Cloth Diapering on the Cheap: Amassing your Stash

Cloth diapering has long been seen as a good way to save money as compared with paper diapers. I will not debate whether or not it is more environmentally friendly then paper (although the WHO has declared cloth the winner due to the ability to wash and reuse on multiple children) but it is almost always cheaper. But how much cheaper is up to you. I started cloth diapering my son when he was born with the idea of being as cheap as possible. Cloth diapers come in many different brands and types, it can be very overwhelming to a newcomer to decided what to get. I will go over the CHEAPEST (in my opinion) way to cloth diaper.

First you start with what diapers to buy. There are three types of cloth diapers: Prefolds with covers, pockets with inserts, and all in ones. Prefolds are the cheapest to buy, last the longest, and are the easiest to wash. These are what I went with. You simply need to buy a bunch of prefold diapers and wash them three times to get them nice and fluffy and they are ready for use. Prefolds come in Indian and Chinese, bleached and un-bleached. There is no great difference in price or quality, you can get whatever type you want. DO NOT buy Gerber prefolds. These are not meant to be used as real diapers no matter what it says on the package. You can buy prefolds used as well. A good website to help you with this is diaperswapers.com. It is sort of like Crag's list for diapers. How many should you buy? That depends on how often you want to wash. I have three dozen small sized and that is about three days worth of diapers. As for sizes, that is also up to you. I did not bother with the new born sized diapers. My new born fit in to the regular ones with only a few poop blow outs until he was 8 lbs. Then we had no more blow outs unless he was put in to paper diapers.

Next you need to decide what covers to get. This is entirely personal preference. You can buy used covers but be careful not to get them too used. They ware out much faster then the prefolds themselves. Many people choose to get a verity of covers and then decide what their favorites are and buy more of those. I personally love the Bumies Whisper Wrap covers. I love Velcro for middle of the night changes (I can't handle snaps when I am tired) and love the cute pictures on the covers. Some people really love snaps though, it is up to you. I also have some Thirstys that are good too but they are not as cute. Six covers was enough for me to get though three days before I needed to wash. I have small covers (8 lbs - 15 lbs) and medium covers (15 lbs - 30 lbs). My son is almost two and we have not needed to buy the large size even though he is over 30 lbs now. I do not use pins or Snappies but if you prefer, Snappies are the way to go. They are pretty cheap and really easy to use. Just look them up on YouTube for instructions.

If you want a nice all in one package that has everything you need until your baby goes over 15 lbs I would recommend the Bumies Cotton Diaper Kit. You can find it on Amazon or through Thanksmama.com This kit has three dozen diapers, six covers, and a roll of liners for about $150. This is enough to go for about three days before washing. They also have a 15-30 lb kit as well. And no, they are not paying me (although I wish they were!) Next time I will go over the cheapest way to take care of them.

Amara Mae is here!

Our daughter was born at home March 13th 2010! She came at 8:59 pm (PST) after just 8 hours of labor and 18 minutes of pushing. Thanks to Hypnobabies and my wonderful midwife, the labor was calm and went very smoothly. Amara is doing super and I am feeling pretty good myself. Now we are just adjusting to life with two kids and trying to get sleep whenever possible. I am so glad not to be pregnant anymore and that I will not be getting pregnant ever again (hubby is fixed).

Boy pee-pee

So how come no one told me that when you are potty training a boy, one of the biggest issues is finding boy friendly potties and getting them to not pee on the back of their undies when they sit on the potty! When I started out potty training my son, I had no idea that (little) potties are not unisex. There really are boy potties and girl potties. Do they mark this on the packaging? Do they give you any clue whatsoever? NO. I had to go through three potties before I found one that works to keep the pee from spraying over the edge every time.

First I should state that I have no idea if my son is normal. He can not only pee about 4 feet but also pees almost horizontal. He has easily peed over 3 inch pee guards. He hates when I touch his penis while he is peeing so I get one chance to aim it and that is it. He will not do it himself. He also loves to watch himself pee so he angles his hips upwards making it even harder to keep the pee going down. This has led to many embarrassing times at friends houses. "Oh I am so sorry but my son peed on your shower curtain!" This does not make people want to invite you back to their houses. It is also embarrassing having to change my son's pants when he DID go pee on the potty but managed to get most of it on the back of his pants.

I did finally find a potty at the Dollar Store that has a very high back. My son straddles the chair backwards and that solves the peeing over the top problem when we are at home at least. When we go out I keep a wash cloth handy for catching the stream before it hits his pants.

Baby Sprinkles

I am planning my own sprinkle for our baby girl. Sprinkles (I am told) are what you throw when you are having your second child. I hope that it is not too tacky to throw my own. I figure that because I have not registered anywhere and have put in the invites not to bring gifts that it is ok. I felt so proud of myself because I sent out e-vites without messing it up and everyone received them. It sounds silly but I am always afraid of messing things like that up the first time I do things. I am very impressed with how many of my invitees responded the day I sent them out. So much faster then sending invites in the mail. With my son's baby shower, my sister in law insisted that she throw the shower. She is normally a very organized person, and I really trusted that she would do a great job, but she really dropped the ball with my shower. First of all, no one received the invites until a week before the shower and some people did not receive them at all. Then for the shower, there was no games or entertainment just cake and ice cream. It turned out that her whole family had had a very bad flu the week before and she just could not get things together. I wish she would have just told me. I would have been happy to help. It did work out and turned out to be a good party but some of my friends and family were hurt that they did not get an invite. So this time I am going to take care of it myself. My friend has offered to bake us a cake (and she always does a great job) and I have found some games online that look like fun. The only theme will be girl. I am really looking forward to it.

Going to far

Well I have done it. I have gone too far in my cheap crunchiness. I have converted the family to cloth wipes for the potty. I stay home all day with my son and I noticed that we go through a lot of toilet paper. Mainly this is my fault because being a pregnant women, I pee a lot. I started thinking about how much money and trees I could save if we did not go through so much toilet paper. Then I realized that I could just do what we have been doing with my son from the very beginning. He is cloth diapered so we have always used cloth wipes. It works very well for us because we just throw the wipes in to the hamper with the diapers when we use them. They just get washed all together, no big deal. Well why couldn't I do that for the grownups? So I went out to Target and bought 3 packs of 12 white wash cloths at $5 each (I did the same for my sons wipes). Then I bought a cute basket to put on the back of the toilet for 25 cents at Goodwill and away we went. We only use the wash cloths for pee and we use each one twice and then it goes in to the hamper with the cloth diapers to be washed. We use the cloth, then fold it in to its self and set it next to the basket so that the next person knows that it can only be used once before washing. We use white wash cloths because we don't use white for our body wash cloths so there is no mix up. I have to say it has worked out really well for us. My husband was skeptical at first and my mom just laughed at me but I was right. We have cut down our toilet paper use by 70% and I still do the same amount of laundry as before. It is just a bigger load now but still not a full load. So yes I have gone to far but it still saved our family some money!

It's a...

We just found out today that we are having a baby girl! We are so excited. My husband claims that he knew all along and I had been having girl dreams so maybe we did know but today we got the proof. The baby was very happy to show us the goods. She is a very healthy looking little girl to boot. I am almost 20 weeks now. We spent a very nice hour in Target's clearance section looking a girl cloths. So now we will have a boy and a girl, two years apart. This is our last child so we were really hoping for a girl. We could not be happier.

Foreign potties

We had a huge speed bump in our potty training. My son stopped going potty when we went out. He would go potty if we went to a house but no where else. He would just hold it until he couldn't and then pee all over himself. When we started potty training he would go anywhere. He even went potty at our county fair. Then out of nowhere he just stopped. I was talking with my mom about this and she said "Do you give him a treat if you go out?" I said no because I don't like carrying cookies around with me. She pointed out that that was most likely my problem. I realized that she was right. I tested the theory at the gym. He had never once gone potty there. It worked! I showed him a piece of candy corn before he sat on the potty and told him that if he went pee he would get the candy. He sat down and peed. I was so happy! No longer do I have to dread going out with him. I refused to put him back in diapers because I knew he could do it and I was right. I just needed the right tool. Bribery. I did spend a minute being worried about how to wean him off treats for the potty but I am sure it will be just like everything else with him. He weaned himself off the breast at 12 months, then the pacifier with out a fuss. I have still not figured out how to get him to poop in the potty. Maybe my mom will have another brain storm.

Next week we are going to visit my grandma in Phoenix AZ for a week so the potty training will go on the road! I am really excited that I don't have to pack diapers (cloth ones) for the trip. Since he only wears them at night, I will just use paper ones. He is down to one or no pee accidents a day and now that he will pee anywhere again, I think we can do this.