Cloth Diapering: How We Roll

More than a few friends have expressed curiosity about our reasons and methods for cloth diapering. I thought I would lay out what we do and how we do it. This post is VERY long. But in it I discuss a bit about our research behind going cloth, the various products that we use, where we shop for our diapering supplies, how we use Chinese Pre-Folds with a diaper cover, and how we launder the diapers with minimal mess. So here goes:

We predominantly use Chinese Pre-folds which are the flat rectangles of cotton that you've probably seen for years used as diapers and burp cloths. We use a single pre-fold, folded into thirds lengthwise, with an outer, water-proof diaper cover. While this is by far the most budget-friendly way to go, there are costlier but easier methods. Chinese Pre-folds, frequently labeled DSQ, or Diaper Service Quality, are made by sewing multiple layers of cotton together. They are divided lengthwise into three parts, with the center panel having extra layers of fabric. So a particular pre-fold's absorbency is noted by the number of layers, (e.g.) 4-6-4 or 4-8-4. When folded in thirds and covered with a diaper wrap, you have a very absorbent, eco-friendly way to diaper your baby!

Before Thora was born, we were living in Manhattan and using landromats. Because we were using communal washing machines, we looked into diaper services, which pick up your soiled diapers, sanitize them, and then drop off a new batch of diapers to you. From my limited research--mostly word of mouth--my impression is that the environmental benefit of using a service is not that different from filling a landfill with one's disposables when you consider the water usage, the chemicals used to treat the diapers, and the carbon emissions of the delivery truck picking up and dropping off your diapers. Since you're not necessarily getting your same diapers back, the services must wash the diapers very thoroughly, perhaps using excessive water and maybe chemicals. (Like I said, I don't have concrete research to back this up and am happy to be corrected if I'm wrong!) Also, using a service is about comparable to the monetary cost of buying disposables. So for us, to be able to self-launder cloth diapers allows us to save money while at the same time pursue eco-friendly diapering.

We launder the diapers ourselves, which is quite painless. We have a washer and dryer in our apartment. (I'm not sure what we would be doing if we lived somewhere with communal washers. I'm curious to know if washing diapers in communal machines is a strict faux pas, or if there are people out there who do this.) Self-laundering keeps the cost of diapering Thora VERY low. There was the initial layout of diapers and covers, around $100; periodic purchases of the diaper liners, around $100 per year (more about these later); and store-bought wipes (which I wash and re-use). This method is much friendlier to our budget then regular disposable diapering. Granted, we are doing more laundry, which surely appears on our electric and gas bills. However, it's only about 3-4 extra loads per week (sometimes less when we're lucky and her poops aren't so messy). However, like most things environmentally-friendly in my life, I'm willing to shoulder the cost--in time or money spent--if there are tangible benefits. We throw away perhaps 1 disposable diaper per month and have 1 plastic grocery bag of garbage from our bathroom per week of wipes (the ones that have come apart after several uses or are too soiled to wash) and general bathroom trash. For us, the results are cut and dry.

There are some great websites and forums out there that provide information about cloth diapering. My first research was on diaperpin.com. It was there that I learned about how modern and easy cloth diapering has become. If you have the means, you can buy cloth diapers that are as easy to deal with as disposables. Since we did our research, I've seen posts on cloth diapering on the Boston Parents Network Yahoo group. For example, there is a personal cloth diapering consultant out of West Somerville with a website that looks interesting: diaperlab.com.

When we got around to purchasing our supply of diapers, we went with tinytush.com. We purchased mostly Chinese Pre-folds and covers to go with them. We've used ProWraps covers and Bummis Super Whisper Wraps covers, both of which we've been happy with. Additionally, we did try out 1 each of three of the most recommended pocket diapers. We went with a Fuzzi Bunz , a Happy Heiny, and a Bum Genius. (TinyTush.com now carries their own brand of pocket diaper and we notice that they no longer carry these brands.) These are a bit pricey, about $17.00 per diaper. However, they couldn't be easier. Anyone who can diaper a baby with a disposable, can diaper a baby with a pocket diaper.

Our stock consists of 5 covers and 18 pre-folds. You can definitely have more, which would mean bigger loads of laundry and less frequent washing... a good thing. These are our "during the day" diapers. While wet and poopy pre-folds go into their respective diaper pail at each changing, you can keep re-using the covers if the diaper is merely wet, or if the poop was contained and did not spread off of the diaper and onto the cover. So we usually only go through 1 or 2 covers a day and 5-6 pre-folds a day. (Thora is a frequent pooper, so if your baby only poops once, you may get away with only 1 cover a day.) At night, we put her in a pocket diaper, stuffed with two inserts--the insert that came with it paired with one of the few random cloth diaper/burp cloths that we've acquired along the way.

Since Pocket Diapers are pretty self-explanatory, I'll only spell out how we use the Chinese Pre-folds and Diaper Covers.

Here's a diaper cover.

It has velcro closures much like a disposable. So once the diaper is folded inside, you pull both up between the babies legs and secure just like a disposable.














Then I fold the pre-fold a) first down about 2 inches at the top to create a lip, and then b) into thirds behind the center panel.

Here is a close-up of the folding technique. There is a purpose behind this specific fold. The two-inch fold at the top creates kind of a lip, so that if Thora were to have a blowout, the lip catches the poop that tries to shoot up out the back of the diaper.

And by folding the two outside thirds behind the center panel, you have edges of the diaper that are, in theory, untouched by poop. That way, I have something to grab on to when picking the diaper up out of the cover and I can cup the mess in the center of the diaper without the poop falling or spilling out.

Then I put a diaper liner down. These thin, rice paper liners, are septic-safe (for most modern pipes) and look a lot like fabric softener sheets, without the filmy residue on them, of course. They are non-absorbent, so they only catch the solids. This way, when Thora poops, I just pull up the liner and toss it (and hopefully the whole mess) into the toilet and flush it. We buy Imse Vimse liners from kidbean.com. When Thora has merely a wet diaper, the used liners, like the diaper wipes, can go right into the wash with the diapers, and be re-used at least twice and often three times.

Now for the cleaning.

The wet diapers are put in a lid-topped garbage can lined with a plastic garbage bag. At the bottom of the garbage can, between the can and the plastic bag, I keep an air freshener.















The poopy diapers go in an old kitty litter bucket filled about 2/3 with water. The bucket has a latching lid which does a great job of keeping the odor down and Thora from investigating the bucket's contents. Yuck! There are people who are proponents of the dry pail method. We tried that and found that we kept being messier than we thought necessary. We switched to the wet pail method.

This is what we do: 1) We try to get as much poop as possible into the toilet. Often this is as easy as lifting out the liner and dropping it in the toilet. However, when her poop isn't perfectly solid and compact, that job may involve anything from using the diaper wipe to roll the poop off the diaper and into the toilet, to the slightly gross "dip and swirl" method. This is just like it sounds. You dip the diaper in the toilet, holding onto a clean end. Then you swirl and swish it around, and the poop, often liquid-y to begin with, comes off in the water. Then, with the aid of the trash can close by, I make the transfer of the wet diaper from the toilet to the wet pail. This sounds terrible, I know. But after a brief learning curve, I got the hang of it, and don't often get my hands or the bathroom messy. And if I do get my hands messy, well, that's what soap and water is for, right? 2) The poopy diapers soak in the water for anywhere between 30 minutes to a day or two, depending on when we do the next load of diapers. 3) We wash the diapers with hot water and a normal amount of regular dye-free detergent. Even though the load would be a "Medium-Sized" load, I set the washer to "Large," since we are going to add in all the water that we are using to soak the diapers. 4) The wet diapers go in, and then we dump the entire contents of the wet pail into the washing machine. This cuts WAY down on mess, since you're not "bobbing for diapers." You don't touch a thing. 5) Every couple weeks, we add a cup or so of vinegar to the final rinse cycle. No bleach or oxy clean, since those products are supposed to break down the diapers, shortening their lifespan. 6) Then all of the diapers go in the dryer. (As the weather gets warmer, I will try to do more air drying outside and sun-bleaching.)

So that's it. They are always clean upon coming out of the dryer. There is no evidence of odor or stains--except for the putty-colored stains from the Boudreaux's Butt Paste that we use as a diaper cream. Like I said, there was a learning curve. But now, doing a load of diapers is as mindless as any other chore around our place. And while a squirmy Thora is harder to diaper with the pre-fold + cover system, the struggle is worth the environmental benefit. And financially, I can't even begin to fathom all that we've saved. And to think, these diapers will be waiting for our hypothetical future children!

I hope this post has taken some of the fear out of considering going cloth. And if you think you might take the plunge, good luck!

Couldn't Be Easier: Package-Free Shampoo

I've recently become very fond of Lush, a shop that sells natural and eco-friendly bath and body products. Here are two of their package-free, solid shampoos, sold in bar-form. You merely lather one up, just like a regular bar of soap, and then shampoo your hair. It couldn't be easier. And there's no plastic bottle produced and then recycled.
Right now, I'm using New!, the red one, which boasts scalp-stimulating properties and a heady cinnamon fragrance. And recently, I received a free bar of Seanik, with my purchase. The dark flecks you see in it are pieces of seaweed.

Couldn't Be Easier: Green Carpet Cleaning

Look at that white carpet! This is thanks to Lily's Home Services.

They shampoo-ed our somewhat large, white, living room carpet in about an hour. And they are true to their word. They scrubbed that carpet clean of all its stains (in our case, mostly foot/dog traffic) for a very reasonable price. And they don't use perchloroethylene (the main chemical used in carpet cleaning). While I didn't get the exact contents of what they used, (it's proprietary, they said), I gleaned from what they did say that it is mostly hot water and non-toxic household cleaner. Need some thorough, non-toxic cleaning done? Call these guys!

Thora Took Her First Steps

Last night we watched as Thora took her first steps! It was so exciting. I'm always surprised at the rush of joy I feel when I watch her do things she couldn't do before. Like putting the shape-finder puzzle piece in the right place. Or pointing to her ears, a word I didn't really expect her to know.

Last night, I came home from the walking the dog to find Thora and Sean on the floor in the living room. Sean said, "Show Mommy how you can stand," and then to me "She can pretty much stand as long as she wants now." We watched her stand and applaud herself, applause that we were happy to echo. And then Sean said, "Let's see if she'll walk between us."

So we sat a few feet apart and walked her back and forth between us. After the first couple trips, we stopped holding on and encouraged her to make the journey of a few steps on her own. At first, she did what she always does, and she fell forward into our arms. But after doing that just a couple times, she lifted up her feet and took 3 steps toward Sean. It was unreal. I couldn't believe that I'd just watched that. Her feet always stay so firmly planted when we let go that I wondered how she'd ever progress. Well, I guess that's how. She just does it.

Couldn't Be Easier... Well, it could

We've been composting now for 2 weeks and it couldn't be easier. Well... it could be, since Cambridge's pilot program for residents is a drop-off only program. And the recycling center is a 25 minute walk, on the other side of Central Square. So in that sense, it could be easier.

However, in terms of the collection of the compost-able material, it couldn't be easier. The small green bin is very small; as you can see, it's shorter than the top of our lowest drawer. The lid has a latch which keeps the lid closed. And although small, it is big enough for about a week's worth of scraps. And we create a good amount of scraps, since we cook at home EVERY night of the week.

The reason we started this was because of the brief clog in our kitchen sink, where we have a disposal. While we're pretty sure that the disposal is functional, we're not sure how the clog happened. So for the time-being, we're acting like the disposal is broken. Immediately after we un-clogged the sink, I became aware of the composting program, and so we switched over. We have a fairly good system going now. So I'm not sure when we'll determine what the clog's cause was.

Prior to switching over to the city's composting program, I learned about the negative impact organic material has when it's put into landfills. Sean's thought had always been that organic material helps other, slower-degrading material, breakdown. While that may be true, organic material releases methane gas, which apparently is significantly worse than carbon monoxide, and so it's much better to compost the scraps than throwing it away. Here's what the Cambridge Recycling website has to say about the hazards of food scraps in landfills:

By recycling food, we reduce methane emissions at landfills that result from decaying organic matter. Methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide! Our goal is to divert at least 400 pounds/week, avoiding about 20,000 pounds of CO2 per year. (The Works)

Anyway, Sean asked, last night, "If we had a working disposal, would we still compost?" And so that's what I set out to discover. And it looks like, as a result to my very limited research, that composting is still better than using your disposal. So much so that some communities, like Raleigh, NC, are banning in-sink disposals and instead encouraging composting. The expert, quoted in this Daily Green article, explains why composting is better than using a disposal:

For one thing, it saves water. For another, the nutrients rinsed down the kitchen sink aren't handled well by sewage treatment plants, and therefore end up entering local waterways. There, they spur harmful algae growth, which can crowd out other native species, and lead to poor water quality. (The Daily Green)

So, there it is.

Music We Both Love: Stereolab's "Emperor Tomato Ketchup"

This is a great album for easing into the day. Songs like "Les Yper-Sound" is nicely reminiscent of a children's round. And "Spark Plug" has a nice, 70's-ish rock vibe to it. Very chill. And of course, I have the sneaking feeling that she might be learning French. What kind of French is another question. Merde!

Couldn't Be Easier

So the venture into homemade baby wipes was as easy as pie! Well, so much easier than pie, really. It was as easy as measuring 2 tablespoons of two liquids and then mixing them with 2 cups of previously boiled water. I reconstituted a stack of machine-washed and -dried wipes that I merely put back into the plastic tub that we've been refilling with store-bought wipes.

The recipe that I found called for 2 T baby bath soap, 2 T baby oil, and 2 C. boiled, cooled water. I used several of the un-touched, dust-collecting bottles of Johnson's products we received as un-opened hand-me-downs and parts of care packages, so this project was easy and free!

Overall, I'm really pleased with how these came out. They don't have the chemical scent of the store-bought wipes (even though we've always bought "unscented") but rather smell like the baby bath and baby oil, which is pretty pleasant. And I wouldn't hesitate wiping Thora's face or hands with these, whereas with the store-bought wipes, I always fear that the liquid is going to get in her eyes or mouth. And an extra bonus: I think the baby oil may actually make the poop easier to get off of the cloth diapers. My theory is that while not rendering the diapers non-absorbent, the oil rubs onto the diaper and creates a barrier, much like the diaper liner, which doesn't allow the poop to bind with the cloth. This was a bit of a blessing, since I waited too long to re-order diaper liners, and we went without them for about a week. However, we didn't suffer too much, I think, because of the new wipes. Hooray, New Wipes!

Beer of the Month

Magic Hat H I.P.A. (SeasonAle)

I love this beer. It is so refreshing but bite-y at the same time. Perhaps I should say up front that my beer terminology is completely amateurish, in case you didn't realize with "bite-y." But that's not going to stop me from highlighting the occasional standout beer.

Here's how Magic Hat describes it: "A medium-bodied beer with a fresh and fruitful nose of vernal vitality. It begins and ends with a big hop bite that is itself forever balanced on the brink by a steady rhythm of malt."

I had this with dinner last week which was then followed with a couple scoops of raspberry sorbet, and I couldn't believe how intense the sorbet's fruitiness seemed. Last night, I had a HI.P.A. with Sean's Chicken and Green Chile Quesadillas and it was again, very complimentary. This is a great beer. I do hope that, while a seasonal brew, it stays on the shelves at Trader Joe's for a month or two more.

Music We Both Love: The Rushmore Soundtrack

This cd rocks for both Thora and I. Thora really picks up on its sounds, the sleigh bells on "Snowflake Music," the crazy drums on "Piranas are a Very Tricky Species," the high pitches on "Margaret Yang's Theme." It's great for us during the middle of the day, the soundtrack to a meal or snack that then segues into some music play afterward. And of course, it's very pleasant to the adult ear. I find myself singing the infinitely-repeatable "Oh Yoko!" all afternoon, which is better than the other infinitely-repeatable song that I recently became aware of, on For the Kids Three: "...poop in the potty, poop goes in the potty, poop in the potty, poop goes in the potty..."

Stars Align, Thora Falls Asleep in Mother's Arms

There are few things quite as narcotic for me, as a mom, than watching Thora's heavy eyelids droop, her head nod, her eyes falling back into her head. When it comes to a crib nap (as opposed to the effortless, languishing, 2-hour(!!!) naps she takes in her stroller) Thora fights sleep with everything she's got. Everything. She does what I would imagine most babies do to resist taking a nap. She rubs her eyes. She cries. She sits up or or stands, holding on to the bars of her crib. It's all very effective. I'm mean, clearly she can't fall asleep standing up, and therefore she won't miss all the excitement that might be going on during the mid-morning, like Mommy unloading the dishwasher or checking email or crawling into her own bed for a quick nap. Exciting!
But here are some of the things that I was surprised to see her work into her No Sleep repertoire. She tugs her hair. She does "mattress angels," which are like snow angels without the snow. She sings or talks her jibberish baby words. She pats the mattress like she's burping it. Her most recent technique is the tugging of her eyelashes. Really?!? And these are all things she does while she's visibly sleepy. For example, I'll be standing over the crib, jiggling her butt, giving her this nice little jostling very much like the jostle she might get while in the stroller, and she's relaxed, laying there eyes fluttering. Her eyes close. And then a second later, her eyes pop open and she begins to do furious mattress angels. It's like watching someone who is falling asleep at the wheel. You can almost imagine her thinking, "Oh my god, I just almost fell asleep. Wake Up, Thora. Wake up! Mattress Angel Mattress Angel mattress angelll..... Oh my god, I just almost fell asleep again! Tug on Eyelids, Eyelids, Eyelids..."
Of course in addition to these cute little tactics, there is the blur of the tantrum, the writhing out of my reach, the body-flopping, the inconsolable crying. Ugghh. So today, after already trying once for the nap and giving up after a couple short intervals of crying, we tried again after Georgia's walk. And it worked. Thora was exhausted, having been up since 5 am (yeah), but wasn't so tired that she wanted to swirl her fatigue into a windstorm of frustrated crying and all-around losing-it. Instead, she just went with it. She just let go of everything, all her little baby woes, worries, thoughts, curiousities, and gave in to sleep. And Oh My God, is that not the most satisfying feeling a mom of a one year old can have. Yeah, the first step will be nice, and the first real words, and the reading, and all of it. But in the context of our life now, Thora effortlessly falling asleep in my arms is about as good as it can get. Now... on to the dishes.

p.s. the above photo was taken when she was just over two months old, back when she would fall asleep all day long. At night, however...