January 10, 2018
18 Comments

Our Cloth Diaper Routine!

So, people have been asking about our cloth diapering system for a while now and though I have shared a few things about it online I’ve been promising I’d do a more thorough post on it at some point, so here it is! I waited until Lola was 2 months old before starting cloth diapers and we used these disposables in the meantime (they had really good reviews from natural Mama blogs that I read and we liked them a lot). I know there are lots of Mamas that start on cloth right away, but I knew there would be so much happening getting used to newborn life so I just wanted to make anything I could a little easier in those early days. You can read more about the differences between diaper types so you can decide which sound best for you, but here’s what we use!

Diapers: I first got started on my diaper stash by getting lots of different kinds of cloth diapers from baby resale shops (not all sell them but some do—try craigslist, sometimes you can find them there too) so I could test out different brands and systems. You’ll want to prep your pre-owned stash with one of these methods. I got some sleeve diaper covers (most of mine are this brand) and I bought some prefolds to fold and put into the covers but most of my stash are the pocket diapers that have inserts which are stuffed inside the diapers (my favorite brands of that style are this brand and this brand are my favorite). Overall, I will say that I do like the pocket style better and that was the kind that I ended up rounding out my stash with. I find that the prefolds can move a bit in the sleeve diaper covers so sometimes you get a leak that may not have happened with the sleeve cover but I still use the sleeve covers so they are still worth having if you can find a good deal. It seems to be that people suggest having somewhere around 24 diapers to keep you from having to do laundry everyday and I would agree with that.

Diaper Pail: I use this diaper pail and these liners to hold my diapers between washing. I would suggest having two liners so you can still use the pain when one liner is in the wash. I also keep this wet bag in her diaper bag so I can put dirty diapers in it when we are out and then I throw it in the wash with all her other diapers and liners. Size-wise I wish it was just a bit bigger as I really have to stuff in my diapers when I get close to wash day, but overall it works great, keeps the smell in, and looks pretty sleek in the nursery.

Wipes: We used only disposable wipes up until a month ago (these are my favorite by far as they only have 2 ingredients are are almost all water-based) but I finally took the plunge into reuseable wipes and they are great! We use these for the actual wipes and this for a plant-derived wipe solution (if you want to make your own just cut up 8″ x 8″ squares of t-shirt type material). I was surprised at how quickly I liked the new system and it didn’t really feel like much more work at all than using the disposable since you can just throw the wipes in the wash with the cloth diapers and spray a clean cloth with the wipe solution before using. Not much more work at all and you can fold the wipes to pop up out of a regular dispenser too which is nice (some people pour the solution into the container also so the wipes are already wet).

Diaper cremes: Not all diaper cremes are approved for cloth diapers so I use this diaper balm and i’ve been trying this new one lately and I like it a lot too (and it smells great).

Liners: So this type of liner is different from the diaper pail liner, because this liner catches your baby’s poop! If your baby is exclusively breast-fed then you don’t have to worry about this yet as you can throw all your poop diapers right into the wash and it will be gone like magic—yay! If you formula feed or have started solids you’ll need to either use a liner on top of your diaper before you put in on your baby (I use these liners). The liner allows the pee to travel through to the absorbent diaper while catching the poop on top for easier removal (you can either flush the liner or throw it away). Alternatively, you can also get a spray system to spray the poop into the toilet before placing diaper into your diaper pail (and maybe a spray pal too!). I haven’t used the spray system myself yet but I know there are a lot of people who do it that way and I may switch over to that at some point.

Nighttime Diapering: This one has been a bit of a recent thing to try and figure out! I had been using disposables at night for a while after starting cloth diapers because I was scared to try a cloth for the whole night, but eventually I started just stuffing my pocket diapers with two liners instead of one and it seemed to work pretty well! Now that she’s a bit older, she keeps wetting through the double-stuffed ones so I decided to try a wool cover and a fitted diaper combo. I’ve heard such great things about wool covers and it seems to work well so far! Since you wash the covers so much less than traditional diaper covers, I only have one so far, but I may get another one so I can have one while the other is drying after being washed. I would suggest maybe 3 of the fitted diapers to last you 3 nights before washing, but you may need one more depending on how often you do a load of diapers.

UPDATE on 8/7/18: We added in these and these all-in-one diapers as our main nighttime diapers when she grew out of the wool cover we were using at night and they are great! I think we may just stick with that process for now for nighttime diapering.

Laundry Process: I would suggest starting to do laundry when you have about 4 diapers left, that way, you won’t run out before your laundry process is done. I do keep some disposables around for babysitters or when I don’t time the laundry cycles right, so I would suggest always having a few on hand for that reason. I found Fluff Love University to be so helpful for me and I looked at their detergent index to choose which detergent would be best (I use this one) and they even have a spot where you can look up your washing machine to see how to best set it for your laundry. Using their cycle suggestion I haven’t had to strip my diapers (“stripping” is when the diapers become extra stinky and you have to strip all that gross buildup away) since following their suggestions so I think it’s worked really well for us. Some people will tell you that you should pull all the inserts out of pocket diapers before tossing them in the wash, but I saw that not everyone does that so I elect to skip that gross step and 99% of the time the inserts fall out on their own during the wash cycle. And if they don’t fall out and stay in the diaper? Well, I’ve given those the “smell test” after the cycle is done and they smell just as clean as the rest of them so I say skip that step too if you can! After washing the dipes, I put the inserts and fitted nighttime diapers either into the dryer or I just dry them and the covers (covers shouldn’t go into the dryer or you’ll wear away the waterproof lining they have) on a drying rack. I like to dry them all outside in the summer and put any stained ones in the sun to bleach away stains (works really well!) but I’ve noticed that sun-dried liners and prefolds are not as soft as when you dry them in the dryer, so if your baby is really sensitive to texture, you may want to dry them in the dryer. The wool cover take a bit of extra care to prep and launder them, but it’s not hard and you don’t do it nearly as often, so it’s just a different process from the other diapers. Once everything is clean, it’s time to assemble them back together and start all over!

“But where should I start?” Good question! Overall I’m so glad that we decided to do cloth diapering. It does save money in the long run and I especially love the “less diapers in the landfill” thing so that’s the biggest plus for me personally. It is extra steps since we have to launder the diapers, but it’s really not nearly as hard as I thought it would be overall. There are a lot of different blog post and detailed opinions on cloth diapering and my biggest suggestion to anyone wanting to get into the process is to not get too bogged down in alllllllllll that you can read about cloth diapering. It’s a lot. It’s very overwhelming. I would just start out with a very small stash of pre-owned diapers of different types and just go from there! Use one trusted resource (like Fluff Love University) and just trouble shoot as you go. Sometimes a lot of research can help, but for me it just muddled the water until I didn’t know which route to go…if you have friends that do it, maybe just start doing exactly what they do so you have someone who can really help you with any issues because they know that particular system well.

I’m definitely not an expert on all things cloth diaper but if you have any questions I’ll try and answer them! Like I said, thankfully we haven’t had to do diaper stripping yet (knock on wood) so I really don’t know anything about that process at this point. And if you’re looking for the best baby items or trying to create a registry for a new baby, check out my favorites list for newborns and six month old babies. Happy diapering!!

xo. Laura

18 thoughts on “Our Cloth Diaper Routine!

  1. Tily

    Yay!! Happy to read you tried these. I have been using them for my son in the past 2 years and it saved soo much money and trash to landfill – if i count the thousands of liners we used.
    I would recommend to choose a system and try to buy stuff at sales- some manufacturers even have test periods.

    As a personal experience i cam say we didn’t have bad rashes, have a good system in place and definitely was worth learning the process.

    Reply
  2. Helen Westerberg

    Great to read about night time, we have been using disposable at night due to leaks, might try out the wool option.

    We used cloth wipes at the beginning with our little boy but found they were too rough on his delicate skin, even with baby oil. Try them on yourself after every toilet visit, I didn’t think it was so nice either! We have these great paper wipes which are super soft when wet, but also like water wipes.

    Reply
  3. Shaleen

    Hey Laura! I cloth diaper also and I’ve looked forward to this post. My little guy is 7 months and we also do disposables only for overnight. He isn’t the best sleeper and I am petrified to lose more sleep over an overnight cloth diaper. Ha! Did you notice any change in Lola’s sleep when you switched to cloth overnight? Like, increased wakings because she felt more wetness or bulk than she might in a disposable?

    Reply
    1. thebandwifeblog Post author

      Good question! I haven’t noticed a difference but that’s exactly why I was scared to try it and switch from overnight disposables. I mean, who wants to lose more sleep, right? But I also noticed that she doesn’t sleep differently (and had no skin rashes) with a dry or wet diaper with disposables at night, so I think she’s just not that sensitive to it. If you think the bulk would be different, you could try it for a few naps first to get him used to it before doing an overnight maybe? You won’t know until you try it! Good luck!

      Laura 🙂

      Reply
  4. Valerie

    Just a thought….we’re 17 months in, I don’t use disposable liners most of the time and I don’t spray. Everything comes out and our diapers still look pretty clean. Just a thought to save you some time!! Another thought for reusable wipes is all those little washclothes people gave you for baby shower gifts. Get them wet in the sink and they work great for us.

    Reply
    1. thebandwifeblog Post author

      Ha! Well, I think she may need the liners because when we forgot and put a diaper in the wash with poop in it, it was totally still in the washer after two cycles just sitting there! Totally gross!

      Laura 🙂

      Reply
  5. Monica Wright

    Thanks for this post, I’m expecting my first little one and have been super interested in cloth diapering! I air dry a lot of my clothes and what I do to get rid of the stiffness is throw them in the dryer for just a few minutes with no heat. It works like a charm!

    Reply
  6. Becca Karner

    Yay, thanks for doing this post! Isaac and I are expecting a little one at the end of February and it’s so helpful to read about what’s working for other families. ?

    Reply
  7. Jessica

    Thank you for this! I’m expecting my first in April and my husband and I are planning on cloth diapering. We’re going to try Grovia’s hybrid option because I like that the shells allow you the option to use cloth or disposable inserts and you don’t have to wash the shells every time you do a diaper change. We’re in an apartment and do not have in-unit laundry so I need a system that will allow us to go a few days in between loads. I will be doing all in one’s for nighttime so your suggestions on wool are very helpful! Question, did you use the same Bambo disposables for overnight before you switched to cloth full time?

    Also curious if anyone gave you a hard time about wanting to go the cloth diaper route. We’re not like crazy cloth diaper advocates, this is just what our family is planning on doing and anytime it comes up, people freak out and try to deter us. I don’t get it.

    Reply
    1. thebandwifeblog Post author

      Yes, I did use those for overnights! We have also used Honest brand as well and they make an overnight diaper that’s more absorbent than usual…and I’ve had people be curious or think I won’t like it because it’s more work, but no one was strongly against it. I say don’t worry about that, just politely smile and do your thing anyways 🙂

      Laura

      Reply
  8. Lauren

    Hey hey!! Also using pockets. We’ve been on solids for two months and I’m still just throwing the poppy diapers right into the wash without spraying, scraping or any other handling (I do a short prewash cycle before the regular cycle to get rid of the bulk of the waste). ?. So far…zero stains and totally clean coming out. Also! I stopped getting any discoloration or stains that needed sun bleaching when I switched to original Tide detergent. Everything comes out sparkling. Has been really helpful during this rainy season when I can’t hang things outside!

    Reply
    1. thebandwifeblog Post author

      Good to know! I feel like when she has really solid poops they may not wash away, but those are getting less and less maybe because her body is adjusting to eating solids…

      Laura 🙂

      Reply
  9. Libby

    This post is so helpful! Our baby is 6 weeks this week and we’re feeling ready to tackle the reusable nappies now (we wanted to give ourselves a break for the first few weeks, too!). Thank you 🙂

    Reply
  10. Mandi McKeen

    Hi there! I was so excited to read about cloth diapering on your post on ABM this morning, I had to pop over and see what you guys do. I was even MORE excited to see you mention wool. We LOOOOOVE wool, and we do cloth/wool full time. I need to introduce you to the wool company Sloomb. (sloomb.com) They’re based in Texas, make adorable baby pants/covers/skirts/sweaters etc. But they also make a lot of adult/mama wool items, too (leg wamers! stoles! and in cashmere!!!). Everything is to die for. (There’s also a buy/sell/trade group on facebook, as well as a chat group, if you have questions or want to find some some more cost-effective items for trying out different styles or to find something that’s out of stock, since wool can be kind of an investment.) It’s a rabbit hole and I’ve fallen very far down it! Haha. 🙂

    Reply

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