Becoming a new parent can be overwhelming, and now you’re asking me to cloth diaper? Rolls eyes…
Listen up folks, I didn’t even consider cloth diapering for the first two months because I was hobbling around like a mad woman with leaky boobs and a broken vagina. But being a life long environmentalist, I knew I wanted to at least give cloth diapering a try.
As it turns out, it’s much easier than I ever anticipated, and cost effective. Here is my 411 on how to make cloth diapering easy.
There are too many options and cloth diapering systems, this is the simplest way to cloth diaper
If you buy books or start google searches about cloth diapering, there are entire websites dedicated to the different ways to approach cloth vs. conventional diapers. For me, less options means less stress and research, so I chose what seemed to be the cheapest route (prefolds with convertible covers). As it turns out, this is also the least burdensome way to cloth diaper!
What’s a “prefold”? And a “convertible cover”?
So much lingo. I have narrowed out all of the other diapering options and prefer to use an outside washable cover and “old school” prefold diapers that are manually inserted into the cover (pictured below).
Each time to change the baby, you will place the prefold into a bin to be washed. The convertible covers however, can be used a few times if there was just a pee. For poopy diapers, you will need to also wash the outside cover since it usually gets somewhere on the diaper cover.
Cloth diaper laundry services
Many cities have services that pick up the prefolds at your door each week and drop off freshly cleaned prefold inserts, hit google and find out! We used Luludew Laundry service in the Los Angeles area and they were amazing. We purchased the universal covers and the prefolds are available to you as part of the cleaning service, so you don’t need to buy and invest in all those prefolds.
Only washing the outside covers clearly cuts down on the amount of laundry you have to do and is a great option for people who do not have laundry in your home. We were renting and didn’t want to wash the prefold inserts in a community washer, for obvious reasons!
Sounds expensive, it’s not.
After doing the math of how many diapers we need during the week, the laundry service was the same, leaving cloth diapering cost neutral. The only thing we needed to purchase were the covers, which come in a variety of cute designs.
Use disposable diapers for the first few weeks, when you’re traveling, or taking day trips
Save yourself the headache of having to carry dirty diapers home and buy some conventional disposable diapers for your travels. This took the pressure off of always having to cloth diaper! And as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, consider using conventional diapers for the first eight weeks while the baby is still tiny and you’re working on getting a little more sleep.
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