Not Your Grandma's Cloth Diapers

With everything else in the world changing, so have cloth diapers! The single square piece of cloth and big ole clothes pins are a thing of the past. Now a days you can find cloth diapers with many patterns and even an option of Velcro or snap together buttons. You may find yourself considering cloth diapers for a few reasons.

• You prefer to slow down the mass dumpings in landfills
• Financially it just seems logic (4 children can be expensive)
• Or simply you just like the whole idea

Whatever your reason, I highly suggest that you do a bit of research. I myself ran into this quite blindly. With being a middle class family and living pay check to pay check and having just had our fourth little pooping bundle of joy, there was no way that we could afford diapers for three little ones all at once. We found ourselves spending $100+ weekly on diapers alone while our oldest was still using pullups and being potty trained (that's a whole nother monster all on it's own!). So we had an idea of what to expect financially if we continued to buy disposable diapers while our last three were working their way up to potty training age. So I figured why not make the switch to cloth diapers? I went online and found what seemed to be good deal. With usually spending $18+ on a single box of disposable diapers, $35 for six cloth diapers plus six inserts didn't seem so bad. Well I opted for the snappy buttons because my munchkins knew all too well how to yank anything Velcro right off of their rear ends!

I received everything fairly quickly and tossed one on my son. About an hour later as he strolled through the living room, I figured that I better check and make sure that everything was holding up okay. Sadly that is when I realized, ONE single insert wasn't going to do the trick and six diaper covers were far from enough. I toughed it out over the next few weeks only using disposable diapers as a back up while I washed the cloth ones. Started the potty training hot and heavy for my then two year old daughter. Finally I was able to order another set of inserts. This set was much more absorbent than the first. So I had gotten all of my ducks in a row and figured out a system. With just using the six covers and twelve inserts, I managed to keep everyone and everything clean and dry! But my washing machine was definitely put to use. Washing every morning and every night and possibly a time between. My daughter was completely potty trained in a months time so it got much easier with only having to diaper the boys. So while I managed to come up with a solution to my dilemma, I worried that what if someone happened to make the same mistakes? Hopefully this can help a little.

Before You Buy Cloth Diapers:

• Remember more is better! A set of 5 is hardly enough for a single child!
• 2 inserts per diaper cover to prevent leaks!
• Velcro is fine for newborns but if they are walking, I recommend snap together buttons!
• Washing the inserts prior to use helps them absorb better.
• YouTube has how to videos if you're not sure how to put them on.
• Inserts laid on the inside of the diaper rather than put into the pocket of the diaper make it so you can reuse the diaper cover and only change out the inserts.

Stay tuned to learn how washing cloth diapers and the insert can be a complicated without the proper know how, dirty diaper storage, and disposal of the waste before washing!