Have you ever considered cloth diapering? I remember one night I called my husband and said we were out of diapers and would he stop by the store and pick up a pack. That was when our first two children were still in diapers… we now have five. Well, only one in diapers but 5 kids. My husband came home with a pack of prefolds, plastic covers and diaper safety pins. I was not amused.
I looked at the pack of diapers and thought… “What in the world do I do with these?!?!” So I turned to my husband and said, “I don’t know how to put them on.” Do you know what happened next? My husband showed me how to put a cloth diaper on! He remembered from back in the day when he had little siblings (he has 10 younger siblings).
We tried the cloth route for about 6 months. I’ll be honest… I did not like it. In fact, I borderline hated it and was ready to give it up after each and every day. Carrying around two sets of prefolds and plastics was not fun. My diaper bag was stuffed everywhere we went. And lets not forget the laundry… not only did I have the diaper laundry but no matter how many prefolds I’d stuff in the covers, my kiddos always leaked so that meant extra bedding laundry.
Baby #3 came and then baby #4 came. At that time, I was really, really into couponing and I figured out that cloth just wasn’t worth it. I was able to stockpile over 2 years worth of diapers for baby #4 and even gave pack after pack away (I think we ended up giving away around 20 packs that no longer fit our little big guy).
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And then… baby #5 was on his way. I was no longer couponing and I had stopped stockpiling. I didn’t know what we were going to do but I sure didn’t want to start paying full price for diapers. I started thinking about cloth again, but this time, pocket diapers or at least something that didn’t require safety pins and plastic covers that kept popping at the seams. When it came time for #5 to be born, I had finally settled on pocket diapers. I ordered a few new ones and we were gifted enough to get us through 2 days without washing. I felt I was ready.
Our second experience with cloth has been so much better and easier than the first time around. I love the pockets and the few flips I have. They still take extra work, I’m not going to lie but it’s minimal compared to what we were doing the first time around. Here are some of pros and cons of cloth diapering.
Cons
- Bulky (pockets and flips are both bulky because of the inserts)
- Extra laundry (you need to wash them every couple days)
- Take more space to store
- Longer to change
- Initial investment
- More changes
- Need to be washed
Pros
- If you take care of them, they’ll last for more than one child
- Easy to care for/laundry
- Save $$$ especially if using for more than one child
- Always Accessible (no random trips to the store if you run out)
- Retain great resale value
- Possibly less rashes
- Less trash
Do you have anymore pros or cons to add? Let me know in the comments below. And be sure to read my follow up post on how to save on cloth diapers.
AN UPDATE:
Since writing the above, I have returned to disposables out of necessity. We had a leak in our laundry room that caused significant damage which led us to find other damage (dry rot) and have been working on it since March. We’ve had weeks without a washing machine and even a week here and there without running water. I decided to make life simpler for us/me by going back to disposables until our laundry room is fully repaired. When that is done, I will be returning to cloth diapers. You kind of need to wash cloth diapers, though.
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