Cloth Diapering, so far

The number one question I get these days is, "So, how's the cloth diapering going?" I can say with full confidence that it's great. We started using the cloth diapers when Liam was around four weeks old. We use a mix of bumgenius and fuzzibunz. Right now my favorite are the bumgenius diapers. The fit is a lot more trim and they're generally easier to use. Whenever Liam wears a fuzzibunz diaper his booty looks ginormous! It's comical. The nice thing about the fuzzibunz is all the adjustable features, but this also makes them a little more complicated to use. I hate having to adjust the elastics on the legs and I never seem to get it right which has led to a few leaks. It's annoying to have to deal with. With the bumgenius you just adjust the rise with a few simple snaps and you're ready to go. I think as Liam gets better I will like the fuzzibunz more but I really love the bumgenius diapers and will probably buy a few more of those so I don't have to rely on the fuzzibunz so much.

Washing the diapers is ridiculously easy and really not as gross as one might imagine. Whenever we change Liam's diaper we remove it, take the insert out, and stick it along with the actual diaper into our Planetwise wet bag. If it's a poopy diaper I spray it down over the toilet with our diaper sprayer and then into the wet bag it goes. This step is not really necessary because Liam is exclusively breastfed and breastfed poo is water soluble and can go straight into the washing machine, but I like to get the diaper as clean as possible before sticking it in the wet bag. I think it might also help with stains. When the bag gets full it's time to wash. [Liam has about 20 diapers or so, which means I wash them every two to three days] I dump the contents of the bag into the washing machine and do a cold rinse. After that I wash them on hot with 1/3 the amount of recommended detergent. Right now we are using Seventh Generation Free & Clear. It seems to be getting the job done just fine. I have a few samples of Rocking Green detergent that I'll be trying to figure out if I like it or not. I'm also interested in trying Charlie's Soap because I hear good things. We'll see. After they're done washing I put them in the dryer on low for 30-45 minutes and we're done! I take them out, stuff the inserts back in the pockets, and put them away in Liam's dresser. It's really not too much trouble to go through to save some money on diapers. If we used disposable all the time (which we did for the first month of his life) we would be buying a lot of diapers and wasting a lot of money. With the cloth diapers he can use them up until the day he's potty trained (which will hopefully be sooner rather than later, supposedly cloth diaper babies potty train earlier than disposable diaper babies) and if we have more kids they can use these diapers too.

I should mention that we do use disposables on occasion, mostly at night. It's just easier that way for now. I am considering using a night time cloth diapering system (maybe doubling up on inserts?) but for now I'm okay with using disposables. Even when we go out he still wears cloth. We just bring a mini wet bag in his diaper bag. When we change him the dirty one goes in there until we get home and can put it in the big wet bag.

So there you have it. Cloth diapering is amazing. I love it. Alex loves it. And I think Liam loves it too. :-)