It's True!

I had planned to post about this eventually, but now that I've been caught on camera (spotted in the last post by my friend Amy!) I figured I might as well write the post now.

We're officially a cloth-diapering family! After a year of disposables, I was convinced by a couple of my friends who also cloth diaper that it was a worthwhile endeavor. My mom used cloth diapers on myself and my siblings when we were little, and all I remember of that was a nasty diaper pail, dunking dirty diapers in the toilet, and plastic pants. Until I had my own child, I had no idea that cloth diapers had evolved. Honestly, I figured they were a thing of the past. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the cloth diapers my friends were using and realized that they actually made a whole lot of sense. So I took the plunge after doing a little of my own research and purchased a handful of them.

My logic was this - I'm at home all day. Any inconvenience of cloth diapers is made into a marginal inconvenience by that simple fact. We spend about $5 on detergent per month instead of $20 on a box of diapers. We create that much less trash. And my favorite part, we're no longer storing poop in my baby's room. It gets flushed just like everyone else's! We have a Diaper Genie II Elite (supposedly top of the line in storing your diaper trash) and the thing stunk. It has a mechanism that is supposed to prevent odors from escaping. It does not work. If you have a dirty diaper as one of the first to go into the bag, by the time that bag is full... well, you can imagine. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited to be done with all that.

So far, cloth diapering has gone really well for us. I wash them at nap time and they're all ready again by the time she wakes up. We've even used them on the go. I got a small wet-garments bag from the baby section in Target and I use that to store her dirty diapers when we're not at home. It's machine washable so it just goes in the laundry with her diapers. Plus I can use these not only until our baby potty trains, but for all of our other children from birth to potty training as well. When you consider the amount of money and trash being saved there, you really can't argue.

If I have any complaints about switching to cloth, they'd be 1) that they do take up more space in the diaper bag so it's harder to carry as many when going out. And 2) we've also had a couple of leaks when the insert gets bunched in the center of the pocket. I'm not sure what the solution to that is, but the company who makes ours (FuzziBunz) guarantees that they won't leak if used properly. If I can't fix it, I'll probably contact them to ask about it.

All in all, I feel like the financial savings, trash savings, and health factor (maybe it's just me, but I feel better about putting a clean piece of cloth on my baby's bottom than whatever is in disposables) of using cloth outweighs any convenience of disposables - the only one of which I can think of is not having to wash them, but to me that is incredibly minor. I never run out of diapers and have to get to the store for more. I don't have to deal with the smelly Diaper Genie or buy the special bags for it. Win, win!

I'm excited to be cloth-diapering and would love to hear from others who cloth-diaper as well. I'm also happy to answer questions from anyone who is thinking about cloth-diapering. I'm no expert, in fact I'm quite new at it, but I feel like I can definitely offer some insight on making the switch from disposables to cloth. Just leave your thoughts/questions in a comment or email theluckiest07@gmail.com!