My Love for Cloth Diapers

I love cloth diapering my son! it has turned out to be amazingly cost effective for us, great for the environment, my baby’s skin, and overall its been a positive experience. its not as messy or as horrible as i grew up thinking it would be. if you are gonna considering it i would encourage you to consider it harder. 

A couple of weeks ago my husband and i decided to see how much we save by not just cloth diapering but also by practicing Elimination Communication. the results really impressed it. We happen to do it on a week when Harvey was going to be babysat twice so he did use some disposables and missed a few Pottytunities but non the less we were still rather impressed. Over 7 days we saved 70 diapers. 20 diapers alone were saved simply because he sat on a toilet instead of going in his diaper and 10 diapers were saved because well he communicated to use the potty before he had a wet or dirty diaper. when we calculated it out we figure we save close to a $1000 a year just in the use of cloth diapers. amazing when you think about it! now what to do with that $1000?!?!?

We often get asked about our cloth diapers which ones we like, what we have tried and what works and doesn’t work for us. For us we use G-diapers during the day with a prefold for the insert (basically we just use the G-diaper as a cover, i am sure there are more cost effective covers but we got the flush-able starter kit and have continued to use the covers with our prefolds). this works well for us as we our often putting harvey on the potty. they Velcro in the back, have a great fit, and we have had no trouble with leaks (well once when he was at a babysitters but i don’t think she understood how to change cloth). For night time we have Bamboozels which we love!!!!! i can’t tell you how much we love them. they are so soft and absorbent and the more they are washed the more absorbent they become. we also have pocket diapers (Fuzi bunz and swadle bees) we use these at night mostly and sometimes during the day. i like the pockets because i can change the absorbency depending on the insert i use, and i feel like the get cleaner than an all in one would because the insert is removable. We intend to try some AIO’s in the future though for when harvey goes to babysitters as they are more like using a disposable. we have also found that cloth diapering would not work for us if we didn’t have our bumgenious diaper sprayer and our charlie’s soap (which has lasted well past the 80 loads listed on the outside).

if you want to learn more about cloth diapering, or earn a chance to win some cloth diapers check out these two blogs… http://bit.ly/k0QzN http://www.diaperdaisy.com/  http://bit.ly/dXfkv

 

Happy diapering!

All things Green

So this is just a quick little post for those of you interested in all things green…

i have a couple recommendations for books and blogs to check out…

if your raising kids read: growing baby green

for your dog: eco dog

cleaning your house: greenup your cleanup and Green this

for sewing: sewing green and the www.theechochic.com , http://euphoriamaternity.wordpress.com/

there are so many more great sites to check out but these are my current favorites. and on a side note if you love contests check out www.theechochic.com she is have a summer block party giveaway that is awesome, slings, baby leggs, reusable plates all kinds of stuff.