Friday, June 06, 2008

At the urgings of my husband...

I am going to write another post on diapers. Feel free to disengage at this point if you are not in the least interested. I am writing this for those of you who are. I have had several requests (from friends and from strangers too, actually) to share with them my thoughts on cloth dipes.

For anyone who is not certain they are interested, but is on the fence with this one, consider this from the money angle. Depending upon what type of cloth diapers you decided to go with, you could save anywhere from $1000 to $2000 over the course of the use of them as compared to disposable diapers (this is with 8 diapers a day as compared to an averaged price of the best selling disposables out there). That's serious cash, folks! Yes, you are paying for water and detergent, but you are not paying for the gas to have them shipped to the grocery store every week, nor are you paying for diaper cream (if you use a fleece or suedecloth type dipe), nor are you paying for trash bags/liners to throw them in over and over and over again. (AND you could use them for more than one child...no, it's not so gross, although I must admit that I thought it might be. ) This is a real way to save some money, and to get cute, Cute, CUTE bum-covers for your babe.

I originally switched to cloth because I was praying about how I could be a better steward of the things God had given me and felt like he was leading me towards using cloth as a means to be a better steward of the earth (just so you know: I don't come down on my friends who don't use cloth. There are a million and one ways to try and be a better steward of the environment and no one can do all of them. I figure that we each respond to where God is leading and that may not look the same for all of us.) Anyways, i ended up LOVING cloth because it is so very much cuter than sposies ("disposables"), because I personally would rather have cloth against my own bum than paper (and so I assume would my children), because it was a fun way to teach my son his colors (he had red, black, navy, lime, olive, maroon, blue, green, yellow, white, turquoise, periwinkle, aqua, and orange), because it causes less rash on my daughter's oh-so-sensitive hiny, and because my son told me he preferred them once he was able to articulate it.

As far as what is out there now:
Here are some of my favorites:

In the covers category (what you put over diapers when you use either prefolds or fitteds or contours):
Swaddlebees ABC Limited Edition Wrap (this comes in many color combos: here's one of my faves)


And Bummis Super Whisper Wraps


In the All-in-Ones category (a diaper that is all one piece, like a disposable; no assembly or disassembly required):
Bum Genius 2.0 All in One (I use these with Honor and LOVE them)



In the Pocket Diaper category I have to have a small aside about Fuzzi Bunz.

aside: I used to recommend Fuzzi Bunz as my number one diaper. I love them and have used them with both my children. I used them with Aidan from 15 months on through potty training. He wore one set of diapers for over 20 months and now that Honor has grown, she is also able to wear that same set and they are still great. However, recently, Mother of Eden (the parent company of Fuzzi Bunz) remodeled or "improved" their diapers. While the fleece does seem slightly softer, and it is nice to have top stitching around more of the edges, I cannot see that any of the other changes were all that helpful. Now the diaper has more "gentle elastic" {read: fits larger (not helpful for my daughter who is on the thinner side of things)}. The tabs in the front "were made larger to give you a better grip" {read: pucker out since not all of the corners have snaps to hold them down (not helpful, just odd looking). However, they do still work quite effectively and my daughter cannot pull them off (something she is quite skilled at with disposables and with her Bum Genius which use velcro instead of snaps).

Now I have a hard time recommending Fuzzi's because the new ones just aren't as fabulous as the old ones (although they are still pretty darn good!)
Here's a pic of some old FBs:


and here's a new one:


Anyways, what pocket dipe would I recommend if I wasn't recommending FB's, I don't know. Possibly the Bum Genius 3.0 One-Size Pocket Diaper (which apparently fits from like 8lbs to 30lbs...or somewhere in that range anyway). I love the All-in-Ones they make, so I might be talked into trying their one-size pockets. It would certainly be an even larger money saver as you could buy all of your diapers in one fell swoop and never have to get any more until they were potty trained...the only real issue being that they are velcro and are therefore easily removed by tiny little eager hands (although no more easily than normal disposables which are also based on the same hook-and-loop technology).

If you look closely, you can see the same color snaps on the front of the diaper that are used to help the diaper change sizes (for lack of a better description):


Believe it or not, there are still so many things to say on this topic:
what are doublers? what kinds are there? when do you use them?
What do you do with your dipes after they are dirty? how/where do you store them?
what do you do with a dirty dipe when you are out?
what are the reasons why diapers leak if/when they do?
what might you need to do differently when using cloth dipes during naps or overnight?

But, I will not address these issues, at least not here. I am too tired, it is way past my bedtime, and I am absolutely certain that this post is already LONG ENOUGH!

I hope that this was interesting/helpful for the few of you out there who have recently been asking me about this. For anyone who is actually still reading this who does not fall in that first category, PROPS to you! and thanks for reading.

I DO have other interests in my life, I promise. It's just that this has come up a lot again recently and so I thought I would throw this out there.

In other areas of my life, I am about to embark on a very fun bible study with a neighbor and friend as we look into Genesis; I am about to read The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende for a book club, and I continue to enjoy our Apple TV.

3 comments:

Paul Stokes said...

I just had a brilliant idea! Take this same idea and market these diapers for aging Boomers! Then advertise them on Facebook! (Except the sequencing would be the reverse of what it is for babies and toddlers.)

Anonymous said...

I think it's interesting, Kellsey, although I doubt that Paul and I were your target audience for this post! It makes me marvel at the technological advances in diapers since the days when I used cloth diapers for our kids. The advances for us were that we had "prefolded" cloth diapers instead of the one-layer piece of birds-eye fabric that would have to be folded by hand. I used a diaper service for the first few months with each one, but after that the same supply of diapers was sufficient to get through our three kids. But the diapers were getting a bit worn by the last child. For fastening we used actual diaper pins! And then there were rubber pants to go on the outside. Disposables were not so good in those days, in my opinion. Extended use of them gave my kids diaper rash. They had no elastic around the leg openings, so they tended to leak. The outside covering was plastic and they fastened with adhesive tabs, so they couldn't be opened and re-closed as today's disposables can - opening them would rip a hole in the outside plastic.

Jana said...

so, i am going to do it.

i am going to try cloth without a w/d. wish me luck--i may go insane.