Cloth Diaper Drop-out

*Whoops, forgot to publish this a while ago*

A few months ago I posted how we have been using cloth wipes with Shepherd, but how cloth diapers just weren't for us.  Well then, we started using them :)  With Inara we could use the cheapest diapers ($0.16/diaper) and it never bothered her skin.  But with Shepherd his skin was really sensitive and was getting a rash with every diaper except the Papmpers Swaddlers ($0.23/diaper).  It doesn't seem like a big difference but 6-8 diapers a day really add up.  We figured it out and for about $150 we could buy cloth diapers to last until he was potty trained, or $50/month in disposables.  So we decided to save some bucks and try cloth diapering.

There is so much information out there on cloth diapers.  The first kind we tried were Smartipants.  I liked that while they were a one size pocket diaper, you didn't have to pull out the insert before throwing them in the wash. The insert comes out during the cycle.  Also they had free shipping, a sale, included a wet bag, and 30 return policy.  I figured since we were new to this, the return policy was probably good.

 

I am glad too, because we sent them back after about a week.  They leaked pretty bad.  The leg openings were pretty big on him so it leaked there and it also leaked in other places. The website says if it is leaking try to change the diaper more frequently but it was leaking after 30 minutes.  So we sent them back. (Disclaimer- after we sent them back we realized we had not washed them 4-6x prior to using which is said to help with absorbency. Even if they were more absorbent, they still would have leaked from the legs though).

Before we spent anymore money on other diapers I asked around what other people liked.  A sweet friend whose kiddos have outgrown them, offered to let us use hers to try.  She had a lot of different brands we could try.  I was so thankful!  The kind she had was a prefold and diaper cover.  I was not too excited to try these because they always seemed like the most work.  But I gave it a try and it really wasn't that bad.

Unless you buy an All-in-One you will have some work anyway, and folding the prefold and laying on the diaper cover wasn't as awful as I thought.  We used hers for a few days and decided since it wasn't dreadful we would give that style a try. The next few days I spent hours scouring the internet on reviews of different diapers. I researched which brand was the best bang for your buck.  Finally Justin told me I just had to make a choice.

I finally chose Econobum.  They claim to be able to "Diaper your baby in cloth from birth to potty training for under $100."  We bought one of the boxes that comes with 3 One Size diaper covers, 12 prefolds, and a wetbag for $48.95. We figured, if we liked it and it worked we could always buy another box and those 2 boxes (totaling $94.90) would be able to meet all our cloth diapering needs until Shepherd is potty trained.

They definitely seemed to be worth the money. I didn't love it, but it was nice to think to my self each time I change a cloth diaper "I am actively saving my family money right now".  Also we were more of a part-time cloth diapering family.  He wore disposables at church, when we ran errands, and at night.  Since we still used disposables often, it wouldn't save us much money to spend $200 on cloth diapers.  Spending (what I found to be) the minimum amount of money on cloth diapers, we would have increased the amount of money we save.

So here are the pros and cons of using the Econobum:

Pros

• Super cheap, and will pay for its self very quickly
• Not hard to clean at all
• Easy to use
• Comes with wet beg
• Less than $50 for a 2-3day diaper supply
• Prefolds can be used with any cover
• Prefolds cheaper than other brands
• Covers are One Size so they fit newborn to 35lbs

Cons

• They only come in all white diaper cover
• Bulky underneath clothes
• Thin diaper cover that I could see wearing out faster than other covers

We used them for about 4 months before we waved our white flag and called it quits.  Once he started having formula and food, his poops were nasty.  We both would gag spraying out his poopy diapers.  He also wasn't requiring as many diaper changes a day since he could be in bigger sizes.  And is also not as sensitive to disposable diapers anymore.  I found some super cheap diapers ($0.12/diaper) that don't irritate his skin.  So we switched back to disposables. And it.is.awesome.  The first poopy diaper I changed after we switched, didn't even bother me.  It gave me such satisfaction to not rinse it out and toss it in the trash! :)

So anyway, we are drop outs but glad we are.  Here are some other resources and good diaper reviews if anyone else is interested:

Cottonbabies

Kitchen Stewardship (this is by far the most extensive review I found)

Simple Mom (Ps, don't you just love all of the "Simple" blogs)

Am I the only one that found the cloth diapering world overwhelming or totally didn't like it?

Cloth wipes

When Inara was about 9 months old I entertained the idea of using cloth diapers. In the end Justin and I decided it probably wasn't for us, but I also felt with how much waste we created.  Over the past 3 years I think I have learned a lot about green and reusable products.  I have found is that sometimes they are either expensive to start with or don't work as well.  When I was pregnant with Shepherd I still knew we wouldn't be clothe diapering but I was still interested in getting chemicals away from my baby's bottom, saving some money, and treating our Earth well.  I found a couple different ways to make homemade wipes.  One was was to use paper towels.  While this way is cheaper I still wanted something that was a little more eco-friendly.  So I found a few other ways. You could buy cloth wipes, which were reusable, but also cost more money upfront.  So I found a few pins on making your own reusable wipes. I combined a couple different methods and recipes and this is what I came up with.

A lot of people said use wipes that match your diapers. It makes sense....sort of, but I found that cloth wipes were so much cheaper upfront and less time consuming that diapers, that I don't really agree with that.

I used baby washcloths as my wipes. I found them for super cheap on Amazon (btw, if you don't have Amazon Prime...get it! A.ma.zing).  I was going to use t-shirt scraps because Justin had just gone through his old shirts, but I had preggo brain and forgot to tell him to save them so he threw them away :(  But t-shirts seem like the cheapest option. This is the solution I have used and it seems to be going great.  I am using water, tea tree oil (for anti-bacterial effect and to help prevent mold), and Dr Bronners Castile Soap. I bought the one scented with Peppermint Oil this time.  Although it hasn't caused any irritation to Shepherd's skin, I think the I will buy the Organic Baby Mild one next time.

The solution is super easy to make. 

1. Boil 1.5 cups of water
2. Add a squirt or 2 of Bronner's Castile Soap
3. Add a few drops of tea tree oil
4. Stir solution
5. Pour over wipes in container.

Yes it really is that easy!  I have about enough wipes to last about 5 days which is plenty and actually helps me keep up on the laundry in the rest of the house. I use an old wipe container that I had around the house as my storage container and it works fine.  I will say we still use disposable wipes on the go, and we also don't use them for really poopy diapers.  You can use them for poopy diapers, but since we wash our wipes with the rest of laundry (and because Justin requested we still have them for this reason), we use disposable for poo.

If you already cloth diaper then you can just throw them in with your wet bag, but since we don't have a wet bag, I got this super cheap garment bag from Ikea and it works great. It keeps all our wipes together that way I don't have to go digging through the laundry to find them.

Have you tried/do you use cloth wipes?  Any other tips?

No cloth diapers for us!

So after LOTS of research I had my info organized and was going to present it all to Justin so we could decided if cloth diapering was for us. Things have been crazy this week and I it seemed like we wouldn't really have time to go over it all until Sunday probably. Thankfully we couldn't talk because...

Justin's Mom bought us 3 boxes of 156 count diapers and is shipping them to us now! Holy smokes! That is a ton of diapers. Plus last month Katie from Mack And Jack told me about this CRAZY sale Amazon was having and I got 204 diapers for $13. So it looks like we are set on the disposables. Fine by me. I did the math and since Inara is older, we use the Target brand diaper (super cheap/good), and it seems we don't change her as much as other people change their babies- we actually wouldn't be saving a HUGE amount of money. I figured we would spend about $400 dollars to diaper her until she is 2. Since she is likely to be a small baby, we can spend even less on diapers. So since we will soon have disposables coming out our ears the amount of money we would save goes down from about $300 to about $100. Plus since Justin and I will likely not have any more babies (unless we adopt some day- and who knows what age we will get), it doesn't seem worth the work to us. But for all of you out there who were/are wondering about Cloth Diapering (CD) I will post the info I found for you. And I will also answer my own questions I posted a few days ago...so warning the rest of this post is about CD and probably pretty long...all you experienced cloth diaperers feel free to correct any wrong info I post.

• There are 3 different different types of CD. Prefold, Pocket, All-in-one (AIO)

• Prefold- These are the cheapest way to CD, but also the most work to clean and apply. Green Mountain Diapers seems to be the most recommended site to purchase this type. They have pictures there too, so I'll let them do the work of explaining how to use this type. With this type  of CD you must buy different size diapers as the baby gets older.
• I wasn't interested in this type at all. I have many different people that watch Inara during a week, and it is kind of a lot of work to ask others to do. Also they to not have the "One Size" (OS) diaper that I wanted/needed for Inara. The OS diaper does what is says...it is one size that fits all poundage. 
• Econobum I only found 1 brand I was interested in because it was kind of a starter pack. $50 for 3 covers and 12 prefolds seemed VERY reasonable. Katie from Mack and Jack said the covers were pretty cheap, so I guess you get what you pay for. But cheap nonetheless to enough to at least try it out. This one the ONLY one I found for prefolds that was OS so that's why I was semi-interested.

• Pocket- These seem to be the middle of the road. More expensive than the prefold, but less than the AIO. Also easier to clean/use than the prefold, but more work than the AIO. Basically there is a "pocket" in the inside of the diaper for you to put the "inserts" in. With this kind you can buy the OS or individual size. I was only interested in the OS, so here is what I found about some of the brands I looked at (there are probably like 100 brands...no joke).
• Smartipants- Here you could spend about $200 and get 12 covers, 22 inserts and a free "wet bag" to put your soiled diapers in. For us this would last 2 days, so we would need to do laundry every 2 days. It seems most people say you need between 18-24 diapers for 2 days, but we use about 5/day so this would last us 2 days.
• Flip- Here you could spend about $110 and get 4 covers with 18 inserts. This was my favorite of the diapers and it seems a lot of people out there like these too. And I'll tell you why. With all other covers, you need to wash after each use, however with the flip that is not the case! You simply take out the insert and put in a new one. You can wipe down the covers in between laundry days. That is how it is advertised and that is the general consensus too. So for $110 dollars we could get diapers and only have to wash about every 3 days. So essentially more bang for your buck. 

• AIO- These are the most expensive and the easiest. It is the CD that is most like disposables because there is no work, simply take off and put on a new one. But because of the ease, it is the most expensive
• BumGenius 4.0- This definitely seems to be the most popular brand for AIO. And one of the cheapest too. Here you get 1 AIO diaper for $18. The one down side to this type (AIO), is that most people said it has a very long dry time, since the absorbency is in the inside of the diaper. So for us we would have to spend $105 for 6 diapers, so that would mean laundry every day...boo!

• Other things to keep into consideration
• Laundry detergent- This site has all the commercial ones broken down for you so you can see if the detergent you already use is good for CD. But also here are some other types of detergent.
• Rockin' Green
• Crunchy Clean
• BumGenius
• Diaper Pail- You will need a can to put in your dirty diapers and a waterproof liner. Some people say they just get a small plastic can, and a waterproof bag at Dicks Sporting goods for under $10. I didn't check on that but here are some different types you can buy. The Cotton Babies website isn't the only place to find and buy stuff, but its the easiest to look around at. God here for diaper pail/wet bag stuff.
• Sales- I was told my multiple people that you should never pay for shipping or never pay full price for CD online because there are always sales. While I didn't see any sales, once again Katie from Mack and Jack, had some coupon codes for me. One code was for a free AIO diaper (pretty good code!), the other was for 15% off your order. 
• Buying used- I know sounds gross huh? But it seems lots of people buy and sell used and it seems acceptable...who know :) You can go here to "swap" diapers. The site is not super newbie friendly and I couldn't find ANY used Flip diapers either. I also didn't look super hard.
• Childcare- Most people still use some disposables. It is really up to you. My BFF and Dad watch Inara when I work 2 days a week, my parents watch her when we go to Small Group, she is in the Nursery and my church, and I will be starting a Ladies Bible Study at church where childcare is provided there. Granted, its not 40 hrs a week in childcare, but can I really ask all those people to CD? Its up to you...and them. 
• Night-time- I found a lot of people saying they haven't found a really awesome CD for the night time, so they still use disposables then.

PHEW! There you have it folks. There are SOOO many other brands, and I seriously probably spent over 5 hours looking at them all. These brands seemed to be the cheapest yet still have quality I could find. A woman who goes to our Church has her own CD business here. I was told she can be SUPER helpful in figuring everything out, and I totally would have picked her brain if we had decided to CD. Also Earthbums website says the following about price matching:

"There's more! If you find the diapers we sell at a lower price, we'll match the lowest price. It's our way of rewarding you for being a good steward of your money!"

Sounds pretty good to me! Good luck with your choice!

Oh yeah here are my answers to my own questions:

1. What brand cloth diapers do you use, and why did you pick that brand?

Flip- cheapest and easiest

2. What were your start up costs and what did that give you?

$110- 4 covers with 18 inserts

3. How many diapers do you have?

See above

4. How often do you do laundry?

about ever 3 days

5. Has there been any costs in up keep?

Most people said no except detergent

6. Why do you cloth diaper?

I felt bad taking out diaper trash 3 days/week

7. What is your estimated savings by cloth diapering

$ 300

Cloth Diapers anyone?

So lately every time I take a bag of diapers out to the trashcan I think to myself  "Sorry environment!". I take a grocery bag full about once a week. I have never really thought about using cloth diapers until as of late. Now that Inara doesn't have that nasty runny baby poop anymore, I have been thinking more about it. The problem is the start up costs. We spend about $15 in diapers (We use the Target Up and Up brand) about every 3 weeks. I know it is suppose to be cheaper, but its more expensive now, and I am not sure we have the money to spend now, in order to save later.

You have to understand, this is a big step for me even thinking about it. I have always been in the "ew thats nasty camp". But now I am starting to see it may be cheaper...and honestly I feel awful all about all the waste we throw away. So what about you cloth diapers moms:

1. What brand cloth diapers do you use, and why did you pick that brand?

2. What were your start up costs and what did that give you?

3. How many diapers do you have?

4. How often do you do laundry?

5. Has there been any costs in up keep?

6. Why do you cloth diaper

7. What is your estimated savings by cloth diapering