"Help The Planet, Save Money & Brag About It"

While this might be true that landfills are for trash-how long do you think we can go on making new landfills? Think about it a little bit-in some countries and cities there is no longer room to build houses, and not enough food to go around.

So we can’t take land from either housing OR agriculture to make new landfills. Landfills are not infinite-and once used as a landfill there are very real problems that exist when in comes to trying to reuse that land.

Water wise-washing one load of cloth diapers uses about the same amount of water as one person flushing the toilet for the two day’s use. So, unless you are telling me that you don’t go to the loo-I don’t waste more water.

Additionally-faecal matter and urine SHOULD go into the sewer where they can be properly treated-not be thrown into landfill, where they can then pollute the environment.

Whilst convenient, disposable diapers are not kind to our planet, no matter how you wish to look at it.

well i went ahead and took the plung and bought a big batch of Fuzzy Bunz cloth diapers. My son will be born in July, so i am just getting a few things ready before he comes.

They are realy well made, but I cant say weather they work well or not….yet.

Congratulations, and good luck! What type of inserts are you using in them? And my advice would be to either use disposables or buy flushable inserts till the meconium has passed-you can wash it out but it’s like tar-cemented on there.

I am sure you’ve read this already but no fabric softeners! It makes them leak. Certain detergents are not good either. If you ever have any problems with them, there are excellent forums out there that can help-just PM me and I’ll drop some URLs for you.

Regarding water again and sposies-no one ever takes into account the fact that water is used in the manufacture of sposies. Yet water usage is always thrown at us cloth users. Add to that the fact there is so much pollution from transporting the raw product to factories, the finished product to stores, in bleaching them, in perfuming them (which causes reactions in many babes).

Besides, cloth is cute

How many do i need?

I bought 18 of the small ones. Will I need more of that size?
Keep in mind i need to keep this as convenient as possible.

PS thanks for the meconium tip, I didnt even think abut that.

Adam

It really depends on how often you want to wash, and what funds you have available. For a newborn, if breastfed, they might have 8-9 bowel movements in a day. In which case you will be washing every other day-which is pretty good in truth. You don’t ever want to not wash for more than three days, because the diapers get pretty stinky. You should dry, rather than wet pail them, because soaking constantly can cause the elastic to age quickly.

So I think in truth that you have enough, as long as you wash frequently. I only had that many at that age, but I also had a dozen prefolds in case I ran out (and they are super cheap if you decide to get some). As the little one ages, they poop less and so changes will drop a little, and your stash will last longer. Right now, I have *gulp* 56 diapers…...because I like different dipes for different occasions.

This is my stash, less the 12 that are in the diaper pail right now;

That’s cloth wipes at bottom left, with covers at the leftmost top corner, and all in ones next to them in the basket. In front are doublers. The big basket houses my terry square nappies (bought from Boots in the UK), on the left, and my fitteds (I have 15) and pockets, like fuzzi bunz (I have 10) on the right. The last basket, on the right, are prefolds.

So what inserts did you buy?

the inserts are the typical microfiber ones that came with it. I hear the hemp is good if he is a heavy wetter, but Im not sure yet.

I am still undecided as to use cloth or plastic diapers.

I have heard that the energy and water used to wash the cloth diapers could be a bad thing, but I’ve also heard good points about not using the plastic diapers. Good ideas from both sides.

Would it be efficient to change between cloth and plastic?

Personally I would say not. When you have paper in the house you always end up reaching for it when you don’t intend to-it is tempting to save a little work. And yes, it is more work but not hugely so. Once you find a system that you are happy with, then it becomes a whole lot easier.

Some daycares will refuse cloth, but fuzzi bunz and the like are making that more rare.

My water bill went up about $3-$5 a month when I changed to cloth, and there was no increase that I could put down to nothing but the change alone in my power bill. Your children will use about the same in toilet flushes (and you know you are supposed to put poop in the loo whether or not its in a disposable diaper) and power anyway.

Thanks for the input, britjojo.  It’s true that if I had disposable diapers in my house, I would be tempted to always use them, since it seems like the quickest and easiest solution at the time.

Just tonight for instance I know I would have been going for the ‘sposies. My dd asked for a clean nappy, so I changed her. Ten minutes later she walked through to the computer room and I noticed that the ruffles on the legs of the nappy (this is a cute, fancyish nappy) was tucked into the elastic. Thinking it’s only ten minutes and hence still clean, I slipped my finger under the elastic to free it…...and felt warm and squishy…...

Cleaned up from that and in a new nappy. Repeat without the messy finger another two times. Four extremely messy nappies rinsed and ready in the diaper pail, and I am realising that something my daughter ate didn’t agree with her.

On the plus side, ‘sposies do NOT hold mess like cloth does. Before I made the switch we had so many explosions-it even reached her hair one time. You cannot expect two thin strips of elastic to hold a puddle of breast fed baby poop. Cloth however absorbs it-and the messes stopped.

well I have been using the fuzzy buns for about a month now and I really like them. We wash every two days and its really not a big deal, I just put in a small load and some oxy-clean (it works great for the stains).

My son seems to be more comfortable in the fuzzy bunz than typical disposable ones and the sposies cause diaper rash. We had quite a few sposies that we got as gifts, so my wife was trying to use them up, but they really are the culprits of diaper rash. Once I started changing him and only using the cloth ones the rash went away.

two thumbs up for fuzzy bunz!

seems silly to think of diapers/ nappies as a threat to the world but 6 billion more kids in the next 50 years thats a lot of landfill

so true.. and because nowadays people live such busy lives and yeah washing cloth nappies also involve making use of water for washing; i guess diaper manufacturers should start looking into developing diaper materials that are biodegradable.

thank to share with us .the savings pay for the diaper within the first 8-10months. For one baby in full time fuzzi bunz diapers

I don’t use a diaper service; there isn’t one around here. I wash my own. Proudly. you?