Cloth Diapering Questions

[jshannyn519]

For those of you that CD, I have questions! I used disposables with my kids, but the more I think about it the more it seems like (a) a huge waste of money and (b) rather environmentally irresponsible. However, never having done anything with cloth diapers EVER in my life, I am totally clueless about how it all works!

My primary concern is what to do when you're away from home. Do you carry a bag around to put the dirty diapers in? Do you rinse them first? My other kids are 11 and 10 years old and they're super active in sports so during football/cheerleading season and baseball/softball season we're not home a whole lot.

What about daycare? I'm a full-time nursing student so the bean will be in some form of childcare for at least 4 days a week. How do childcare providers deal with cloth vs disposable?

I would so appreciate any help you can give!

[Mamatoabunch]

I have a dirty bag for the cloth when out. I never rinse diapers, but if there is a solid I will dump that in the toilet. I won't do that until we get home. No idea about daycare.

[Mommy2Austin]

Originally Posted by jshannyn519 

For those of you that CD, I have questions! I used disposables with my kids, but the more I think about it the more it seems like (a) a huge waste of money and (b) rather environmentally irresponsible. However, never having done anything with cloth diapers EVER in my life, I am totally clueless about how it all works!

My primary concern is what to do when you're away from home. Do you carry a bag around to put the dirty diapers in? Do you rinse them first? My other kids are 11 and 10 years old and they're super active in sports so during football/cheerleading season and baseball/softball season we're not home a whole lot.

What about daycare? I'm a full-time nursing student so the bean will be in some form of childcare for at least 4 days a week. How do childcare providers deal with cloth vs disposable?

I would so appreciate any help you can give!

First of all it doesn't have to be all or nothing! You can cloth diaper when babe is with you and have disposables for daycare/babysitters. I keep a small bag with me (washable wetbag type bag...or if I forgot one a plastic grocery bag lol) and just toss dirties in the pail when I get home. The bag gets washed with the dirties when it gets yucked up :P

[jshannyn519]

Originally Posted by Mamatoabunch 

I have a dirty bag for the cloth when out. I never rinse diapers, but if there is a solid I will dump that in the toilet. I won't do that until we get home. No idea about daycare.

Thank you! Have you ever used disposables? If so, do you think that cloth are more or less work than disposables? Or maybe about the same?

[Mommy2Austin]

For me they were no more work than disposables. The disposables always smell up my garbage. And if one should get overloaded in the night? Those nasty little gel beads get EVERYWHERE. It takes me a good 30-45 minutes to clean it all up.

With my cloth...I can wash them sooner if they start getting a little smelly (which doesn't happen often.) And if one gets overloaded in the night? I just wash the sheets too. No gel beads to deal with. And a quick wash down of the mattress and some new sheets and everything is good to go.   

[amaayeh]

I used disposables with my first and cloth with my second.  I LOVE cloth and so does dh.  We absolutely hated disposables after we went to cloth.  When we went out of town, we would use disposables and I thought they smelled so absolutely terrible.  I never had smell issues with my cloth.  You can do disposables when you are out at those events with your older kids, but honestly, I think it might be more of a pain to do so.  Like a pp said, I just threw the dirty/wet ones in a bag and dealt with it at home.  It was never a big deal and poop isn't either.  When they are tiny and if you breastfeed, the poop just washes out.  When it gets to be more, you just put it in the toilet.  I never rinsed prior to washing.  If it stains at all, just put it out in the sun for a few hours.  The only time I ever had a problem was when I forgot to put a clean dipe in the car before I left...trust me, that only happened a few times!  :)

[Mamatoabunch]

Originally Posted by jshannyn519 

Originally Posted by Mamatoabunch 

I have a dirty bag for the cloth when out. I never rinse diapers, but if there is a solid I will dump that in the toilet. I won't do that until we get home. No idea about daycare.

Thank you! Have you ever used disposables? If so, do you think that cloth are more or less work than disposables? Or maybe about the same?

I have used disposables. I too find them a pain, especially disposing of them, smelling in the trash. I find cloth easier and a lot less expensive. On our long trips last summer we used disposables. We all hated them and how much the diapers smelled.

[msmiranda]

I started using cloth when my second was 4mo and I love it!  To answer your main questions, you can use disposables when you go out if you want, or you can bring a wetbag or plastic grocery bag to put dirties in until you get home.  As for daycare, I have successfully used cloth with daycare and I know a lot of other mamas have too.  Basically what I did was brought a cloth diaper with me and a wetbag to show them how it worked and that it was  not any more work for them to use cloth.  I was with a center for a short time and then interviewed another center and a couple of in-home providers.  No one turned me down, everyone seemed open to it.  We ended up using one of the in-home providers and she used the cloth with no issues (I did bring disposables as backup for if he got a rash and needed diaper cream, as you usually can't use things like Desitin with cloth).  I mainly used pocket diapers and that was what I took to day care.  You will see when you start looking into it that there are several different types of cloth diapers.  I think that day cares would be more likely to use pockets and all-in-ones than other types because they are most similar to using disposables, in the sense that the diaper is pre-assembled and they just fasten the snaps or velcro.  Cloth is definitely somewhat more work than disposables, but mainly just in the sense that it will be an additional few loads of laundry each week, depending on how often  you wash.  I have found cloth to hold in poop much better than disposables, so it definitely cuts down on blowouts and stained clothes, which somewhat compensates for it being a bit more work.  In terms of money, I will say that it is VERY easy to spend as much or more on cloth as you would on disposables, so be careful there.  Particularly if you end up trying a bunch of different things and then reselling them and getting more new things, like I did for the first 4 or 5 months of using cloth.  I was not doing it to save money, but if I had been I would have put in more research up front and probably gone with one type/brand of diaper.  

[GolfAddict]

I will be a FT mommy so I have little experience with either.  But I have been researching CD's partly due to the waste and the ridiculous cost of disposables.

There are a couple brands that make hybrids - Grovia, gDiapers, and I think BestBottoms.  So you can use the cloth when at home and they have a disposable pad insert to use when outside the home. 

Anybody have any experience or opinions with the hybrids?

Jenni ~ Don't mean to hijack your thread...just thought it would be more beneficial to extend the discussion since I am basically in the same boat as you.

[jshannyn519]

Originally Posted by GolfAddict 

I will be a FT mommy so I have little experience with either.  But I have been researching CD's partly due to the waste and the ridiculous cost of disposables.

There are a couple brands that make hybrids - Grovia, gDiapers, and I think BestBottoms.  So you can use the cloth when at home and they have a disposable pad insert to use when outside the home. 

Anybody have any experience or opinions with the hybrids?

Jenni ~ Don't mean to hijack your thread...just thought it would be more beneficial to extend the discussion since I am basically in the same boat as you.

No worries at all! I hadn't heard of the hybrids and I'd love more information on them as well.

You are all such an amazing resource! Thank you so much! My mom used cloth diapers on my sister and I when we were babies and she's fully in favor of cloth over disposables. I have kids so I do at least one load of laundry a day, if not more, so I don't think that washing the diapers would really add that much work to my life.

A friend of mine said that she bought about 15 all in ones that were a one size fits all and that was all she needed.

Yes, the disposables DO smell terrible. I absolutely hate the way a disposable smells in the trash after even an hour or so, forget about letting a couple of them sit in the house for a day or more in a trash can. It stinks up the whole room! I didn't think about the smell issue with cloth vs disposable, but it is wonderful to hear that the cloth don't smell like the disposables do.

[Mamatoabunch]

An easy peasy way to start is w/a dozen or two prefolds and a few velcro covers. That is my preferred method anyway. I am not really into the more expensive, although cute, fitteds and such.

[dabblersupreme]

my 1st daycare refused to entertain the notion of cloth so we used disposables for daycare and cloth at home. my current daycare does cloth, yay!

i have never used the hybrids myself by just inherited some gdiapers from a friend. that is a decent option for travelling/cutting down on waste, and she told me she actually used cloth inserts rather than the disposable kind, but it cut down on the amount of cloth waste that accumulated when she took her son camping.  i will try that myself in the future - thus far we have used disposables while travelling because the dirty diaper laundry accumulation seemed ridiculous while travelling.

[nikie23]

Thank you for starting this thread!  I've spent quite a bit of time looking into different types of CDs - fitted, prefold, all-in-ones... it makes my head spin.  A girlfriend of mine just had a baby and she joined a diaper service that sounds pretty awesome; I think I'll be doing something similar when the nugget comes, along with some diaper covers.  I've also seen flush-able inserts that look like they would be a good idea for day trips and such.

I'm confused about the smell, though - do cloth diapers not smell when they're waiting to be washed?  I feel like I'm missing something fundamental.  Disposables are pretty awful, though.  My sister has a 1 year old and her whole house reeks of dirty diapers.  Whenever I'm over there I think, whew, can we open a window?

[Mamatoabunch]

Originally Posted by nikie23 

Thank you for starting this thread!  I've spent quite a bit of time looking into different types of CDs - fitted, prefold, all-in-ones... it makes my head spin.  A girlfriend of mine just had a baby and she joined a diaper service that sounds pretty awesome; I think I'll be doing something similar when the nugget comes, along with some diaper covers.  I've also seen flush-able inserts that look like they would be a good idea for day trips and such.

I'm confused about the smell, though - do cloth diapers not smell when they're waiting to be washed?  I feel like I'm missing something fundamental.  Disposables are pretty awful, though.  My sister has a 1 year old and her whole house reeks of dirty diapers.  Whenever I'm over there I think, whew, can we open a window?

My diaper pail closes and smell is contained to the pail, the pail is kept in the laundry room. It only smells when we open it and put a dirty diaper in. 
 

[nikie23]

I seeeee.  Thank you.  So I guess I should add "diaper pail with lid" to the baby list.  :)  Maybe I should also suggest a lidded trash can for my sis.

[jshannyn519]

Originally Posted by Mamatoabunch 

My diaper pail closes and smell is contained to the pail, the pail is kept in the laundry room. It only smells when we open it and put a dirty diaper in. 
 

Originally Posted by nikie23 

I seeeee.  Thank you.  So I guess I should add "diaper pail with lid" to the baby list.  :)  Maybe I should also suggest a lidded trash can for my sis.

Do you have just a regular diaper pail, like you would use for disposables? This was on my list already because I knew that I would need something to contain the odor. The one I want is the baby Trend Diaper Champ because it uses any kind of bags, including the plastic grocery sacks, instead of using only the special inserts like the Diaper Genie. We had it in the restroom of the baby store I used to work in and it NEVER smelled... until you opened it that is.

[amaayeh]

I just bought a regular trash can with lid at Target.  It worked great and we never had a problem.  I think twice I took it outside to sit in the sun to kill germs, but never had a problem with smell.  I washed every other day.

[Mamatoabunch]

Originally Posted by amaayeh 

I just bought a regular trash can with lid at Target.  It worked great and we never had a problem.  I think twice I took it outside to sit in the sun to kill germs, but never had a problem with smell.  I washed every other day.

LOL. Our trash can does not have a lid, pretty useless in our house. It gets mucky, kids break it, etc. So yeah disposables would stink in an unlidded trash can.

[Mommy2Austin]

I wouldn't recommend the disposable diaper pails that they have on the market for cloth. They are super expensive and most use those expensive bags. Any good sturdy trash can with a lid (get a little fancy with the ones with the foot pedal that opens the lids!) will do the job and not cost you a ton. Plus you can get a washable/reusable liner that just gets tossed in with the dipes :)

I started cloth when my first was about 10 months old. I started with about a dozen flat diapers a few snappies and a few used bummis whisper wraps. I handwashed everything because we didnt have a washing machine in our apartment. Even with that extra work, I loved them :) I've had all manner of diapers...flat, prefold, fitteds, pockets, and all in ones. I've used G-diapers a few times (with cloth.) Personally, I've found the more simple I keep things, the better it works (and the less money it costs me!) I like a mix of Flats and Prefolds and my favorite covers are the Dappy Pull on covers. My second favorite cover is the Bummis Whisper Wraps with the velcro. Cheap and simple :)

[littleteapot]

I've never not used cloth. :)

We carry a "wet bag" with us for outings, and put soiled diapers in there. Always dump solids in the toilet - always. That includes with disposables. You're not allowed to throw solid waste in the trash; it says right there on the disposable packages. :)

Ask your daycare about the diapers. They shouldn't have a problem, but if for some reason they do you can use safer disposables like Tushies or Seventh Generation.