Stripping and drying cloth diapers

Here are two small notes about cloth diaper up-keep.

Stripping cloth diapers
If you notice your child's cloth diapers are starting to become less absorbent and you can't figure out why, it may be time to strip them. I've discovered that our cloth diapers need stripping approximately once every three months. Even though we use a gentle detergent and generally treat them nicely (as nicely as anyone can treat a diaper), residue build up happens.

There are lots of suggestions out there about the right way to strip a diaper, but I decided to the follow the routine suggested on the Cotton Babies blog because 1) that's the parent company that makes Bum Genius diapers, our diapers of choice and 2) the instructions are pretty simple.

To strip cloth diapers:
1) Wash the diapers as you would normally. For us this means one cold pre-wash cycle (i.e. soaking) followed by one hot cycle using detergent.

2) Keep the diapers in the washer, and add one tablespoon of original blue Dawn dishwashing liquid for a hot cycle plus a hot rinse.

3) Run one more hot rinse cycle.

I love the way the diapers come out of the wash with a subtle Dawn smell. I immediately notice a change in absorbency after stripping the diapers.

Solution for drying diapers
We've been drying our child's diapers on a traditional wooden drying rack, but last weekend during a trip to IKEA I decided to purchase this space-saving solution: the Pressa drying rack.

This novel little gadget has 8 arms, like an octopus, and there are 16 clips total hanging from the arms. For our needs this a perfect mechanism for drying diaper shells because we find ourselves typically washing 16-18 diapers at a time. Because our laundry room is on the bottom floor and our bedrooms are two floors above, the Pressa makes it easier to carry the dry diapers upstairs all at once while also holding our toddler who can't manage walking the stairs without assistance.

Although the arms of the Pressa theoretically fold up for easy storage, my one complaint is that the arms don't actually stay in place when folded. This isn't a big deal for us, but it does seem like a design flaw. At $4.99, though, I'd say it's OK.

New cloth diaper routine

When I first started cloth diapering I wasn't sure if the probable increase in our utilities bills (electric and water) would still make cloth diapering more financially frugal than using disposables.

I now have close to a year's worth of utilities bills to compare the befores and afters, and though I ultimately conclude that cloth diapering is more frugal, I can also say that our bills are up.

Water in particular has gone up significantly. Of course, water is the cheapest utility out there, at least in our neck of the woods. We pay our bill quarterly, so when I consider how much we pay for water each month (divide each bill by 3) it pales in comparison to the typical energy bills we get each month.

Here's the water bill breakdown:
January -- $111.99 (This bill is dated January 19, 2012, and it was sent while Natalie was still in the hospital, so it's a good baseline for our bills pre-baby.)
April -- $117.87 (We started using cloth diapers in early March, so here you can see the impact on our bill with about 6 weeks of cloth diapering.)
July -- $140.22
October -- $148.82

There's clearly a big increase in our water bill in the billing period covering the last six months, aka the time since we really started using cloth diapers.

So it seems that cloth diapers are causing our water bill to rise a good amount, right?

I assume so, but I also realize that there are other ways caring for Natalie has contributed to an increasingly large water bill. Specifically, we run the dishwasher more often now that her plates, bowls, utensils, bottles and cups are getting used multiple times per day. Also, we bathe her, and now that she's older we bathe her move often than we did when she was a newborn. And we have to wash her clothes, but I've managed to only run a load of her laundry about once every two weeks.

Other forms of baby water consumption aside, I have to believe that running a load of her diapers every other day is the greatest contributing factor to our increasing water bill. So, I've decided to change that routine ever so slightly and wash the diapers once every three days as opposed to every two days. I tried this method out a few times with our stash of 20 diapers and I found that the diapers were barely drying in enough time before I completely ran out of diapers. (In fairness, one diaper is always in our diaper bag, and one diaper is now a dedicated swimming diaper, so it's more accurate to say we were working with 18 diapers.) I ordered 4 more diapers in fun colors that weren't available when we were building our stash this time last year. Now I think we have the perfect amount of diapers for this new cleaning schedule.

Those of you using cloth diapers, have you modified your cloth diaper washing routines? Do you think you're ultimately saving money through cloth diapers over disposables? How many cloth diapers do you have? Anyone given up on cloth diapering?

Two weeks of cloth diapering: Common questions

I have to say that even though Matt and I decided we'd use cloth diapers long before there was a baby in the picture, when the time came to start using them I was a little apprehensive. Now with two weeks of cloth diapering under our belts I can't imagine going back to disposables. Here's what I've observed, in Q&A format.

How often do you wash cloth diapers?
Every other day.

Doesn't that mean you're spending your life doing laundry?
No more than I do by virtue of having an infant in the house.

Plus, a load of cloth diapers only contains about 11-14 diapers, so it doesn't take long to clean them in the washer or get them to dry. On our standard Kenmore washing machine (we do not have anything fancy) it takes about 10 minutes to prewash the diapers and then about 30 minutes to wash them with a second rinse. I put the inserts in the dryer for 60 minutes, which is plenty of time, and hang the diaper shells outside (thank you, nice weather!). I find it's easiest for me to stick to the washing and drying routine by running the load of diapers first thing in the morning so the diaper shells will be dry by afternoon.

Aren't cloth diapers gross to change?
No more so than a disposable diaper.

Aren't cloth diapers gross to wash?
I can see that this could be the part where parents decide not to use cloth diapers. I invested in an extra pair of rubber gloves that I keep in the laundry room. I wear them when I am separating the diaper shells from the inserts as I put the diapers in the washer for the prewash cycle. But I am not an easily grossed out person, so if you are then cloth diapering might not be for you.

Do your diapers truly come out of the wash looking clean?
The first time, yes, the second time, no, so then I learned that I needed to put a little bit of laundry detergent directly on the dirty diapers as I prepared to wash them on the hot cycle. That trick, coupled with hanging the shells inside-out to dry in the sun has resulted in perfectly white, clean diapers thanks to the sun's bleaching powers.

Aren't cloth diapers more prone to diaper blowouts?
If you're not familiar with this term, a blowout occurs when a diaper leaks....big time. Unfortunately the first day of cloth diapering we experienced the biggest blowout we've had to date, though we haven't experienced many in general. If we'd been using a disposable diaper, though, it definitely would not have contained the mess either. One thing I have noticed is that cloth diapers can get oversaturated faster than disposables, so a particularly wet diaper could leak. Cloth diapering may require being more vigilant about diaper changes, but I'm fine with that, seeing as I will be the main person doing diaper changes for the next year and a half.

What's the ideal number of cloth diapers to own?
20 diapers is our sweet spot currently.

When we started out with 17 cloth diapers I felt it was a few too many, and I was right. The first time we did the diaper laundry we were down to two spare diapers, leaving us with enough to use while the diapers dried. I found a decent deal on the Bum Genius 4.0 Artist Series diapers through Sew Crafty Baby and bought 3 of those oh-so-pretty diapers (I am not being sarcastic -- who knew diapers would be so cute? See the patterned ones below).

When is the ideal time to begin using cloth diapers?
Even though I only started using cloth diapers because we were almost out of disposables when our baby was 7 weeks old, I think this really was the perfect time for us.

Magically, we started using cloth diapers right when Natalie started producing fewer dirty diapers. (For our purposes dirty diapers = contain a #2.) It's not unheard of for newborns to have many dirty diapers a day. Newborns produce a lot of dirty diapers because their intestinal track is still adjusting to life outside the womb. As it begins to function more normally they produce fewer and fewer dirty diapers. Some parents report that as their child hits 2 months and older it's not unusual for the baby to go for days without a dirty diaper, and it sounds like from a medical perspective this doesn't concern doctors either. Although this has not been our experience, we are definitely seeing the number of dirty diapers diminish and that is OK.

I would also say that when we started using cloth diapers Natalie weighed at least 10 pounds. The Bum Genius 4.0 one-size diapers claim to work on babies from 8-35 lbs., and because Natalie was born weighing more than 8 lbs. we technically could have used these from the start, but I am glad we waited for her to get a little more meat on her bones and for us to adjust to parenthood using disposable diapers before making the cloth diaper transition.

These Bum Genius diapers are expensive at $18 a pop. Do cloth diapers really save you money?
For us the answer would be yes. We've only purchased 8 of the 20 diapers we own, and because I purchased all our diapers on sale we've only spent $120 of our own money on diapering for Natalie. Even if you bought all the diapers yourself, though, you would definitely save diaper money in the long run once you make the initial investment. The Real Diaper Association (yes, this exists) estimates that the average family would spend $1,600 to diaper a child in disposables for two years. The Young House Lovers used Seventh Generation disposables for their daughter's first 9 weeks and spent $180, meaning they believe they'd spend $3,000 for two years (though my math would indicate the number would be closer to $2,000, but maybe I'm doing it wrong). The point is, though the numbers vary greatly, everyone will spend more on disposables than on cloth.

Because you're running your washing machine and dryer every other day aren't you negating any positive impact you'll have on the environment and your wallet?
Based on everything I've read it appears that from an environmental perspective disposables will never be able to win out over cloth. We all know plenty about the number of disposable diapers in landfills so I won't bore you with those dirty (Ha!) details. In terms of energy: Yes, it takes energy to clean cloth diapers, but it takes lots of energy to produce the thousands of diapers we'd go through if we used disposables exclusively (we will use disposables when we travel out of town).

The jury is still out on how much our energy and water bills will increase as a result of washing diapers, so I plan to keep track of all our bills from this coming year and compare them to what we paid a year ago to see the difference. (This will be similar to my year-long Costco experiment.)

.....
I'm finding that my initial plan to store the diapers in the top drawer of the dresser in the nursery is working out just fine. I've been making an effort to arrange the diaper shells and inserts in the drawer in a way that will encourage us to use all items equally. I'm placing the newly laundered inserts at the bottom of the pile and the newly laundered diaper shells at the back of the drawer, therefore prompting us to rotate through our entire stash without wearing any item out too quickly.

An unexpected benefit of using cloth diapers is that our garage no longer smells. That's where we store our outdoor trashcan, and a particularly smelly round of disposable diapers sitting out there for days can get a little funky.

Cloth diapers: Getting started

It's been a big week over here in baby world.

First off all, a follow-up on my last post about Natalie's sleeping schedule:

Turns out that by writing about her sleep habits I did not, in fact, jinx the pattern. Instead, Friday night she slept soundly for 7 continuous hours, prompting us to go ahead and move her to her crib in the nursery for the first time ever Saturday night. We figured it was better to give it a trial run on a weekend night rather than on a week night in case incessant crying became the order of business and kept Matt up before going to work. Somewhat miraculously, after rocking Natalie to sleep for the first time ever in the glider in the nursery, I carefully laid her to bed, turned on her Sleep Sheep sound machine, hit the switch on the baby monitor, and quietly left the room. Saturday night she stayed asleep for 7 hours before waking up!

Sunday night she did wake up in the middle of the night, but it was only once at 3:30 a.m., and after a quick feeding she was back to sleep for another 4 hours. I had the confidence on Monday during the day to put away her Pack N Play.

Then last night she fought sleep for a while after having a big bottle at 9:30 p.m., so by 10:45 p.m. I fed her again, she fell asleep by 11 p.m. and stayed that way until 7 a.m. today. Thank you, Natalie, for a solid 8 hours of sleep.

It's worth noting that each night I have done something different -- one night she had a bottle, one night she had a bath, one night she stayed out late socializing, one night she took a late evening nap and stayed home. In all cases, though, she still slept through the night (or in the case of Sunday night virtually made it through the night uninterrupted). So, I have no secrets to share about what was gotten Natalie to sleep through the night, other than perhaps her increased age. Right now we don't have much of a bedtime routine, besides making sure she has had a diaper change, a Sleep Sack around her, and she's been fed.

Now that we've successfully transitioned Natalie from the Pack N Play bassinet in our bedroom to the crib in her nursery, I'm feeling bold and ready to take on a new experiment: cloth diapering. It also doesn't hurt that we only have about five disposable diapers left.

So yesterday one of my few agenda items included washing all 17 of Natalie's Bum Genius 4.0 cloth diapers. We have the one-size-fits-all pocket style diapers with snap closures. These are intended to fit babies from 8-35 pounds. We opted for the snap closures instead of the hook-and-loop Velcro closures because the snaps seem more durable. The rather cute and colorful polyester diaper shells each come with two inserts: a newborn insert and a one-size-fits-all insert. According to the Bum Genius people, once the baby outgrows the newborn inserts they can be used along with the one-size-fits-all inserts for added protection at night.

To prepare a diaper, simply stuff the insert inside the diaper shell's pocket, snap it on your baby (adjust snaps according to the baby's size) and you're set. As I've said before, these are not your mom's cloth diapers.

Confused yet? Here's a visual to help. Notice the pocket on the inner diaper shell.

  
Insert the smaller newborn insert and/or the one-size-fits-all insert that comes with a couple built-in snaps that allow for three different sizes: small, medium and large. The one-size-fits-all inserts are thicker than the newborn inserts, but note that when adjusted to the smallest size they are as long as the newborn inserts.

Select the snap settings best suited for your baby. There are three different length options and five different width options. I know, lots of snaps, but you only use a couple snaps at a time.

Before Natalie's arrival one of the items on my long to-do list involved washing all her clothes and linens. I did not, however, wash her cloth diapers because I knew it would involve more than standard laundering practice, so I decided to wait until we actually needed to use the cloth diapers. I'm also, frankly, afraid of screwing them up. But, I went ahead and followed the instructions on the Bum Genius website, and I have to say it wasn't that complex.

First I prewashed both the diaper shells and inserts on a cold cycle. Then I washed them with detergent on a hot cycle with a second rinse. I'm using Tide Free and Gentle to clean Natalie's diapers. It's the same detergent I'm using on her clothes and linens, and it's free of dyes and perfumes but not free of enzymes. On this detergent link on the Bum Genius website it says that "at best" the detergent used on these diapers would be free of dyes, perfumes, enzymes, optical brighteners and anything else designed to stay on the diapers after washing. Given that this says "at best," though, I'm taking that to mean that my Tide Free and Gentle is fine -- at least for the time being.

To dry the diapers I line-dried the shells and put the inserts in the dryer. The inserts themselves take up a decent amount of space. Aren't all the colors so pretty?

In the future as Natalie starts using these diapers I'll be washing a load of them every other day, seeing as it's recommended because it's not a good idea to let dirty diapers sit around. Because newborn waste is water soluble these diapers can be thrown straight into the washing machine. Later on down the road we'll be installing and using our Bum Genius diaper sprayer to spray down the diapers before throwing them in the diaper pail and then in the washing machine.

I'm still working on the best way to organize these diapers in the nursery, but for now I'm thinking it makes the most sense to keep the shells and inserts separate, seeing as we'll probably double-stuff her nighttime diapers (especially if she keeps sleeping through the night!). It also seems like there's no use in snapping the shells or folding them much. Although they'd be prettier all neatly folded, the reality of changing and diapering a baby needs to take priority here.

I can't comment on the effectiveness of these diapers yet on a newborn as we're just getting started with this experiment, but I'll be back with more extensive reviews as we gain experience. And, assuming this experiment goes well, I'm planning to still pick up a few more cloth diapers to at least make an even 20 diapers.

Discounted cloth diapers

As you might remember from my baby registry post, one of the items I was most hoping to receive from my registry was cloth diapers. Ask and you shall receive. Several friends gifted me with them at my baby shower, and my friend Katy even demonstrated, much to the intrigue of all present, how these Bum Genius 4.0 diapers work. (People like my mother, who cloth diapered us old-school style, giant diaper pins and all, were especially amazed -- these are not your mom's cloth diapers.)

So, I was really happy when Katy told me the other day about her friend's shop that specializes in cloth diapers and related accessories (in addition to other green-baby products). Right now we have 10 cloth diapers to work with, and I feel like we should at least double that amount so we only have to launder the diapers every other day, as opposed to having the washing machine running non-stop in our house.

The store is called The Cloth Nook, and right now you can get 20% off all orders as well as free shipping. I guess this comes in perfect time, in case you were planning to buy someone you love this highly practical gift for the holidays (but probably the only person in the world who would appreciate such a gesture would be yours truly).

Because I believe the owner is (sadly) closing her store, not all diaper colors and closures are available, but I was able to snag five Bum Genius 4.0 snap closure diapers each at 20% off, and I basically never see these diapers on sale. Now we'll have on hand 15 cloth diapers in a variety of colors (2 clementine, 2 twilight, 1 moonbeam, 1 zinnia, 3 blossom, 3 butternut, 2 sweet, 1 bubble). I still want to get 5 more diapers, the ribbit and the grasshopper ones, because they seem ideal for our daughter's future wardrobe as I am partial to green in all things in general (including Kermit the Frog, whom I am excited to see in his new movie).

Now, back to baking. Have a happy Thanksgiving!