It's another gray day so the pictures aren't great, but I wanted to get these posted since I have a few minutes. The family closet has changed my life people!! It has taken my most overwhelming chore from crazy to totally doable. We had to start in the laundry room because that is were most of this process starts. These storage racks went on sale for 69$ right after Christmas and we got 3. We also got several of the $3.50 Steralite clothes baskets because they fit side by side perfectly. In the laundry room I now have baskets labeled (Whites, Towels, Darks, Reds & Purples -we have a lot of those!) to separate clothes into, baskets marked "Clean" for clean clothes, a place for storage (extra dish cloths, table cloths, socks that need a mate). The laundry room is much less intimidating now, I actually like going in there! I also now have room for my drying rack in here! I painted a huge henna design on the wall to pretty it up a bit. :) The Caffee sign ...
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I have a question about the fleece in the pocket diapers. How do you get it to smell clean after washing? Is it a special type of fleece? My older two still wet at night and if urine gets on their fleece blankets or pjs, they stink. In a last ditch effort I even tried soaking one pair of pants in a vinegar solution and later bleach but it didn't help and I ended up tossing the pants.
I think I would like pocket diapers, but the potential problems from smell is deterring me.
Wash routines make a lot more sense to me now since I started cloth diapering.
For the pants I would: soak the pants in blue dawn (yes the dish soap) because that's supposed to strip away the buildup and then rinse well.
Cloth diaper wash routines are what keep the diapers from stinking. Certain detergents are better about leaving no build up (I use tide original). My wash routine is cold rinse, hot wash with tide, and then hot rinse. About once every two months I will add another was of dawn and a rinse to that routine. I have a top loader (a glorious old clunker!) and they are best for washing diaper because they use a good bit of water. When I had my front loader I would add a gallon of water to the wash by pouring it through the soap dispenser, I also used the "heavy" wash setting which tricks the machine into using more water.
If I were you, I would get some reasonably priced diapers (these are our favorites and are the best prices http://www.theluvyourbaby.com/hot-item-ultra-soft-cross-over-square-tab/ ) and give it a try! 6 diapers should get you started part time cloth diapering and if you don't love it they sale for almost the same amount as you originally bought them for on Craigslist!
I'm starting with the econobums (covers & prefolds)on recommendation of my cousin. I just bought a couple trial sets for now which should get us through a day, or close to it. They are really affordable but without a liner there won't be anything to wick the wetness away and I think that will bother me.
I like the idea of the pocket diaper and I think my husband will like those better. I'll check out the ones you use. We still plan to use disposables at night, at least for now, as my kids tend to be heavy wetters at night.
Thanks for the info, it can be overwhelming looking at all the message boards and trying to figure out what the abbreviations mean.
This is my prefolds tutorial:
http://thehandmadedress.blogspot.com/2012/12/diaper-tutorial-how-to-make-fitted-from.html
And this is some of the diapers I made and bought:
http://thehandmadedress.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html
My stance on this is: if you plan to have more children make you up 12 newborn diapers (or buy used) and then fill in with 12 prefolds and 2-3 covers. If you don't plan to have more you could still buy them and sell them for probably the same price you paid. With that many diapers you would be able to wash every other day and be fine.
And ya know what? If you just want to do disposables until the babe fits in one size pockets, do it! This is certainly not an all or nothing thing!
Have you tried wool covers? I have not been brave enough.
We started out using Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers, but our son grew out of them by age one (he had some serious plumber butt. The rise was just not adjustable enough.) I switched to prefolds and covers (Thirsties for the covers) and I like them SO much better. The washing routine is much less involved since there is no fleece, and they don't leak like the FBs did. We just trifold the prefolds and lay them down the middle of the cover, so it isn't more complicated or anything. Anyhow, maybe that is just me, but prefolds and covers are also much cheaper, so this might be a good option for other folks.
On newborns- I see lots of newborn cloth diapers on Craigslist frequently, it seems like it would be smart to buy newborn diapers used and then resell them afterwards (provided you aren't saving them for the next baby.) You could probably break even that way since they fit in newborn diapers for such a brief time, they really wouldn't lose much value in a few short weeks.