we are officially a cloth diapering family.
and here's how it happened.
we started cloth diapering in January 2010 when my son was 18 months old. he had already been in disposable diapers for 18 months before i learned about the chlorine levels and other toxins in the diapers. plus, at the time, our family was going "greener" and disposable diapers were out-right negating our efforts.
our diaper of choice is the new style gDiaper with cloth inserts. i use WAHM-made fleece/cotton inserts and organic cotton prefolds, both inside the gDiaper liner. sometimes, and i mean maybe once or twice a month, i'll use a gDiaper flushable insert. and when i do, i don't flush it, i trash it. i also have a few Huggabunz all-in-ones that i like but mostly for at-home days or potty-learning days.
i was hand washing and line drying the diapers until i realized our washing machine has a hand-wash function on it. cool! so now, every 2-3 days, i put a load of diapers - liners and all- in the machine on the "rinse and spin" cycle, then i add environmentally-friendly free/clear detergent and a few bath towels, and run them on the hand-wash cycle. on nice days, and if i have time, i still line dry the diapers. i love the way the fresh air makes them smell, and the sun does a nice job of naturally bleaching out any discoloration. otherwise, i tumble dry the diapers, inserts and prefolds but air dry the liners.
i still buy one small pack of Up&Up brand disposable diapers, which i have nicknamed 'chlorine diapers,' per month. because. there are days in which certain circumstances require us to use disposables. at the gym, at church, at a playdate. pretty much any time someone else might have to change Bubba's diaper i put him in a chlorine diaper. i really don't like to because now that his little precious bum is used to the organic cotton, he gets a little red rash when he wears chlorine diapers.
so that's it. that's how we successfully switched from chlorine diapers! i won't be posting diaper stories as a regular Friday thing anymore. but please feel free to comment or email if you want to talk diapers with me! thanks for all your support!
