My husband and I were cloth diapered as babies 30+ years ago. Complete with safety pins, a diaper service and all. So when we found out we were pregnant, and knew we’d be going through lots of diapers, we decided to look into cloth diapering our baby, at least some of the time. I was worried it would be overwhelming with all the laundry that was necessary as well as the sheer volume that we would need in order to not do diaper laundry every other day.
I researched what kind of cloth diapers we would use, since there are so many different options, knowing that again, it had to be something easy. I was (and am) working full-time and my husband was in grad school full-time. We also live in Wisconsin where exclusively line-drying diapers was not an option year-round. And I knew that I didn’t want to buy multiple sizes of cloth diapers as our child grew.
Our son was born and was itty bitty. We probably could have made cloth diapering work right out of the gate, but it was overwhelming. We went with disposables until he gained some weight, and we felt we had a better handle on what this parenthood thing looked like. When it was time to pull out the cloth diapers that I had slowly been collecting, we wanted to dive right in. However, we still haven’t gone all in.
At night we use disposable diapers, for the sole reason of all of us hopefully getting more sleep. This also makes middle of the night diaper changes easier as we don’t have to think, and everything goes in the trash.
We also decided—at least to start—we would use disposables when we were out and about. Some of this because of the distance we had to travel to run errands, but honestly, we didn’t like the idea of potentially carrying around poopy diapers as we continued our errands.
While we thought this would be how we eased into cloth diapering, this has been how we have continued diapering for the last 10 months. When we leave the house our son is in disposables, with disposables packed in the diaper bag. When we’re home for a good chunk of time, chances are he’s in cloth diapers. When he’s had rashes we’ve used exclusively disposables to help clear up his rashes faster.
I’m super thankful that cloth diapering doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If it was, we wouldn’t be using cloth diapers at all. I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the laundry, with making sure they were “stocked” in his room, or honestly with my mental health. But using cloth diapers even part of the time makes a difference in the landfills. Once he was in cloth diapers part time, our purchase of disposables has gone way down. One giant Costco sized box lasts us more than a month and a half. We are never running out of diapers, and there’s always something clean to put on his bottom.
It's safe to say I love cloth diapering because of the cute prints (even though I swore I would only buy solid colors). But I also like it because in a crazy way, it’s one less thing for me to worry about. It’s one less thing to constantly be checking we have enough of. And doing both cloth diapers and disposables works well for us.
Full disclaimer-My husband is the one that does *most* of the diaper changes since he is home with the baby all day. I asked if he wanted to help write this blog, since he honestly has more experience with the day-to-day use, and he wanted nothing to do with it. I’m typically the one doing the ordering and grocery shopping as well as laundry, so we both buy into this system!
