I always thought I'd be a cloth diaper kind of mom. (This was back in the day when I thought I'd do two years in the Peace Corp.) Who was I kidding? When Jude was born we said we'd start with disposables and then get cloth diapers once he was bigger. But there are so many options, and we were so tired, and we'd gotten a lot of diapers at the baby shower...and...and...And we never made the switch.
Fast-forward three years.
We now have Aidan, we are once again so so tired, and we are burning through boxes of diapers at an astonishing speed. So in honor of Earth Day, and because I am home now and able to take this on, we are finally embarking on our cloth diapering adventure. An adventure in washable poo!
For $130 I put together a starter kit. It helped that I hit a one-day sale for the GroVia diapers on babysteals.com. (If you are a mom that doesn't yet go to this site daily, you should. It's a frugal brand-whore's paradise.) The rest I bought on Amazon.
In the kit, I have 2 GroVia hybrid shells, 2 GroVia all-in-ones, GroVia bio liners (roll of 200), GroVia bio soakers, bummis fleece liners (5-pk), GroVia soaker pads (2-pk) and a box of 6 OsoCozy unbleached prefold cloth diapers to try as another insert option.
I have also ordered Woolzies drier balls to replace my beloved Bounce dryer sheets.
They were cheapest ($29.99 with free shipping) at drugstore.com. Cloth diapers react poorly to fabric softener, so this was a great motivator to move onto something reusable in the dryer. Wool dryer balls are also supposed to decrease drying time - bonus to my energy bill and a nice bump for Mother Earth.
THE CHALLENGE:
Use cloth diapers overnight as well as replace 2-4 disposable diapers in the day, assuming it's a day we're at home. At $56 for a box of 144 diapers, each disposable diapers runs me about $0.39. If I average 3 cloth diapers a day, then the cloth diapers pay for themselves in just over 3 months. In that 3 months I'll also have kept over 90 diapers out of my local landfill.
Wish me luck! I'll report on our progress. Any tips from parents who have traveled this treacherous path would be oh so appreciated.
3 comments:
I'm on the road and can't regale you with the full story, but:
a) awesome.
b) it's totally possible. Only cloth diaps have touched our kiddo's bum. I'm not gonna lie: it's extra work, and sort of a lot. We managed because we never let ourselves feel the sweet luxury of disposables... So it was just "what we do".
c) hang in there!
d) miss you. Love the blog.
Yippee, embarking on another great adventure! Declan has been in cloth diapers from the get-go and I think that may even be part of his motivation for preferring to do his business in the toilet. Awesome... no complaints from me, given how I relish rinsing out dirty cloth diapers in the toilet. I got the "G" brand and love them. If you don't already have it, I would highly encourage the use of a spray nozzle which attaches directly to the toilet... that way if you do have to rinse, it's a lot more straightforward. :-)
Good luck friend!
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