Well, I have been saying it since 2004… cloth diapers are making a HUGE comeback. That was the year I started a cloth diaper business and it took off like a rocket from day one. In 2006 when I was sick of being holed up in a sewing room and was stuck with the decision of expansion or quit… I chose to quit the business and sell it. I had no desire to be in a service business for the long term and I have never regretted selling. I am very happy to see a passion of mine get the attention and accolades it deserves though.
A recent article from The Big Money has the cloth diapering world buzzing. Apparently the recession has spurred parents to try cloth diapers in record numbers. The cloth diaper industry which always had a steady growth is now exploding as parents who have limited cash can’t stomach spending any of their hard earned dollars on what is essentially… garbage. That is what a conventional, disposable diaper is…. a portable potty destined for the trash heap. Cloth diapers on the other hand are an investment and a cheaper one at that.
At a time when most of the economy is in the toilet, the cloth-diaper business is booming. Cloth diapering has long been a countercultural lifestyle choice, reserved largely for deeply committed environmentalists. It became more popular in the past couple of years as green went from crunchy to hip.
If you haven’t given cloth diapers a try I urge to to take that leap. And don’t fall prey to the cloth diaper myths that abound. Just a couple weeks ago I was talking to a friend on the phone and I brought up cloth diapers and I could almost hear a gag over the phone. She proceeded to tell me that she could never dunk diapers in the toilet and swish them around and then put them in a bucket that would then smell up the whole house.
I am baffled by the people who think you need to dunk diapers in the toilet. WTH? I never, ever dunked a diaper. I also never, ever had a problem with smell and I used a wicker basket with no top to store dirty diapers until wash day. When I lived in Arizona I could also easily go a week without washing diapers. In Ohio, with its more humid climate, I had to wash every 2 days but that was because of mildew, not smell. 8 out of 10 objections to cloth are usually just a matter of false perceptions.
I won’t re-invent the wheel and tell you all the reasons I love cloth. Just check out some of the stuff I have written already.
I totally agree! Cloth diapers are awesome! I actually just switched both my boys over at the beginning of the month and honestly I don’t really see what the big deal is, they are just as easy as disposables, plus I use the covers which are so cute! We were using about 10 diapers each day, so thats 3650 diapers into the landfill in one year from our house alone- ouch! Plus the expense. I do have one question though- I am having some smell issues- but I havent been rinsing the wet ones before putting them in the bin- do you do that? Awesome post- as always!
I’ve been using cloth diapers on both my kids. I love them, but I have noticed the elastic giving out on the Bum Genius. I hate to buy new cloth diapers for my 9 mos old–that kind of defeats the purpose–but they don’t scrunch around his leg anymore. Guess we’ll just deal. Otherwise they are great!
You can totally fix this! (That is, if your 1-year warranty is up, b/c Bum Genius will replace them w/o a hassle.) If you just make a little slit at each end of the elastic, pull out the old stuff, thread the new elastic through with a safety pin, pull to your liking and sew it in. I hand sewed the ones I’ve repaired and it does take a bit of time, but well worth it. It’s been almost a year since I did that and they’re going strong!
Great idea–I’ll give that a try!
Andrea try sprinkling them with baking soda as you put new ones in. That will absorb the smell. Also put some baking soda at the bottom of the pail or basket. I also used to put a few drops of essential oil on a cloth wipe and throw that in there with the diapers.
Awesome- I’ll give that a try, thanks!
do you know why bum genius would void the warranty if you use baking soda? I have a few bum genius diapers and have avoided baking soda because of the warranty but don’t know why.
I think they claim that baking soda is an additive that will cause build-up. I probably wouldn’t use a diaper that was so high maintenance.
Yahoo for cloth! I know that’s it’s getting much more popular in my are- I have a friend who started a CD/Carrier website three or four years ago and she chose to sell out this past year… because she was too busy and couldn’t take it!
Question- how did you NOT swish? I have a diaper sprayer, but I would almost rather swish than spray.
Brandis, if there was solid waste I would shake it out over the toilet or use a bit of TP to swipe it off and then I would just throw in the diaper basket. I never dunked or sprayed.
I love cloth diapering! I’ve been doing it for 10 months. I think my only regret is buying such a large stash of PUL lined diapers. I wish I would’ve put the money into organic bamboo or hemp diapers and wool covers….ah well, live and learn! At least my current stash has an excellent re-sale value if I want to switch it up for the next one!
I’ve been cloth diapering for 2 years now and i’ll never look back. I have fought with issues but finally have them resolved and find that simplicity is the key for me. Natural fabrics, especially cotton, is the cheapest (usually) and easiest to care for. I can’t tell enough people how much i love cloth diapers.
I used cloth the whole time with my daughter and loved it. I had lots of people questioning my choice, but I hated adding to landfills, and who can resist those puffy little cloth-covered tushies? Despite baking soda and essential oils, I HAD to wash every 2-3 days (even in a dry climate) for smell reasons. Poop and pee do have an odor, so I had no delusions of being odor-free between washings. You must have been lucky… your kids’ poop don’t stink :)
Dunking the diaper in the toilet? where do people get this stuff?
For those parents who can’t handle the smell, or washing the diapers there are diaper washing services (usually still cheaper than disposable); you tell them how many diapers to provide, they leave the clean ones on the door step and take the dirty ones away (like the milk man).
We’re loving the cloth diapers too. I have a friend who is keeping an eye on how I feel about it because she just found out that she’s expecting another baby and likes the idea.
With my supply we have to wash every 2-3 days, which is how I like it. Not an excessive supply, and it means that I do laundry often enough to keep the smells under control.
I’m also loving that there’s a resale value to my diapers.
I cloth diaper and love it. The smell issue I think probably has a lot to do with the chemistry of your baby’s output and what their bowel movements are like. My son is 6mo and has pee that absolutely REEKS. We’re also in Florida, and it’s very humid. I have to wash every two days, and even a closed pail gets pretty stinky.
I haven’t had to deal with solids-poops yet.
Oh and I totally agree on the essential oils thing. I use TT and Lavender from http://www.aromaticsinternational in my laundry. But i Hadn’t thought about adding them in the diaper pail on a cloth wipe. (What a great idea!)
We are going half and half now, which is a huge accomplishment in our family. Getting my husband to use ANY cloth diaper 5 months ago was practically unheard of, now he uses them all the time except overnights (still haven’t won that one) or when the little guy has tummy issues.
I’ve been CDing for almost a year now. I simply couldn’t afford ‘sposies for two babies after my son was born (they’re 14 months apart!). I love my cloth! DH is on board too. I count myself very lucky to have found the CD love :) I can’t believe that I used ‘sposies for my first two kids…OY! Sorry mama earth.
I love CDing too, and my wife and I just bought a bunch of Good Mamas for our new baby boy that’s due any day now…
The only question I had for everyone out there is how to handle the “clothes not fitting” issues. Meaning, stuff not fitting because the diapers are so much bigger. We CD’d with our 2nd daughter for about a year, and towards the end (when she was 18 months old) we had a hard time getting her into a lot of her pants/shorts because the diapers were big (we were using both BumGenius and Blueberry’s at the time).
Any thoughts on that? Otherwise, I love them, they will be great for the summer months — both of my other girls were winter babies and so we didn’t get any outside time until they were 6+ mos!
That’s a good question about the clothes for a boy. I have a daughter that is 20 months that I cloth diaper and I just put her in dresses and skirts a lot b/c those to tend to fit over the diapers all the time. When we are just at home though – she just wears the diaper and a shirtt. For my 4 month old daughter, she just tends to wear onesies that are probably a size bigger.
I bought stretchy clothes for my babies and also made my own clothes with more room in the butt. :) I also let them run around with just a tee and a diaper quite often.
anyone tried the Bambino Mio diapers ???
We LOVE our FuzziBunz! My daughter has gotten almost 2.5 years out of the 18 mediums that we purchased. And only one of them is finally starting to wear out by one of the snaps. To defeat the smell – we bought a diaper pail, diaper tote to put inside, and use “deo discs” to put inside. They are great! I wash diapers about once a week at this point. We have found that most clothes fit ok, just a little tighter than with disposables. But I hate to think of all the money we would have spent on diapers over the years. Not even mentioning the trash created. It actually makes me a little angry that some people are only switching to cloth because of the cost benefit and not because of the earth. But I guess whatever it takes….luckily everyone in my family was on board with this adventure!
We used deo discs too. Good stuff! I still have some in a couple storage containers and after 3-4 years they STILL smell good.
We just switched to cloth diapers too (Fuzzi Bunz)! I am amazed by how much I LOVE them!! We use the rice paper liners inside the diapers to catch any #2’s. You can wash them quite a few times when you launder your CD and when your baby does have a poo-the liner catches it and you just flush it down the toilet.That’s how I got my son’s caregiver to let me use cloth diapers when she watched him. She didn’t want to leave poo diapers hanging around and wouldn’t dunk them. It does crack me up how ppl say they don’t want to CD because of the smell…I had more odor with dirty disposables than I EVER do with my cloth diapers!
Tiffany, I love you and your blog so so so much, but I think you may be a little misleading with your info on the no smells and not swishing. I try to do whatever I can to get people to switch to CD, as I’ve been with ’em for 2 years and love them, but…they do stink sometimes. You do have to get close to your child’s poo sometimes. The same goes for disposables, too, so I think those arguments are bunk anyhow. But, I always do tell people this stuff; I don’t want to be a misleading representative of CDs!
I just can’t believe people are so squeamish about baby poo, for crying out loud!
I was never able to use tea tree oil for anything though, my older son had a HORRIBLE allergic rxn to even the smallest amount! And I stay away from lavender, as it has show some endocrine mimicking effects in boys. So I gave up on the essential oils early and have just never used them.
HI!
I’m planning to switch to cloth, but I’m wondering if you have tips on how to handwash cds. . Also, the recommended laundry detergent most of the cd companies required are not available in our place. Can I just use regular powdered detergent or even laundry bar soaps?
Thanks!
Cherry
No tips on handwashing unfortunately, but you can get Charlie’s Soap which is recommended by a lot of the CD companies online and they have free shipping (http://charliesoap.com/). I haven’t tried it for handwashing, but it works great in the washer for our diapers and all of the rest of our clothes too! Regular powdered detergents aren’t recommended because they supposedly buildup after a while. Check out http://allaboutclothdiapers.com/category/washing/ (another good CD blog with lots of washing tips). Good luck!
Well I still haven’t been able to go with cloth diapers. My boys leak all over the place. I guess I haven’t figured out to use them properly. I am sticking with disposable for now. I try to do what I can to help the environment in other ways.
I am trying to transfer my 3.5 month old boy over to CDs. I am using Rump-A-Rooz (similar to Bum Genius but they have snap closures and an inner gusset). He seems really uncomfortable in them. The first day I tried them they irritated the top of his penis (near the base). I think it was the cloth rubbing against his skin and not a problem with the detergent. And I had the same problem as Sarah, if his penis was pointing up when I put the diaper on it got stuck that way and he leaked out the top. How do you CD boys? It seems much easier with girls!
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I live in Colorado, which is a fairly dry climate and I am having a terrible time with mildew. I have soft water so staining has been a problem if I don’t eash off my 3 mo old’s poop. So I have a wet/dry pail. I use Bum Genius and they advise that I use bleach to remove the mold- whichI have done, but the mold comes regrows the next time I put diapers in the pail. They are diferent diapers every time. I am worried about bleach ruining my investment and I am getting really frustrared. I wash every other day. Any suggestions? should I switch to a wet pail?