Our Cloth Diaper Set-Up

I'm always interested in hearing how other families use cloth diapers, so I figured I'd show you how we use our stash!

I had said in a pregnancy post that we would just use the Gerber/Babies R Us prefolds that people had given us in diaper cakes, but a friend who actually cloth diapers her own girls sent us the kind she uses: awesome Cloth-eez prefolds from Green Mountain Diapers!  (Can they please re-design their 1997-looking site already??)  I added some Econobums and one Thirsties hemp prefold to that, and we have the makings of an almost-full stash.  We now use our Gerber/BRU ones as rags for all kinda of messes (mostly as burp cloths).

This was actually my sister's dresser when we were growing up.  Glad it's got some years left in it!

Like my man Alton Brown, I hate unitaskers.  Instead of a changing table, we use just one drawer in a dresser.  Cora's clothes are in those other drawers.  I also think a Diaper Genie is a rip-off, so I got a simple trash can from Target.

This Planet Wise pail liner fits perfectly!

I bought one pail liner, and another sweet friend hooked me up with a second (along with some other great diapering essentials--she doesn't even have a child yet, so this was so unexpected!).  The liner above has owls on it, and the other one has giraffes!

I also won some cloth wipes from an Etsy shop in a blog giveaway back when I was pregnant.

Fun robot print from TurtlesRUs

It was only a dozen wipes, so we added some baby washcloths in there to round it out.  That's Kissaluv's spray you see there, also.  (Although at the time it was most likely about 90% water.) You may also have noticed the box of disposable wipes in the first picture.  Yep, I find the big messes are easiest to clean with the wet ones!  The only issue is that the closest real trash can is in another room.

Anything that's clean goes in the drawer!  (And yes, I trifold them after they dry, just to eliminate that step later!)

Right now, we have 6 covers (Flip, Econobum, Bummis, Thirsties) and about 20 prefolds.  We tri-fold the prefolds, and they are pretty bulky.  So bulky that they sometimes didn't fit under certain onesies (especially before 3 months), so I got a few all-in-ones and one pocket diaper to try out as well.  We've learned that she does better in prefolds at night, though (rarely a leak!).  I've done pretty much all of my cloth diaper shopping through Mom's Milk Boutique.  They have a great customer loyalty program, often throw in free samples, and I can usually hit it when they do "double milk miles" days.  I've already been able to cash out for a $10 gift card!  They also have a SwagBucks option for a $5 credit that costs half as much as the Amazon card, so I've used that as well.  (Too bad there's a one-time limit on cashing out for that one!)

Our basic system is that we have 2 covers "going" at once.  One is on baby's bum, and the other one is sorta "airing out."  Covers go in the pail once they're soiled, and cloth diaper laundry is every 2-3 days in our HE top loader.  Cora needs disposables for daycare once or twice a week, so we keep those on hand as well.  Since we don't have a huge stash, sometimes during cloth diaper laundry, she goes into a 'sposie.  I bring a plastic grocery bag into the room for the trash bag when that happens.

Our apartment won't allow us to hang a drying line on the patio, but hanging them in our laundry room works just fine.

Also, since our apartment faces a terrible direction for the sun (NNE, I think), if any of them are stained and need to be "sunned out," I take them with me to my volunteering gig, park facing due west and put them on the dashboard.  At the end of the day, I come back to some awesomely clean diapers!

Here are our five all-in-ones/pocket diapers.  I'll be doing another post with reviews of each.

In summary: hate, love, like okay, still unsure, like okay

So far, we have LOVED cloth diapering!  I guess it's easy now since our baby isn't really eating solids yet.  But we're saving so much money that we'll just deal with that once the time comes and I'm sure it will be routine soon enough.

Don't let her face fool you; she really loves her cloth diapers, too!

Note: These opinions are my own.  None of these companies have reimbursed me in any way, but if they're reading, I wouldn't mind doing a real review in exchange for a diaper!