Cloth diapers and the working mom

We’ve been using cloth diapers for about 9 months now, starting when Littles was about 15 months old. I find that a lot of people have misconceptions about cloth diapers, especially how it works with daycare and busy schedules and other pieces of a working mom’s (and dad’s!) life, so I figured I’d share a little bit about our experience.

Cloth diapers? Are you crazy? Sorry, I don’t do diaper pins.
That makes two of us! If you haven’t seen modern cloth diapers, take a peek at the selection at a store like Jillian’s Drawers. There are many different types, none of which require pins (a nifty device called a Snappi replaces pins for old-fashioned prefold diapers), many of which fasten using velcro tabs just like a disposable.

Pockets and AIOs and fitteds… oh my! Getting started is so overwhelming!
I felt the same way! So I started with the Changing Diapers Changing Minds (CDCM) trial program from Jillian’s Drawers.

How does the trial work? You pay for seven different cloth diapers, along with a few accessories. You keep them for three weeks. At the end of three weeks, you ship back any or all of the diapers for a full refund, less a $10 program fee. If you choose to keep all the diapers, you get a $10 refund.

A trial isn’t the cheapest way to get started, but it’s the most risk-free, since you can return everything if you find that cloth just doesn’t work for you. You also might be surprised by which diapers you end up liking, and not liking! I know I was.

Once I figured out what I wanted, I started browsing the Diaper Swappers forums. This is a great marketplace to buy and sell used cloth diapers. It’s extremely overwhelming at first, so I don’t recommend it to complete cloth newbies, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and found it to be a valuable resource for finding new diapers -- and saving a ton of money.

Wait, wait, wait. Used diapers? Gross!
Well... not really. I mean, it's not like they come to you with some other baby's poop in them! (That would be gross!)

I always wash new-to-me diapers once with bleach to kill any lingering nasties, then put them through another complete wash cycle before putting them on Littles. I've never had any issues.

And the savings are huge. All told, I've saved close to 60% of retail by buying used.

Speaking of price, are you really saving money compared to disposables? Aren't cloth diapers really expensive?
You can save a ton of money with cloth diapers, especially if you start early in your child's life.

To throw out some numbers, I estimate that we would need to spend a minimum of $9/week on disposable diapers for Littles. That's about 6 diapers/day, at about 20 cents/diaper. (Extremely conservative estimates.)

I've spent about $450 on Littles' current stash. This includes not only the diapers themselves but also things like absorbent inserts for pocket diapers, covers for prefolds and fitteds, accessories such as Snappis and wetbags for dirty diapers, etc. Factor in the occasional pack of disposable diapers (e.g. to use while traveling) and laundry costs, and let's call it an even $500.

That means we need to use cloth diapers for about a year just to break even with Littles. We might very well make it, as we've got nine months under our belt already and Littles doesn't look like she'll be potty training anytime soon.

Let's say that we do make it to a year and break even. All that work, just to spend the exact same amount?

Well, no. We plan to have more kids, so we can use Littles' diapers on them to save even more money.

Even if we weren't planning to have more kids, we could always sell Littles' diapers when we're done with them to recoup some of our initial investment. (Try that trick with used disposable diapers!)

And, of course, if we had started cloth diapering Littles earlier, we would have saved even more.

All told, I know we'll end up saving a nice pile of money. And Littles' stash isn't even particularly cheap -- I could have probably put together a fully functional stash for half that price.

If you're looking into cloth diapering to save money, here's a nifty calculator to help you figure out your savings.

Alright, so they're cheaper, but I've heard that cloth diapers really aren't better for the environment.
Yep, this page from Huggies quotes a study sponsored by the UK Government Environment Agency that found that disposable diapers have a similar environmental impact to cloth diapers:

"[The study] showed that using cloth diapers uses more water, energy and detergents, and disposable diapers contribute more solid waste to landfill... Both diaper alternatives were found to have similar, overall impacts on the environment with the differences being the stage of each product's life cycle where the impact occurs."

OK, so the overall environmental impact is the same. Case closed, right? Well, not exactly.

It's important to read through the full study and not rely on a summary because the study makes certain assumptions. Here is a link to the full study. (It seems to move around quite a bit, so apologies in advance if you click on this in the future and it doesn't work.)

As the Huggies site points out, the study finds that "the main source of environmental impact [for home-laundered cloth diapers] is the generation of the electricity used in washing and drying the [diapers]." (page 120)

But now, hop up to page 56 and look at the assumptions made with regards to washing and drying:

• 75% of cloth diapers are laundered in a water temperature of 60°C/140°F, including 32.1% that are laundered at 90°C/194°F.
• 19% of cloth diapers are tumble dried.
• 9.5% of cloth diapers are ironed.

The problems with these assumptions? At least for me:

• I never wash my diapers in water hotter than 140°F. In fact, most pocket/AIO manufacturers recommend water no hotter than 140°F, as it can break down the waterproof layer in those diapers faster. And 194°F? Forget about it!
• I always line dry my diapers.
• I never iron my diapers.

So without a doubt, my energy usage will be lower than the "average" based on that study. And again, the study found that the main environmental impact of cloth diapers is in washing/drying, so if I can cut the environmental impact of washing/drying... well, that's very significant.

In contrast, there's no way to cut the amount of solid waste you contribute to a landfill by using disposable diapers. (Well, I suppose you could just use one diaper a day or something, but that would be gross.)

Even so-called "green" disposables aren't much better than regular disposables when it comes to the amount of solid waste generated. In theory, they are biodegradable (unlike regular disposables), but in practice, "nothing degrades well in a landfill."

What about the laundry? I work full-time and barely have enough time to keep up the house as it is!
Again, that makes two of us :) But cloth diapers really don't take that much more time, compared to disposables. Here's a breakdown:

• Pee diapers go directly in the pail. No difference between cloth and disposables.
• Poopy diapers need to be dumped in the toilet. This takes maybe a minute. You can cut down that time by using flushable liners -- the liner catches the poop, and then you dump it all into the toilet.
  This wasn't a big deal for us, as we always dumped poop out of disposables to cut down on the smell. And it's worth noting that you're supposed to dump poop out of disposables too, for health reasons.
• Taking the pail down to the washing machine takes no more time than taking out a load of disposable diaper trash.
• It takes me about 5 minutes to put the diapers on the drying rack to dry. (I could cut that time by tumble drying, but as noted above, that increases the environmental impact.)
• It takes me about 15 minutes to stuff the absorbent inserts into the pocket diapers Littles uses at daycare. This is easy and can be done while talking on the phone, watching TV, etc. (I could also cut that time by using all-in-one diapers instead, which don't require stuffing.)

All told, it's about 20 minutes of extra work each time I do diaper laundry. I do diaper laundry once every three days, so we're talking an extra 40-60 minutes of work each week. That's far less time than I spend on our other laundry! It's entirely doable, even with a full-time job.

Did you ever consider a diaper service instead of washing your own diapers?
We did, very briefly, when I was pregnant with Littles. We quickly eliminated it because it's as expensive as disposables, if not more so!

Now that I know more about cloth diapering, I would never even think about doing a diaper service, for many reasons:

• Diaper services only provide prefolds, which are the "old fashioned" diapers that many people think of when they think of cloth diapers. They don't provide the more modern and easy-to-use pockets and all-in-ones. That said, I actually really like prefolds... but for working moms, they're a no-go at most daycares.
• As we realized previously, it's expensive! The local diaper service here in Dallas charges $75/month for 80 diapers/week, which is what's recommended for a newborn. Compare that to the cost of 80 disposables/week: That would cost around $70/month if you pay 20 cents/diaper. And compare that to the cost of purchasing 30 prefolds (enough to go 3 days between laundering) and washing them yourself: Even new prefolds only cost about $2 apiece, so you'd spend just $60 upfront, less than either of the other two options -- and that would be all you would need to spend on diapers for the first six months or so! (You would still need to buy covers, but you need to buy covers with a diaper service too.)
• It's not very "green." Most diaper services wash diapers at extremely hot temperatures in order to properly sanitize them so that they can be used on multiple babies. Some also use bleach and other additives regularly. Laundering at home, I can wash at lower temperatures because the diapers are just used on one baby, and I can minimize the use of additives like bleach. That lowers the overall environmental impact.
• The downside of having someone else wash your diapers is that you end up with a week's worth of dirty diapers sitting around your house!

What about daycare?
When we first switched to cloth, we were sending Littles to a stay-at-home mom during the day. I approached her about trying out some of our diapers, and she agreed. She preferred velcro, so I ended up purchasing 8 BumGenius diapers just for her to use. I also provided a wetbag for her to put dirty diapers in, as well as some disposables for her to use when she wanted. I also told her that she didn't have to dump poop if she didn't want to (although she usually did anyway).

To be honest, it was not a raging success. Although our sitter never said anything explicitly, I strongly suspect that she really didn't like using cloth. Over time, she used disposables more and more. It wasn't uncommon for Littles to come home in a cloth diaper, with only one diaper in the wetbag (i.e. the one I had put on her that morning). We also had a lot of problems with leaking, and our sitter always seemed really annoyed by it. In my opinion, any logical person would have taken the leaking as a sign that Littles needed to be changed more frequently, but I suspect our sitter wanted the excuse to not use cloth.

But we liked our sitter otherwise, and so it wasn't worth raising a stink over. The last straw came in April, when Littles had a week where she leaked just about every day. At that point, we knew we were just weeks away from switching her into a new preschool, so we switched to disposables exclusively for the remaining time with our sitter.

As for her preschool, we are using cloth there too. When we initially decided to go with that school, I decided to approach the director about using cloth diapers. I started by looking up the Texas state licensing requirements to see what they had to say about cloth diapers. In Texas, there are no rules against using cloth diapers; the only requirement is that each soiled (i.e. poopy) diaper must be placed in a separate bag.

So I took that information to the preschool director. Her only concern was about possible smell, but I assured her that I would provide a big wetbag for all diapers and take it home nightly. She agreed to give it a try.

The preschool does have a somewhat unique requirement around diapers in general: They require pull-ups, as they do not do any diaper changes lying down. So I had to figure out a pull-up cloth solution. I evaluated a bunch of different cloth training pants, but Littles really still needs the absorbency of a diaper and I found that the training pants just didn't cut it.

Eventually, I got a tip that just about any side-snapping cloth diaper can be used as a pull-up. I eventually settled on Green Acres Designs (GAD) pockets. I simply stuff each diaper with two inserts (one hemp, one microfiber or bamboo) to increase the absorbency (Littles does pee a lot!), then snap them on the appropriate setting. They pull on just like a disposable pull-up, and then can be snapped off. I also provide a wetbag and a few gallon-size Ziploc bags for poopy diapers. (I hand-wash the used Ziplocs at night.)

Littles has now been in school for four weeks and so far, so good! She has had a few leaks, but nowhere near as bad as with our old sitter. And this past week, I noticed that they have been changing her more frequently (there are usually four diapers in the wetbag at the end of the day, compared to two or maybe three in the first few weeks) and so I'm sure it's no coincidence that this was a leak-free week. They are even dumping poop, which is more than I expected from them!

I'm particularly pleased that the GADs seem to be working out because disposable pull-ups are expensive! They're tough to find for under 30 cents/pull-up. That means we'd likely be spending around $8/week or more just on pull-ups during the day! In comparison, I've spent $127 on the GADs and the extra inserts I needed. We'll break even in just 12 more weeks.

So there you have it -- cloth diapering is totally doable, even for the working mom! I know cloth diapering is not for everyone, but if you've been nervous about starting because you think it's too complicated or too much work, I hope this post helps show otherwise :)