Cloth Diapers (I can't believe I'm posting about this, hah!)

Today, I found Rob and I having a conversation about cloth diapers, and after we hung up I had to just laugh at the fact that we're definitely on a new adventure if this is something we're interested to talk about. :)

There's this great blog that I follow called Young House Love that mostly posts about DIY home projects, however, they also have a little girl and they tend to share different projects and adventures they've encountered in parenthood. One of them being the adventure of cloth diapering. (Dun dun dun!)

All I can say after a little bit of reading, is that it's not what it used to be. I probably never would have looked into it if I hadn't seen this informative blog post. The process is a lot easier from the days where it was just a piece of cloth and a safety pin.



bumGenius sprayer

Now-a-days there are cloth diapers with snaps, no pins, and are adjustable as your child grows, so the whole one-size-fits-all works for these. They aren't just a piece of cloth, they have built in liners that absorb all the goodness, lol.

The clean-up apparently has been improved as well. Once removing a dirty diaper, if it's wet you can just place in a bag for storage until laundry, if it's soiled then you take the diaper to the toilet...and here's where I think the newer part is...many cloth diaper-ers have a sprayer hooked up to their toilet. So right away, you take the soiled diaper to the toilet to rinse everything off, then place in the bag.

Now, the next thing I'm learning about is the bag you place the dirty diapers into. They have washable bags that are meant for dirty cloth diaper storage, they're called wet bags. The bag is specifically made to help hold in the odors. The great thing is that when it's time to wash the diapers in the bag (I hear about every 1 to 1 1/2 days) you simply pour the diapers out of the bag into the washer machine, then toss the bag in with the diapers to be washed! Pretty cool and easy in my opinion. This has been found to be a better alternative than just tossing the dirty diapers in a bin with a plastic bag in it, and then not often getting around to washing the smelly bin.

So now let me mention the cost, cause honestly, the main reason I'm entertaining this idea of cloth diapering is for the savings.

The family of the link that I posted above only purchased 12 cloth diapers and have found this to work for them. The ones that they use and recommend are called bumGenius. For 12 cloth diapers, the cost is $265. They've used these diapers since their baby was 9 weeks old up until now, they're child is now two. So the cost savings of not having to buy disposable diapers is really astronomical. When washed with the appropriate care, they also come out looking really great! On the family's blog, they did an update a year later taking a picture of the inside lining to show if there were stains, and all look stain free and like-new. I should also mention that the wet bag mentioned above can run for about $19. Here's a link to some that I've found.

I should also mention that they come in a bunch of really cute colors...definitely can coordinate with anything. (there's more colors than these pictured below)

Overall, I'm a thrifty person, and can totally see the money saving benefit and even ease of going this route. Surprisingly, Rob was already on this train of thought of cloth diapering (oh the things I learn!) So we'll see, but it looks like we may be leaning in this direction.