The Lazy Parent’s Guide to Part-Time Cloth Diapering
Let me begin by saying that I am neither an environmental purist, nor a cloth diapering purist. What I am is a mom who wants to try to do better about conservation and being environmentally responsible, and teaching that to Noah, but I am also lazy. If something takes a lot of organization or work or — especially — cleanup, I might do it a few times, but it won’t become part of my routine.Thus, “The Lazy Parent’s Guide to Part-Time Cloth Diapering,” or here’s what worked for us, maybe it will work or spark ideas for you too.
1. Use cloth diapers overnight, not during the day. Yes, you may only be reducing your disposable production by a diaper a day, but every one helps, right? Also, the fleece lining of pocket diapers is gentle and helpful with diaper rash. (That’s what got me back on using them. Horrible, horrible, horrible thrush-induced diaper rash.)
2. Don’t start right away. Newborns go through TONS of diapers, and you’re already overwhelmed and sleep deprived. Add ridiculous numbers of smelly diapers & MORE laundry to that list and the lazy parent will be over cloth diapering in days, at most.Wait until the baby (mostly) stops pooping at night. I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was much sooner than he started sleeping through the night regularly.
You also may want to wait until your baby is regularly eating solid food. Exclusively breastfed babies often go a few days between poops, but when they do, those poops are often extremely messy and runny. Some people claim they don’t smell that badly, but that was not my experience. Maybe those moms only ate flowers. 
In any event, a lot of the solid food poops are easier to deal with if you happen to have bad timing and get a cloth diapered poop. (Mostly easier, anyway.)
3. These are not your mother’s cloth diapers. These look and act a lot like disposables, except that they’re made from cloth and you wash them.
I mostly use “pocket diapers.” The interiors are fleece, the exteriors are either waterproof or water-resistant, and there’s a slot at the back where you stuff absorbent material like microfiber, cotton, or hemp. Some have slots in front too, so the absorbent material comes out in the wash and you don’t have to touch “the dirty part.”
Pocket diapers either snap closed or close with “hook and loop tape” (the non-trademarked term for vel*ro), and you can get them either “one size fits all” or buy mediums or larges when you’re ready to get started.
They also come in a variety of colors and patterns, but for some reason I don’t fully understand, most cloth diaper places don’t recommend the cute patterns for overnight. Why patterned material is more likely to leak, I do not know. But I don’t really want to test it either.
4. Cleaning them is not that hard. In theory, you can just put them in a pail and wash them at your leisure. But we find that gets a little smelly. Here’s our routine:
- Start with a container. Our first “pail” was a small container from Ikea that cost $0.50 and has a loose-fitting lid. I do NOT recommend that. It was fine for a few weeks, but started getting smelly. Eventually, I bought a Wahmie Wet Bag, which I like and which I throw in the wash with the diapers.
- Toss the dirty into the bathroom sink after changing Noah in the morning.
- When I go back upstairs to get ready for work, first pull the stuffers out and give the whole thing a quick rinse, then fill the sink and let them soak while I shower.
- Wring them out and toss them in the pail. If they’re very smelly, drizzle a little baby wash in too.
- If the pail gets really smelly before we have time to wash, dump some white vinegar in with the diapers. (Half a cup?)
- Eventually, throw them in the wash with unscented detergent, warm/cold, extra rinse cycle. (If you don’t rinse out all of the detergent, the smell can cling.) Every month or so, I do a hot/cold cycle instead.
- Regular old dryer. No fabric softener or dryer sheets — you don’t want to repel the water.
- I wash the rest of Noah’s clothes with the diapers, and haven’t noticed any particularly smelly consequences.
Getting Started
I don’t think you should start with fewer than 4 diapers, because you’ll feel like you’re doing laundry all the time. I’d start with 4-7.
I also think you should buy no more than 2 of a particular kind, because you might not like that kind, or they might not fit your baby very well. You can always buy more. Also get a mix of stuffers — you need 2 or 3 per diaper, depending on how much of a wetter your baby is.
The best known pocket diapers are Fuzzi Bunz, Happy Heiny, and Bum Genius; we have also used Haute Pockets, Pocket Change (the ones where the inserts come out in the wash all by themselves), and Wonderoos. It really does depend how well they fit your child. Also, the cutest ones I’ve ever seen in my life, but which are pointless for overnight, are Starbunz.
The stuffers are mostly microfiber and a mix of hemp & cotton. Most of mine are microfiber, but I actually prefer stuffing with one of each. The hemp are much thinner and lighter. You can also use them inside a disposable diaper for extra absorbency, but don’t do that with microfiber, because it will actually wick the moisture out of your baby’s skin.
None of this stuff is cheap, at least upfront. This is not the cheap guide to cloth diapering, it’s the lazy guide. The average price for a single one of these diapers is $15.95-17.95.
BUT, you can save money if you’re willing to buy “factory seconds” with uneven stitching of snaps, for example, you can get them for more like $11. (Which I did.) There are also good sales available. And if you expect to have another child (or more than one more) you should certainly be saving money by the time baby #2 is is out of diapers.
As I got more confident, I also tried prefolds & wraps, which are a lot cheaper, and frankly, almost as easy. I hope to use a lot more of those with another baby. I also tried some All-In-Ones, and while they were easy, they weren’t quite absorbent enough for overnight.
Be warned — they can be kind of addictive! Especially the cute colorful ones.
I figure this lazy strategy will keep at least 365 disposable diapers out of our landfills — more if you join me. That may not save the world, but every little bit helps.
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It seems to me the jury’s still out on whether the landfill savings of using cloth diapers outweighs the water/energy savings of using disposables. See The Poop on Eco-Friendly Diapers for more discussion. I haven’t investigated this enough to have a firm opinion, but it seems like the environmental gap between the two is probably smaller than we think, in any case. Much also depends upon personal circumstances: Do you use a diaper service or wash your own? If a service, how far does the truck have to travel between you and the company? If you wash, how energy-efficient is your washer? How big a load do you do each time? Do you line-dry or use a dryer? How much output does your child produce and is he/she prone to leakage more in one type than another? Do you live in an area where water resources are limited, and washing may have a more negative environmental impact?
Of course, factors such as diaper rash may sway people more towards one type, as you note, and that’s certainly valid. I just don’t think we should assume that the environmental conclusion is “cloth good, disposable bad” for everyone, everywhere.
Having said that, I think you’ve come up with a useful, balanced method for those who have decided to incorporate some cloth diapers into their routines, based on their own assessments of environmental costs and their own circumstances.
Thanks, Dana! You raised some very good questions, and the Wired article is interesting. I was surprised about the conclusions re: Seventh Generation and other eco-marketed disposables.
My personal opinion is that the landfills are a bigger problem, but I’m not using large quantities of water or bleach, and I don’t live in an area with significant water use restrictions. (I think we have alternate date/evening only lawn watering in place. But we don’t actually water our lawn.)
Here in Utah we have a lot of land and not a lot of water, so Kristin and I decided that the best environmental choice here was to use disposables in an effort to conserve our water use. But, just because we have a lot of land doesn’t mean that it’s ok to waste that land on making landfills. What I wish is that I could make a choice that would respect BOTH resources. I’ve been thinking about g-diapes as a good compromise, but have held off getting them as I’m still uncertain that that’s the best choice.
What I’m wondering is if you HAVE to wash the wet cloth diapers seperately from the rest of your laundry. You know, if you’re only using one a day. I’m thinking of our wash cloths, I wash them separately from our clothing because I wash them in hot with an extra rinse and I don’t use fabric softener as my skin is sensitive. Sometimes I add vinegar or oxy clean to the wash. Sometimes I add a little bleach to sanitize. Anyway, it makes a small load, and I could certainly throw some diapers in there without using much extra water. But, no one ever talks about washing their cloth diapers in with other objects… like wash cloths. It makes me wonder if it’s the “ick” factor. I know I have an ick thinking about it… but then it all comes clean anyway, right? And I throw the panties that Julia pees on right in with the other clothes and that doesn’t really gross me out too much. Or is there some other consideration to washing the diapers in with other objects?
I throw them in with the rest of Noah\’s clothes, or with sheets & towels.
Since I do run an extra rinse cycle on the diapers, I feel like that takes care of the \”ick\” but I can see where other people might draw that line somewhere else.
UPDATED TO NOTE: I also run the diapers (and whatever is with them) in a longer cycle than I use for anything else. We have a fancy high end washer (gotta love Sears Outlet!) with approximately a billion cycle choices and the \”express\” cycle does everything except diapers and super-dirty toddler clothing. I would guess that we wash the diapers for twice as long of a cycle as our average load of laundry.
To the “it doesn’t make a difference” folks, I offer this-
Washing diapers uses no more water or energy than flushing a toilet for an extra member of the household. The only energy you are expending is the same as if another person joined your home… and guess what, someone did!
The energy/water used to launder cloth does not compare to the energy/water used to MAKE paper. It uses more water and energy to MAKE a paper diaper than a cloth diaper will ever consume in its lifetime. Also apply the above thoughts from Dana to paper- How far does the Pampers truck drive to deliver them to you, do you ever make a store run just for Pampers, do you use plastic encasements for you Pampers or just chuck them with the other trash, how fuel efficient is the vehicle that delivered them and the vehicle that picks them up to take them to the dump and the vehicle you drove to buy them in?
Yes, WASHING cloth uses more energy that throwing away a paper diaper. But MAKING a paper diaper uses more energy than WASHING cloth. We could all saves lots of water and energy that we use washing our clothing by simply trashing our clothing, right?
I flush a toilet roughly 7 times a day (sorry if that’s TMI for you!). I wash Charlie’s diapers every second day. A toilet flush uses… I’m guessing 3-4 gallons. So, 4 gallons, 7 times a day, is 28 gallons I use a day to flush the toilet. I do not flush it every time I pee, that would be wasteful and pointless, since I drink a lot and pee pure water. So, 28 gallons a day to flush my toilet, times 2 days, 56 gallons. I know damn well that my washing machine, even using TWO washes (which I do), uses far less than 56 gallons to wash his diapers. It also requires no toilet paper (try as I might, I’m just not into the reusable TP thing), and no chemicals to clean a the toilet he is not using. Once he is potty trained, I imagine there will be a lot more flushing, which will surely require much more water than washing his diapers. So, in fact, it is more environmentally conscious for him to wear cloth diapers than to use a toilet. I imagine the same goes for me, as I am sure that I would use less than 28 gallons of water a day washing my own diapers.
Estelle, good points! I hadn’t even thought about the flushing water use issue.
The thought of using cloth diapers make my head hurt. But good for you!
The new house we are building will be certified “green”. We’re doing our little part to help make the world a better place.
It takes lots of fossil fuels, water, wood pulp, and plastic to make disposable diapers, and then they need to be transported from the plant (Singapore? China? 7th Gen are made in the US) to the store, then from the store to you, and then from you to the landfill.
It does take fossil fuels to heat my water and power my dryer, but from the cost comparisons I’ve made, we’re well ahead of the game. Since I’m confident that Kimberly Clark, et al, get better prices on fuel than I do, I’m also confident that I’m using less fuel to wash than they do to make and transport.
The thing I find most compelling on the environmental issue? We wash clothes and towels. No one is advocating that we wear disposable clothes.
Hope you don’t mind if I post here. I am a cloth diaper Mom myself and I just wanted to say I agree with Estelle. I wanted to add that with the new EnergyStar rated appliances- there is even less water and energy used to wash the diapers. IMO I think cloth does help save the earth one diaper at a time. :0)
Thank you for this – it is a lot of what I am looking for as I start on this path!