Cloth Diapering for Dummies

When my son was born in October 2008, I joined an online forum for other expectant October 2008 moms. Among our discussions, cloth diapering has been my expertise because we chose to cloth diaper The Boy. Since then, many of us have gone on to have their second (or third) babies, and are asking for my advice on the subject.

So, here it is. Cloth Diapering for Dummies... or beginners ;)

1. Cloth diapering requires washing your diapers. A lot. If your washer and dryer is too new or too nice or not good enough, you won't be able to do this.
2. Invest in a diaper sprayer that attaches to your toilet unless you want to spray out breastmilk dipes in the sink disposal. It's an unfortunate discovery when the next load of clothes is stained with yellow.
3. Try different kinds of dipes. We started with bum genius AIOs (all in ones) and g diapers, some swaddlebees (fitteds) and found that prefolds from greenmountaindiapers.com with Bummis or Thirsties covers fit the best and are the most inexpensive.
4.  Learn the lingo. Basics are AIOs, AI2s (all in twos), prefolds, covers, fitteds... after you know what is being talked about, it's easier to understand.
5. Snaps last longer than aplix (velcro) because aplix sticks together in the washer. I don't care what people or manufacturers say, snaps all the way!
6. Get a wet bag for your diaper bag so you have something earth-friendly to put wet dipes in if you're out of the house
7. Some dipes leak more than others. cloth on a whole requires more changes than disposables.
8. Don't let the fancy high price diapers fool you; in our case we found cheapest and simplest was best.
9. There are throw-away liners that go inside cloth covers, basically a pantyliner-looking thing.A few moms I know use these but it doesn't make much sense to me. Either go big or go home! ;)

We cloth diaper to save money and the environment. When both babes were in diapers, I washed at least 3-4 times a week. Prefolds that have been peed in go into a DRY bucket in the laundry room and covers that don't have poo on them can be reused. I just lay them out to dry. (I suggest at least 4-6 covers and 12-24 prefolds to start with.) Poo, if solid, is dumped into the toilet. Anything not solid gets rinsed out first, then thrown into the diaper bucket to wait until next wash.

Some of my favorite sites:
greenmountaindiapers.com - i order all my stuff from here; they have starter packages and the basic FAQs
nickysdiapers.com - have heard good things but never bought from this site
diaperswappers.com - the craigslist of dipes; perfect to get a few different types to try