaluvs fitted diapers that worked great, but we couldn’t afford a full stash of them. There are a few one-size fitted diapers, like Kissaluvs Marvels, but for the most part you have to buy multiple sizes of these.

$$$$ So if you got Kissaluvs Marvels and they fit from birth to potty training, you might spend $900 on fitteds and $200 on covers.

The Cost of Cloth vs. Disposable

I know these numbers are intimidating, but you are still saving a ton of money over time vs. disposables.

• DISPOSABLE DIAPERS AND WIPES COST ABOUT $1000 PER YEAR PER KID
• disposable diapers create about ONE TON OF TRASH per year per kid

If you only have one kid in diapers at a time, one-size diapers or adjustable-size covers will save you a lot of money, but really ANY OF THESE SYSTEMS WILL SAVE YOU MONEY OVER DISPOSABLES. You just have to pay an intimidating sum up front. But that’s why it’s best to TRY DIFFERENT OPTIONS so you don’t spend a ton on one kind of diaper that ends up not fitting your baby’s chunky thighs very well.

• IF YOUR BABY POTTY TRAINS AT 3 YEARS OLD, YOU WILL HAVE SPENT $3000 ON DISPOSABLES VS. $300-$2000 ON CLOTH…
• but if you HAVE A SECOND KID, you can probably USE MOST OF YOUR DIAPERS AGAIN ($6000 VS. $300-$2000), or you could sell your used diapers and recoup some of the cost.

Unless you buy a big stash and then decide you hate cloth diapering, pretty much any way you slice it the numbers are in favor of cloth.

NO MORE DIAPER PINS!

Modern cloth diapers do not require diaper pins, though you can still buy them online if you want to go that route. Most cloth diapers use either SNAPS OR VELCRO to keep the diaper in place, or you can use something called a SNAPPI to hold prefolds.

Snappis
Snappis were created by a cloth diapering dad who wanted to ditch the pins. They are simple: a three-prong stretchy plastic hook that clips onto the sides and center of baby’s diaper. Snappis are easy to use when you want to fasten a prefold diaper onto baby before adding a wrap-style cover over the top, but they’re actually not necessary because wrap covers fit tightly over prefolds and can hold the diaper in place on their own unless the diaper is pretty large on baby. This means that Snappis are most useful when baby is just growing into a size of diaper, such as when baby is a newborn or when she is sizing up into the large, premium size of prefold.

Snaps vs. Velcro
Velcro gets you a perfect fit at the waist, but it can wear out over time, and it sticks to things in the wash if you don’t fasten it to the “laundry tabs” before putting it in the pail. Snaps aren’t as perfect a fit, but they wear well over time and are harder for stripping toddlers to figure out, so I hear. I recommend a variety in your stash.

Accessories

• Two PAIL LINERS (made of PUL) can be EMPTIED OF DIAPERS, THEN THROWN IN THE WASH WITH THEM for a NO-MESS STORAGE SYSTEM. Love these!
• Two WET BAGS ARE LIKE LITTLE PORTABLE PAIL LINERS FOR YOUR DIAPER BAG. Also good for holding wet clothes. We love Leslie’s brand: they never leak and have a snappable handle to fasten them to strollers or door handles.
• For wiping little butts we love CLOTH WIPES plus a SPRAY BOTTLE full of 1 cup water, 1 t Dr. Bronner’s castile soap, and a few drops of essential oil. Gentle, cheap.
• Fave DIAPER RASH CREAM is Burt’s Bees because you just rub in a tiny bit and it stays put. No globbing on and getting it stuck to your diapers.
• DETERGENTS need to be ADDITIVE- AND SOFTENER-FREE to keep your diapers from repelling water, so we use Rockin’ Green or Allen’s Naturally. Both work great, but RG is a lot cheaper.

Advice

I would recommend trying a VARIETY of diapers because EVERYONE LIKES SOMETHING DIFFERENT, and because different DIAPERS FIT BABIES DIFFERENTLY. You also don’t want to discover that the velcro diaper that worked great for the first year NO LONGER WORKS when your busy toddler figures out how to take it off! We have found that a variety of diapers work best for a variety of situations: some diapers work better overnight, others fit more trimly and work under certain outfits that you don’t want to have bulked up by a fluffy butt (as cute as that can be).

My Favorites

You will find your own favorites as you begin to try cloth diapers, but here are a few of my favorites to get you started:

• GREEN EARTH Diaper Service Quality chinese cotton unbleached PREFOLDS (DSQ means high-quality and absorbent. Chinese just means cotton from China. Indian prefolds are softer but a little less hardy, I’m told.).

• THIRSTIES Duo Wraps! Size one fits newborn-9 months, size two fits 9 months through potty training. The little elastic LEG GUSSETS ARE A MUST on diaper covers to contain messes, in our opinion.

• BLUEBERRY makes a pretty good diaper cover, too, similar to Thirsties.

• If you choose to get newborn-size covers, inexpensive PRORAPS work great and have a belly button cutout to avoid hurting baby’s cord stump.

• HAPPY HEINYS or FUZZIBUNZ pocket diapers with snaps. (Both of these come in sized and one-size options.)

• If you go the AIO route, BUMGENIUS extra-small worked well for our newborn (we had two of them). When she got bigger our one-size BumGenius pocket diapers didn’t fit her well, though, and leaked until I doubled them up with hemp inserts, which relegated them to night diapers because of the bulk.

• KISSALUVS fitteds hold in messes and are a great alternative to prefolds, but they are pricey, so we only tried them in newborn size. Trim and reliable, and easy to put on a wiggly baby, though. Worth a try if you can afford them.

Resources

The Little Seedling Facebook Fan Page (sale alerts and exclusive coupons!)

The Little Seedling baby boutique

Zany Zebra (more great cloth diaper info, including cloth wipe solution recipes)

Diaper Swappers (an online community of cloth diapering mamas who swap and sell their stashes)

The Cloth Diaper Report (diaper blog with diapering tips and giveaways)

Born To Love (how to choose your perfect diapering system

Cloth Diaper Blog (diapering info and giveaways)

Diaper Pin (sales and announcements from the major cloth diaper boutiques)

The Cloth Diaper Report Guest Post: How To Build a $1000 Stash For $500 (written by yours truly )

I hope this information helps you get started. CHECK BACK SOON FOR MORE INFORMATION on HOW TO USE CLOTH DIAPERS and HOW TO SAVE EVEN MORE MONEY ON CLOTH DIAPERS, including…

HOW I WON $800 WORTH OF CLOTH DIAPERS AND OTHER BABY PRODUCTS ONLINE!

HAPPY DIAPERING!

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