[Turtle Woman]

I desperately want to start cloth diapering.

My son is six months now and I keep saying I'm going to start when we don't have to go out of town anymore but the reality is we keep having to go out of town almost every weekend and it's not going to stop soon.

I live in a townhouse and feel weird about laundering diapers in the shared laundry room. Also the initial cost of buying everything will choke me.

I called up Dy Dee Diaper Service and it will cost $16 dollars a week and they will sell me three ProWrap diaper covers for $10 to start. I figure I can slowly buy better covers as I am able to research more.

Does anyone know of any reasons I should not use Dy Dee or reasons I should not feel weird about using the laundry?

Thank you!

 

[sadean]

I used a service for both of my kids, mostly because my ILs paid for it and I didn't want to wash diapers. My only outlay of money was for the wraps. $10 a piece is about what I paid (a little more, but I am accounting for inflation). There are pros and cons to a service:

The pros:

You get clean, sweet smelling, white, soft, in good condition diapers delivered to you door once a week.

Someone else washes the diapers, so you don't have too.

You will get different sized diapers as your baby grows.

It is not any more expensive than disposables (usually).

If it is like the Dy Dee Service we had, the diapers are free after two years until the child is potty trained.

The cons:

You will still have to buy and wash the covers. Three Pro-Wrap covers lasted me about a day, so if that is all you buy you will still be washing poopy/wet covers everyday in the community washer. I had about 6 covers in each size (still cheaper than disposables).

Service is more expensive over the long-term than buying your own CPF and covers. It's kind of like rent...you pay out for an immediate service, but you have nothing to show for it when you are done and no way of re-cooping your costs (like reselling your diapers and covers when you are done with them).

The chemicals used to wash the diapers are harsh and contribute to water pollution.

The diapers sit in a bucket in your house for a week and, well, stink. The odor disks they give you don't work THAT well. If you forget to set them out for pick-up, well, they stink even longer and more

So, I don't know if that helps. If I have more children, I will probably just buy my own (personally think I should have done that in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20). But I have my own washer now...

 

[Turtle Woman]

thank you!

 

[sadean]

I wanted to add that travelling with cloth is not that difficult. It is bulkier than disposables, but take plenty of plastic bags and you will be fine. If you use the service, then you just dump them into the bucket when you get home...

 

[chaos_pie]

We have used a diaper service for the past 11 mo. As I have said on this board before, it has been a great way for me to transition to cloth. I loved it and I knew the detergent (and tiny amt of bleach) that they used and they were much safer than I think most diaper services are given credit for.

I personally never really had a problem with the smell....the deodisks that they supplied worked really well. You also do not have to leave dirty dipes in pail for a week either..you can take them out in a bag (our service would pick up as many bags as I put out).

I never considered cloth with my son. With dd, I thought I would try cloth for only 3 mo (when there are so so so many newborn dipes). I have really liked it and it has encouraged me enough to now buy my own and it do it myself.

I say go for it....try it out with a service. If you like it, over the long run it is way cheaper to buy your own Chinese Prefolds (like the ones that the service will deliver) and do it yourself...but maybe that isn't for you.

 

[Mere]

Dd is 20 months old now, and we have used a service with her since she was 2 weeks old! I really like it...I only pay $10.80 a week, which is completely worth it to me to not have to deal with extra laundry. Incidentally, the price my service quoted me initially was for a certain amount of diapers...once I figured out how many I actually used a week, it was less than that amount so the price dropped by several dollars. You might check into that.

Anyhow, you do have to wash your own covers, but that's not a big deal. My service even washes my cloth wipes and various doublers for free.

Re: the smell, it *can* get smelly, admittedly. What we do though is at the end of every day wet down a prefold and lay it over the top of the dirty diapers so that it covers them all up. Then sprinkle generously with tea tree oil scented baking soda. Voila! No smell.

Re: the environmental concerns, not all diaper services are bad for the enviroment. Mine uses various wash cycles (one at a super hot temp) and oxygen bleach. They do use a little bit of fabric softener, which some people say affects absorbency, but I've never had a problem with it.

So, in summary, if you can live with the price, I say go for it! I give diaper services a

.

 

[Aherne]

I can chime in on the shared laundry bit...

I only had one complaint and that was that the room stank when I washed dipes. But she smoked in the hall-way so I ignored her.

Basically I washed them when I knew most people weren not coming in and out of the room (the washer/dryer was right in the back entrance so you had to walk past them... hense my reasoning for not wanting to stink the room up)

Only a couple pointers:

TIME your wash cycle and set your timer so you get there asap if you are anal about what goes in the dryer. Someone being "nice" by tossing your stuff in the dryer could shrink a wool dipe or *gasp* put your PUL in the dryer LOL.

Bring lysol and spray once you've loaded the dipes.

Make sure you take a hot soapy cloth and give the washer a good wipe. This is mainly lip service to the others but it makes them feel as if you care that they are washing clothes with your poop.

(they are the ones with the hang up lol)

But maybe start with the service and then as you get better with the cloth think about making the transition. Think though... for two months service you can buy enough prefolds and covers to have enough for 2 days... then with all the money you "save" you can buy other stuff. Just think... tell your dh that you have $10.80 per week to spend on diapers. Why in only 15 weeks you can buy that watermelon cover

:

HTH

 

[MamaMonica]

I started with a service with my first- and had all the pros and cons sadean laid out. OUr service had really unabsorbent dipes for some reason. Later I heard that was a common complaint with the service I used. I had thought it was just us at the time.

I bought my own and found washing to be cheap and easy an have stuck with it for 4 years, but don't share laundry, have our own in the basement.