Cloth Diapers

We started our cloth diapering journey when Fiona was about 2 months old, I wanted to save money and we were dealing with a lot of diaper rash on her. I got a few diapers to try and it didn't work for us. Fiona got a different rash (found out later she is allergic/sensitive to the material we tried) and we were starting daycare and didn't know if we could find someone willing to use cloth diapers.

Shortly after Fiona's first birthday, after a lot more research, I decided to give it a go again. JR was not wanting to try it this time, so I bought a handful to try. This time it worked much better, JR took a while to warm up to it, but last week he wrote a persuasive essay about cloth diapering. :)

I love using cloth diapers! I love that I don't have to worry about running out of diapers and going to buy some at the store. I love that I don't have to take out giant bags of nasty diapers every day or two. I love that I'm not putting weird chemicals on the kids butts. I love how cute some of the prints are.

It's not all glorious, there is dumping solids, we have a diaper sprayer that is hooked into the plumbing on the toilet, that helps. I do have to wash diapers every two days, and double rinse. I have to "strip" diapers once every couple of months because detergent build up can decrease absorbency and make diapers get ammonia build up.

I'm active in the Babycenter Community and people are always showing off their diaper stashes. I got sucked in this time, so I put James in flats for about a day and washed and put away all of our diapers to take pictures of our stash. Ours doesn't come close to some of the others on there, but it works for us, we have plenty of diapers, and a lot of variety. Ironically, my favorite diapers to use are flats, ya know, the diapers that our grandmas used. They cost about 18-24 dollars a dozen, most of the cute diapers I have retail for $18-$25 each, so it makes me laugh that I have all these fancy diapers but use the cheap, old fashion diapers most often. Here they all are- I listed all the brands so if you don't plan to cloth diaper, don't worry about reading all of it-just look at the fun prints. :)

Here's our whole stash all put away (not including Fiona's diapers):
The very top is extra inserts and liners. All of our covers on the shelf, top left is PUL (waterproof material) covers, top right is wool and fleece snap on covers. Middle shelf is wool, pants, shorts and footies on the left and soakers (pull up cover) on the right. The bottom is diaper overflow.
Our fitteds: fitteds are made out of a very absorbent material, usually the middle has extra layers to keep the bulk down, these all have cute prints on the outside, but don't have a waterproof layer. The top row is all night time diapers (Holden's Landing, Firefly, Green Sprouts, Rainshine design, Pooligan's for Hooligans). The three middle rows are Bagshot Row Bamboo (BSRB) diapers, obviously my favorite fitted. The 5th row down are three Pooligan's fitteds. The last row are Bububebe, I actually have two more of these on the way.
All-in-ones (Aio), pocket diapers and All-in-2 (Ai2): Top row, 4 Kawaii minky bamboo pocket diapers, 2 Fishnoodles Ai2, 2 Cozybunz Ai2. Second row 7 Bumgenius organic/elemental AiO. Middle row, Click-a-Doos Ai2 (a cute print on the outside with a waterproof material hidden inside), dinosaurs, sock monkeys, bees, earth. 4th row down is my hodge-podge row: 2 Pooligan's Ai2 (Ooga Boga's and KU prints), TnT shamrock Ai2, Cloth Reverie hedgehogs Ai2, Full Tilt Robins Ai2. The bottom row is all Bagshot Row Bamboo Hybrid Ai2 (stars, zoo animals, Peter Pan, Thomas, Pirates, Cat in the Hat, and Hedgehogs-also have a guitar one on the way).
Boring fitteds and Prefolds, the hemp ones on the top right are awesome (again, my favorites are the boring ones):
Fiona only wears one diaper at night so here is her little stash, we actually usually only use the Nana's Bottoms AIO's (the colored ones on the bottom) and some of the fitteds in the above pics (they are onesize fits most over 8 or 10lbs).
I didn't take pictures of the flats because there isn't much to them and most of them were dirty. Just imagine a plain white absorbent blanket. Fiona actually calls them blanket diapers.

"Hey Mom, are you done taking pictures of my diapers-this rug burn sucks."