I'm pretty sure we have several cloth mamas here and I've been considering using cloth to save money. This is totally unknown territory for me so I'm definitely a newb. A friend of mine CDs and I got a quick peek at her stash and she recommended all-in-one's or pockets. I don't want to be doing crazy rolls and folding the liners.
So I guess my bigger question here is, how do you wash them? Is there a special way to do it or can I wash them like normal clothes?
Post by BabyStandish on Feb 11, 2017 8:44:45 GMT -5
lupincat it largely depends on your washer and how hard your water is. If you don't know how hard your water is you can get one of those water testing kits to see.
We have a front loader HE machine with very hard water so our wash goes something like this: regular cotton wash with no detergent, hot heavy duty wash with 1-2 extra cycles with 2-3 tbsp tide powder and about 1/3 capful of calgon water softener. If I open it and see any remaining suds I'll put it through another wash with no detergent.
We wash diapers separately from clothes unless DS had a pooplosion (which only happened when he was in a disposable) and sometimes if it's a smaller load I'd throw in a towel.
I hang dry my covers/AIO's/pockets, but put all the inserts in the dryer with no dryer sheet.
It's a bit of a trial and error to figure out what works best.
Yep, wash routing will vary based on your machine and water. The basics are: rinse cycle no detergent Hot Wash cycle with detergent Rinse cycle to get out excess detergent
I always suggest trying a variety. You may be surprised what you like and it may change as LO gets bigger/starts solids/etc....I thought I would like pockets/ all-in-ones and didn't like stuffing pockets. I needed up liking flats for newborn stage which surprised me :-) plus brands fit skinny/chunky kids differently.
I just finished stripping and bleaching our cloth... we have extremely hard water (greater than 180ppm) and for some reason, calgon isn't cutting it for us
A wash routine can be hit or miss and some trouble shooting may be required (as you can see)..
For DS1, we liked flats and covers for the NB stage- we used econobum and Bamboo flats. Thirsties XS covers were way too big on him even at 9 lbs. We use the best bottom AI2 system and have since he was about 3 months old. We use Bumgenius pockets for daycare.
We tried Thirsties, Alva, Kawaii, and Charlie banana on him and they didn't fit right. We have blueberry capri's (covers) but they don't fit him well either.
For DS2, our NB stash is covers and flats along with about 40-50 AIOs of varying variety (thirsties, blueberry, smart bottoms, and meadowlark)
You'll need to put your wash cycle on the longest available cycle. You want it to look like diaper stew, not diaper soup, when it comes to water level. They get cleaned by rubbing against one another
Our wash routine was pretty much what chknma described.
We loved fitteds, flats, and prefolds and used pockets stuffed with flats for babysitters or when out and about.
IMHO, AIO take forever to dry, so I really didn't love them.
As a child gets older and urine gets more concentrated, you can start to have ammonia issues. I found that flats were the easiest to get fully clean since there are no layers for anything to get trapped into.
I sold some of my NB covers and workhorses because we weren't sure about trying again for #3.
I need to inventory what survived and add CD stuff to the purchasing plan. (So much more fun then shopping for anything else on my list aside from babywearing stuff!)
I'm also thinking about unloading some of my Blueberry AIOs and trying some applecheeks.
I'm finally feeling more committed to at least CDing through maternity leave and until starting solids. BF diapers are so easy to manage it would be silly not to at least consider doing it for the first 6 months.
Can I piggyback on here as I am trying to figure out my diaper stash.
Does it seem reasonable to plan on 12 diaper changes per day? And for diaper covers used w/ inserts or prefolds, how many times can you typically reuse the covers? Like every other change? Every 3 changes?
I'd plan for 12-14 in the newborn stage (especially since sometimes they dirty the diaper right when you are changing them). Two covers a day (with a 3rd in case the fitted or prefold doesn't hold everything) is generally good, just trade them at every change and let it air out between changes. If you are using prefolds, you may find that the cover gets soiled from BMs a bit more frequently than if you are using fitteds (depending on the fold you use and how well you do it), in which case I'd probably have 3-4 on hand per day.
And send 6-8 a day to daycare, they may require new covers at every change (depends on local laws etc.) Whatever is still clean can just be brought back the next day.
Generally, if you can do laundry every other day, 24-30 diapers + 6 covers ought to be enough. If you are willing to do laundry every day, you can get by with fewer (14-18 + 4 covers) keeping in mind that laundry of diapers takes about 3 hours including drying time during which you may go through 2 or so diapers.
12 changes per day plus a couple extra for laundry times. Covers need to be line dried, so keep that in mind. You can reuse them until wash day provided there's no poop. We had 7 covers for the NB stage with 30 flats. We usually could go two days with those but he was also (and still is) Sir Poops A Lot.
You'll also be doing MOTN changes for a handful of months, so that'll account for the number being closer to 10-12 changes per day. Once those are no longer done, you're probably looking at 8-10 changes a day
For daycare, it depends on the particular center and how long they will have baby. DS went through 5ish for a 8 hour stint at 9 months (when he started daycare) and is down to 3-4 per day at 2 years for a 9-10 hour stint but I double stuff his daycare diapers due to his unpredictable sleep times (some days, he demands to go down before 12 and sleeps until 3:30, others he refuses to go to sleep until 2ish). His typical changing times now are 7am (home), 9am, 12p, 3p, 6p (home).
jennyelf, hpnegirl, thanks! 30 diapers + 6 covers is generally what I'm going for, although I do need to figure out the whole daycare situation (we're on a bunch of waitlists, ugh) and what they'll require. I have heard that some places are required to change covers each time, in which case I may get a bunch of inexpensive pockets for daycare, then do prefolds w/ covers for at home.
Oh right, I had heard about line-drying covers. What about pockets? We plan on getting a portable washer/dryer for the upstairs bathroom, and the dryer is basically just a giant salad-spinner, not heat. I heard it gets stuff 90% dry so we'll either line-dry the rest or run them in the dryer downstairs. I wonder if just the spin-dry would be okay for the pockets and covers?
What about newborn sizes? I know it'll depend on the baby but how long until yours were able to fit into OS?
Also, PirateCat you'll want a few different brands of covers to try since not all will work with all babies
Yea, I am planning on getting 1 or 2 of each for now and maybe I'll just get 4 for now or something until I have a chance to try them on the baby.
If I end up getting a bunch of pockets for daycare, I was looking at the Kawaii diapers, which I'd probably buy in bulk. I'm not sure if I should buy one and try it out first, or if it would be easy enough to sell and recoup the cost, since they are much cheaper in bulk.
Echoing what hpnegirl said re wash routine. Ours definitively outgrew newborn diapers around the 10 week mark as well. We didn't use OS diapers though. We were mostly a fitted + cover family, and the GMD fitteds are sized. We found them to work really well and were pretty economical even if we did have to buy 2 sizes.
I'll add PirateCat that we used the kawaii pure and naturals for Daycare exclusively a long time, they held up well for being a less expensive diaper. I line dried if I had time or threw them in the dryer if needed. Microfiber can get funky after a while so we ended up just stuffing with flats when I got tired of fighting our hard water.
chknma that's good to hear! I have heard good reviews about them and it seems they would be convenient for daycare. Did you have to unstuff the inserts before washing or just threw them in stuffed? I was thinking of getting the bamboo inserts instead of microfiber. It also looks like I can sell them pretty easily and recoup the cost if I end up not liking them so I feel okay about buying them in bulk without having tried them.
PirateCat. They had to be unstuffed....but it wasn't bad or overly gross....Stuffing is what lessens my enthusiasm for pockets, but they really do wash so well compared to our AIO and are convenient for others when compared to flats/PF....I'm going to try some applecheeks this time because I hear the inserts really will agitate out in the wash.
chknma bummer I was really hoping I could get out of unstuffing soiled diapers. I think AI2s would be my ideal but it's hard to pass up how affordable Kawaii pockets are, especially if the daycare requires changing the cover every diaper change.
chknma bummer I was really hoping I could get out of unstuffing soiled diapers. I think AI2s would be my ideal but it's hard to pass up how affordable Kawaii pockets are, especially if the daycare requires changing the cover every diaper change.
We don't unstuff ours.. they come undone in the wash. Granted, it's a different brand so maybe that's why? They're stuffed with the microfiber insert and a kawaii or Alva bamboo flat
I hear you. I think I had 9ish of the PN for and saved my preferred CDs for home as my stash grew ;-)
Plus then I didn't have to worry as much about Daycare accidentally using the wrong cream or something else to mess up the diapers.
Maybe I'll only need 6-8 of the Kawaiis since kid most likely won't go to daycare two days in a row... I need special cream for the diapers???
Yes, most standard diaper creams contain things that repel water and don't come out in the wash easily. A water repelling diaper is about the last thing you want.
There are many cloth diaper safe creams. We personally loved CJs Butter.
Post by BabyStandish on Feb 16, 2017 9:50:07 GMT -5
PirateCat yes, most diaper creams you can buy in store are not compatible with cloth diapers. We use Earth Mama Angel baby bottom balm. A lot of cloth diaper retailers have lots of different creams to choose from though.
Post by BabyStandish on Feb 16, 2017 9:55:59 GMT -5
Another nice thing about using CD is that we hardly ever have to use the diaper cream. I think DS's bum has only been slightly irritated a handful of times.
PirateCat yes, you do. Same with diaper powder. We use grandma El's and CJ's. I've heard good things about grovia and thirsties. I didn't have luck with EMAB so I tossed it
Another nice thing about using CD is that we hardly ever have to use the diaper cream. I think DS's bum has only been slightly irritated a handful of times.
Lucky..
I have Sir Poops a Lot. We go through a decent amount. We also had a bacterial diaper rash so he had to go in disposables for treatment due to the cream and until I could strip and bleach (so glad we have our own washer and dryer now! That was when we still didn't).
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