December 6th, 2009

Starting Our Cloth Diaper Adventure

I just washed our first few cloth diapers.  I am excited to begin this project.  I am starting with an assortment: Smartipants, bumGenius, Econobum, Thirsties, Kissaluvs and FuzziBunz.  I purchased one of each type except for the Smartipants, I have 4 of those.  I thought I would try a few out before committing to a whole system.  I realize there will be a little waste in the beginning from washing smaller loads, but I can live with that compared to investing in a system that didn’t work for us.

These are my biggest concerns at the start:

1. The moisture won’t wick away enough and I will be changing Spencer every time he wets; then we would need a huge stash of diapers.

2. I won’t be able to deal with the poopy diapers – they will gross me out, I won’t be able to get them clean, etc.

3. Our really hard water will cause laundry issues. I’ve researched this and there are solutions, it may just cause a little more work.

4. I won’t be able to stop buying them because they are so cute.

November 24th, 2009

Thinking of Switching

I am pondering the switch to cloth diapers, but I am not quite sure how to go about it.  I have done a hefty amount of online research and have really enjoyed reading all of the cloth diapering posts on various blogs.  There is a baby-carrier/diaper swap next week, but I am not sure if I want to start out with used diapers, but I have a sling to trade, so there is no harm in checking things out.

I was worried about cloth diapering in the beginning because I hadn’t care for a baby before and didn’t want to add extra laundry or work in the beginning.  My mother-in-law offered to get me diaper service as a gift, but I declined due to visions of diaper pins and bags of dirty laundry.  It turns out that there isn’t a diaper service in the entire county, so it wouldn’t have mattered.  After a few months, the sheer volume of diapers we were going through was bothering me.  It wasn’t the money as much as it was the garbage, but the expense was certainly a part of it.  My husband took a smidge of convincing, but I showed him the new kinds of cloth diapers and he started to come around.  I don’t think he will be washing them, though.