Cloth Diapering Update: Two in Cloth!
We now have two cloth diaper wearers in our family:
After using disposables for the first week or so with Kai while we were waiting for the remnant of his umbilical cord to fall off, I was super excited to start using cloth diapers on him about two weeks ago.
While we use mostly prefolds and covers with Erik (with a couple of pocket diapers we use at night), we have a greater variety of diapers for Kai. The bulk of our newborn/ small diaper collection is still prefolds and covers, but we also have several pocket diapers, some fitted diapers and a couple of all-in-one style diapers as well.
So far having two in cloth isn’t much more difficult than having one in cloth. I was doing laundry about once every two or two-and-a-half days with just Erik in cloth, with an occasional stretch of three days. Now that I have a newborn’s diaper laundry added to that, I think the most we’ve gone between loads is a little more than 48 hours. I think most of the time we’ve been doing diaper laundry every day-and-a-half or so. But now that I have my laundry routine down, it doesn’t feel like it takes too much time out of my day to get that laundry done.
Interestingly, the determining factor in when to do laundry most days has not been running out of either boy’s diapers…but rather that the diaper hamper was full and smelly (I don’t rinse out the newborn poopy diapers, because they come clean in the wash without rinsing…but that does make the diaper hamper much smellier!).
Before Kai was born I got a real steal on a great diaper bag for having two kids in cloth diapers ($25 shipped, from Ebay!). It has a lot more interior room than my previous bag — enough for about two diapers per kid, a full change of clothes for Kai, an extra pair of pants for Erik, and all the usual diapering stuff like a changing pad and wipes. So we’re able to cloth diaper fairly easily, even on the go.
It seems silly, but I really think that cloth diapering makes diapering two kids seem more fun. Changing diapers is classically considered one of the drudgeries of parenting, but there’s something about using cloth that is making it not seem like much of a drudgery at all, at least so far. And of course I still like the money savings of not having to buy disposable diapers times two, and the convenience of not having to run to the store due to running out of diapers!