In Case You Didn't Know

I'm sharing this bit of information and our experience in case you didn't know about it.  I was in that same boat a few years ago until a friend told me about it and shared her story.  I was sold.  And I never would have known had she not.  So thank you El for sharing with me.  I must say, once I tried it, I loved it! 

What in the world am I talking about you ask?

Cloth Diapering.

Yep you heard correctly.  I love using cloth diapers! 

We first started using them with McKenzie and due to the events of this past summer, when we moved into the camper we made the decision to switch back to disposable since we didn't really have room for the diapers and our washing availability was limited.  And to be honest I was a little hesitant to break them back out once we moved into our house.  I had gotten use to disposable.  But I finally did and my first thought was, "Why in the world did I wait so long?!" 

Okay, if you are like me, when I first heard 'cloth diapers' you imagine your grandma hanging layers of cloth on a clothes line outside, hours of work, large safety pins that you could pierce your precious baby's skin with and nasty scrubbing of baby poo in the toilet.  Or something along those lines.

Let me tell you, that is not the case, or it doesn't need to be.  The new world of cloth diapers is ingenious. 

There are tons of options out there for cloth diapers.  I'm going to share with you the kind we use.  FuzziBunz.  There are others, each mom you talk to will probably love the brand she uses.  But I'm going to talk about FuzziBunz cloth diapers because it's what we use.  Go figure. 

First off, they are super cute!  And colors galore!  Other brands I believe even have prints, but I'm not into that, just solid colors, simple, it's what I like.  I checked out the web site a little while back a noticed some new colors and I was tempted to buy them just because of that.  I'm not in need of any but they are just so cute! 

So, how do they work?!  Without all the drama.

Here's what the shell looks like.

Each Diaper comes with 2 inserts.  A small and a large one.

The FuzziBunz are made with snaps, which I might add, I love!  There are cloth diapers made with velcro but velcro will snag clothes and an assumption is that the velcro would grow weak.  The snaps on the FuzziBunz are extremely durable and strong.  I have never had one snap open while my kiddos are wearing them. 

The snaps are adjustable so the diaper will grow with the baby.  It will fit an infant up to a toddler.

With three snaps on each side to get a perfect fit.

To make sure there are no leaks there is adjustable elastic for each leg.

So you can fit the size of your babies leg.

There is an opening at the back of the diaper for the inserts. 

You can choose which ones, small and/or large, and how many to put into the diaper.

Here it is with an insert in.  Now the diaper is ready to be put on your baby!

Alright, so yeah, getting it on is not the messy part.  What about that, you ask.

Well first off, if you're changing diapers in the first place, even disposable, you're already dealing with everything that goes along with that.  There aren't many extra steps with a cloth. 

For wipes, we tried using cloth wipes but we found that it was a bit to much work than we wanted to deal with.  You had to have cloth wipes available and a pray bottle with water to get them moist.  So we just decided that using regular wipes worked best for us and then we just throw them away.

If the diaper is just wet then you just take out the inserts, fold up the diaper and stick it in the dirty diaper bag.  Here's our cloth diaper bag. 

With handles to hang it up.. We keep ours out of sight in the laundry room.

Like I said, just take the inserts out,

Fold it up and stick it in the diaper bag.  Then of course go wash your hands, the outside shell stays dry, its the water barrier, but the inserts are wet and you just barely have to touch them.

Well, here's where you might have a little extra work.  If the diaper is filled with #2.  But I promise it's not that bad.  All you need is one of these...

A diaper sprayer.  We bought ours off Amazon.  And it just hooks up to your water source to the toilet and hangs on the side or can be attached to the wall.

Just turn it on or off,

Get the sprayer,

And hold your diaper over the toilet and spray it off.  You don't have to scrub anything or get your hands dirty.  To be honest I hardy have to even use my diaper sprayer.  Most time I just dump the #2 into the toilet and I never get my hands dirtier than what they would by changing a disposable diaper.  (Sorry, TMI for some of you.  Just trying to keep it real and share with you what it's really like.  I promise it's not that bad.)

I wash my diapers every 2 to 3 days.  And this is totally easy and clean once again.

The bottom of the dirty cloth diaper bag has a zipper.

So all you have to do is unzip the bottom of the bag,

And dump it into the washer.  Once again without getting your hands dirty.

And you hardly use any detergent.  1 Tbsp. detergent.  That's all! 

They come out perfectly clean after washing.  A few, over time have gotten a little stained but all you have to do is hang them in the sun for the afternoon and the stains will disappear! 

The fabulous news.... how much you will save!!!  An average of  2,000 dollars per child in disposables.  And just like I'm doing, you can use the cloth diapers for multiple children.  That's hard to beat, with only a few extra steps that are not really much harder or time consuming from disposables. 

So just so you know you have options when it comes to diapers. 

And I just can't get over how cute my baby is wearing them!

Okay, there is one downside of cloth diapers for me.

They are more bulky.  They really fill out their clothes and there is the possiblity of needing a size bigger than they are for their bottoms.  But it also makes for a soft landing if they fall down on their bums! 

So, if you didn't know about the options as far as cloth diapers go I hope this was imformative for you.  And I hope more encouraging that cloth diapers are a great option, than making the idea of them even more repulsive. 

Check out our cloth daipers here: FuzziBunz.