our cloth diaper journey

We've been cloth diapering Mr. Crawford for about a month now, and it's going so well! We've gotten a pretty good system down so far, and we both really love it. I didn't know what either of us would think, but I really think David appreciates the process as much as I do. He can probably see all the money we're saving :)

So, here's the deal. We have 14 one size diapers:

3 Flips

6 Bumgenius

2 Best Bottoms

1 Fuzzibuns

1 Charlie Banana

1 Bumkins

We got a lot of them as gifts (we registered on Amazon), and I bought the 3 miscellaneous ones off Zulily before C was born and I was being spontaneous (it's really not a good deal because they get you on ridiculous shipping prices). Because of some great advice from the lady at our local store that sells CD's (Retail Therapy), we've been using BumGenius diapers like Flips- we don't put the insert inside the pocket. It means we can often (but not every time) reuse the shell with a different insert. We go three whole days on our 14-diaper stash! I think that's pretty good. Granted, we have a TON of inserts. My sweet friend Denise passed down her CD stash that she used with Amy Grace (almost 9?! years ago), and it was chalk full of goodies. She also gave me lots of sized diapers that we'll be using when C gets to be big enough. 

Denise also gave me a ton of cloth wipes, so we've started using those. They are awesome! I just made a solution of 2 c water + 2 T baby soap in a spray bottle, and I spray the wipe before using it. I have a small bottle that stays in the diaper bag with a few wipes for on-the-go changes.

Our system is pretty straight forward. Take the diaper off, put it in the pail. I have just a regular trash can with a wet pail liners (we have 2 planet wise ones) and it works perfectly. I go ahead and take the insert out of the pocket (if that's the case) and strap the velcro down to the sides (I only have 2 aplix diapers though) so the bag is ready to be emptied straight into the wash when the time is right. If I use a regular wipe (which I hardly have since starting the cloth ones), I just toss it in the regular trash can. 

We wash diapers every 3rd day, usually after C goes to bed. I hang the covers to dry and sometimes set the poop stained ones out in the sun (but it's annoying because then I do have to wash those again and I usually just wait until the next wash day). We have a high efficiency front loading machine, and I had heard that they are the worst to use for cloth diapers because they (efficiently) don't use a lot of water. I've had friends say they pour water into their machine or run up to four cycles per load, but I found (per a suggestion I read online) that adding a few "dummy" towels to the load does the trick. 

I should say, we are still using disposables at night for a couple of reasons: 1) we have a bunch of them that we got as gifts (we're using Nature Babycare right now and we love them! Their wipes are my favorite too.) and 2) Crawford has such a great sleep schedule at night, I'm just afraid to do anything that will mess him up.