If you are looking for ultimate savings when your baby arrives, these tips for How To Get Started With Cloth Diapering will make a huge difference. After having our son last year, the cost of baby supplies were staggering, especially since it had been ten years since we had a baby!
Cloth diapering is an up-front expense that can easily save you hundreds of dollars a year. With new great diaper products out there, you can easily make sure your child stays dry and clean while cutting back not only on your own budget but also on waste that is bad for the environment. That’s a win-win in my book! You can also read about How to Make Your Own Baby Wipes! You will also want to check out our 10 Tips for Having a Baby on a Budget!
How To Get Started With Cloth Diapering
Pick your type of cloth diaper. When starting out, I recommend taking the time to see how cloth diapers work before you put in a large investment. Find a local friend who cloth diapers, or a store that sells cloth diapers and do some practicing. Learn how they fold, attach and how absorbent different liners are. These aren’t your mom’s cloth diapers from years gone by. While you can still buy those simple cloth diapers and use safety pins to secure them, there are so many better options out there.
There are styles that are all in ones that only need to be put on your baby with snaps or Velcro. There are others that have insert options you can add more or less depending on your needs. Almost all cloth diaper options now secure with snaps or Velcro, so no worries about sticking a pin in a busy baby. What you want to look for is the size, absorbency needs and durability. Since these will be washed over and over again, you want a good quality thick fabric that won’t fall apart quickly. With cloth diapers, you do get what you pay for.
Also, if you purchase on sites like Amazon or Etsy, make sure to check out the reviews first to see what others are saying! This shop on Etsy has over 1,000 reviews!
Shop second hand. Check out resale shops, Craigslist, Ebay and local Duck Duck Goose or similar kids clothing resale events. These are great places to get good deals to stock up on the cloth diapers you need.
Determine your needs. For infants, you will have 7-10 dirty diapers per day. Ideally you want at minimum twice that many diapers in the appropriate size so you aren’t doing laundry constantly. You will still be doing laundry almost daily, but at least you can cut it back to one load a day if you have enough on hand. If budget allows, you want to have three times as many diapers as you need in a single day. For older kids only 5-6 diapers may be needed each day, but the larger styles also last and grow with their body much better. You’ll find yourself in the medium size group much longer than the small. Having more of this size will be ideal since it means you can cut back on the washings to only very few days.
Have a wet bag and bucket on hand. One thing about dry diapers is the cleaning process is a bit more involved. For best success, keep a wet bag in your diaper bag so dirty cloth diapers don’t damage others around them. You will keep a wet bucket on hand in your home for soaking diapers until time to go in the wash. A simple wet diaper can be wrung out in the toilet and then dropped into the wet bucket with a water and soap solution to soak and be ready for washing. A dirtier poop diaper is a bit different. You will want to shake the feces out into your toilet and flush, then may want to rinse this diaper out if I stained a lot. Then add toy our wet bucket to soak before washing.
These tips for how to get started with cloth diapering are just a bit of what you will need to successfully keep your child clean and comfortable. Keep their bottoms happy by making sure you don’t let them stay in dirty diapers for long. Use your favorite diaper cream as a barrier to add extra protection for those times you can’t get right to changing them. Read more about why Pedi Derm Bum Paste is my favorite!
This is a really great article to get you started! Just a couple of things I want to add as a mother who’s cloth diapered 3 babies over the past 3 1/2 years:
Another great way to get started cloth diapering on a budget is by upcycling every day items such as old t-shirts, towels, sheets, receiving blankets, wool sweaters, etc. Anything that is absorbent can be used to cloth diaper. You can find many great options at local thrift shops for a fraction of the cost to buy the materials new. You can even use some of these as no-sew options if you don’t know how or want to sew! You can also make your own diapers by purchasing materials (which will still be cheaper than buying commercial options). There are some great websites that have the materials needed to make your own diapers.One of my favorites is http://www.diapersewingsupplies.com.
As far as the amount of diapers you’ll need, the bare minimum of diapers for a newborn is 24 diapers, but 36 is more reasonable. Even with that many diapers, you’ll be washing every other day. With cloth diapering, you need to change your baby more often than when using a disposable – a maximum of 2-3 hours between changes. Newborns typically eat that often anyway so it’s really helpful in getting used to changing that often. As babies get older, you may go down to 5 – 10 diapers a day as they learn to better control their bladder and how much of a heavy wetter they are.
As far as storage between washings, I have to disagree with the wet pail option. Having a pail with water in it between washings is a breeding ground for bacteria (even with a soap solution) as well as a hazard for young children and babies. You can use the same method without having water. I have never used a wet pail and have had no issues with my diapers. I highly recommend a pail with a pail liner which is just like the wet bag you mentioned, but larger. I know many people are put off by the thought of poop in their washers, but it’s really no different than when a baby has a blowout in a disposable. There are diaper sprayers that attach easily to your toilet to help get solids off diapers that don’t come off just by shaking. One of my favorite websites for storage and cleaning solutions for cloth diapering is http://www.fluffloveuniversity.com. 🙂