Cloth Diapers?

[aviastar]

Yup; we pay a private small company to come get ours. There is no county service. And we collect all our recycling and have to take it in to the sorting stations. And we burn our yard waste a few times a year

 

[Asscherhalo_lover]

WOW country living! In all fairness we pay insane property taxes where I live and I assume a good chunk goes to local services like trash and recycling. I hope they save a bundle on taxes for virtually no services!

 

[niter]

Anyone use cloth diapers?  What''s your experience?  The expense?  The hassle?  The benefits?

We''re considering it and it seems like cloth diapers have come a LONG way.  Of course, we''ll have to get through the stash of disposables my mom already bought (that''ll seriously last us months).

My concerns are:

Is it more expensive than disposables?  How much?
Do you have to order everything online?
How often do you have to do wash?  Every day?
Is it too much to ask MIL to use cloth diapers since she''ll be the primary childcare?

I'm late to the party but here goes:

1) It can be cheaper or more expensive. I think if you keep your wits to you it is VERY economic. There are diapers out there that I have seen people get into bidding wars over in excess of $700. Apart from that, cd'ing is extremely economic.
2) For the area I live in, yes. There are some more populous areas that have cd'ing retail locations.
3) Depends on the number of diapers you have and the number of bottoms you are cloth diapering. With my singletons I generally washed every other to every 3 days. When they got older, twice a week.
4)No. Some children, like all of mine, are allergic. You are your child's mom. If cd'ing is the way you do it, it's the way you do it. There is no reason that it is more or less difficult.

 

[niter]

Meg - thanks for the input. That is exactly the route we were going to take GMD prefolds with Thirsties duo wraps, and the Bumgenius pockets. It's good to know that they are roomy enough to stuff with prefolds.

Everything I read says to get a variety of brands, but I feel like if I get a quality brand, I should be ok getting a little stockpile going with just those. Has anyone done this and regretted it??

This is what I would suggest. GMD are a wonderful product, easy to use, easy to clean, easy to fold, and SO cost saving.

 

[phoenixgirl]

Meg - thanks for the input. That is exactly the route we were going to take GMD prefolds with Thirsties duo wraps, and the Bumgenius pockets. It's good to know that they are roomy enough to stuff with prefolds.

Everything I read says to get a variety of brands, but I feel like if I get a quality brand, I should be ok getting a little stockpile going with just those. Has anyone done this and regretted it??

I did kind of regret going with a smallish FuzziBunz stash with my first because I paid something like $500 expecting those diapers to last through all my kids. They lasted 15 months of being washed every other day. And that makes perfect sense since the TPU won't last forever; they were washed over 200 times each and then they gave out. FB was good about replacing them but after a few times I felt bad making them replace them again and didn't want the hassle of sending them back.

So with my second child, I just bought Alvas and Diaper Rites and cheap diapers. I bought more so I could wash less often. Since I only spent a fraction of what I spent on my first stash, I didn't cry when one broke or got lost (one time I walked over a mile retracing my steps because one of my FuzziBunz fell out of the stroller and I wasn't going to let $20 go to waste). And OK, since I'm a PSer, maybe I also went a little crazy trying a whole bunch of different brands and getting some WAHM diapers too, and then selling the ones I didn't want. But if I had it to do all over again, I'd probably go the Alva route (or covers/prefolds) and just give them away when we were done. Much easier.

 

[Puppmom]

I cloth diapered DS1 but didn't last with DS2 because he had severe food intolerances resulting in nasty rashes that responded only to that goopy butt cream (can't even remember the name!). Anyway, I just took my diapers out of storage (basement) and the elastic was basically crumbled on every single diaper - except the fuzzibunz which of course has the easiest to replace elastic and the cheapies (I think they shipped from China and are a no-name brand). My friend is good with a sewing machine and is going to replace the elastic but 3 years in storage and elastic was kaput on Totbots, BumGenius and Applecheeks. The elastic was also intact on Grovias but I never liked those.