[Eco] cloth diapers

[Luisa]

Wow! Thanks 'Becca!

I was really curious about all the solid matter and what you 
did with it. Your email thoroughly explained that. With the 
liners I guess things are much easier.

Also the "fitted" ones must be easier to deal with than using 
pins. I have not done a web search about cloth diapers, so I 
am sure a lot has changed.

All we had when I was a baby in Mexico (a long time ago) were 
cloth diapers. And that is all I saw used with my little 
brother and younger cousins... but we had the really old 
fashioned ones, made at home from flannel cloth, and the 
liners where a thinner material made of cotton as well, kind 
of like cheese cloth... and then there were the pins... and 
the outside shells, if used at all, were plastic pull ups.

Perhaps one day I will have a baby and I want to be ready to 
take care of it in an environmentally friendly way. I will 
keep in touch with you for last minute updates in cloth 
diaper technology.

Regarding the washing machine, I think that using the hot 
water and the micorbicide are more than enough to get rid of 
the bacteria in the poop.

Thanks for sharing!

Luisa





--On 2/23/07 1:27 PM -0500 becca at earthlingshandbook.org wrote:

> Luisa asked for a separate thread on cloth diapers.  What
> is it that you want to know?  I will explain some basics:
>
> Cloth diapers are one category of merchandise that has
> benefited vastly from Internet shopping.  Lots of them are
> made by work-at-home moms who run little online businesses.
> Even the factory-made brands are mostly small companies
> working in the US and Canada.  These little companies have
> done a lot of innovating over the past 15-20 years,
> introducing many new types of diapers and related
> equipment, so a huge variety of choices are available...and
> many of them are very cute!! :-)
>
> I always knew I would use cloth diapers because my parents
> and most of my extended family did, so I saw it as a
> sensible choice financially and environmentally.  Also, I
> had babysat for disposable-diapered babies and found their
> diapers hard to tolerate aesthetically; they just feel so
> fake and crinkly, not something I'd want wrapped around my
> body!  When I tried cloth menstrual pads and found out how
> much more comfortable they are than the plastic kind, I was
> even more convinced both that I wanted my baby in cloth and
> that I could tolerate the extra work involved.
>
> Rather than deal with pins, we decided to buy "fitted"
> diapers, which are elasticized and fasten with snaps.  They
> need a separate waterproof cover; after trying several, we
> prefer the type that's made from nylon and pulls on like
> underpants.  Our initial purchases included one pack of
> flushable diaper liners, which we intended to use during
> the meconium (gunk that lines baby's intestines before
> birth and comes out in the first week and is very sticky)
> phase, but we found that they are really really handy for
> getting poop off the diaper, so we decided that the
> environment could handle an extra sheet of thin unbleached
> paper per poop.  We also bought washcloths to use as baby
> wipes, "doublers" which are extra layers of cloth to
> increase diaper absorbency when needed, and some laundry
> bags so fabulous they merit a separate paragraph.
>
> These laundry bags or "wetbags" are made of nylon, a bit
> thicker than an umbrella.  They have a drawstring with
> toggle.  If you fill one with WATER, there's some leakage
> at the seam, and of course if you turn it upside down most
> of the water comes out the hole in the drawstringed
> opening...but you can fill one with DAMP things and have no
> leakage at all!  They also contain odors well.  Aside from
> use with diapers, wetbags have radically improved my life
> in situations like bringing home a wet swimsuit.  I always
> used to use a disposable plastic shopping bag, which often
> works just fine, but those tend to tear.  Wetbags are
> durable and reliable and come in nice colors, too!  Like
> the nylon diaper covers, they're easily washed with a
> squirt of liquid soap and a quick rubbing and rinsing, or
> they can go in the washing machine.
>
> We use a large wetbag to line the diaper pail, which is a
> kitchen-size stainless-steel trashcan with lid operated by
> a foot pedal.  It has an interior plastic bin that I take
> out and clean every 3 or 4 weeks.  My parents always stored
> dirty diapers soaking in water in a tightly sealed plastic
> pail, and I remember an unpleasant odor every time that was
> opened.  In my pre-motherhood research, I learned that many
> people these days use a dry pail, and it's worked out well
> for us.  It smells better, and I certainly appreciate not
> having to lug 10 gallons of water down the 2 flights of
> stairs to the laundry room!
>
> Before changing a diaper, we wet a washcloth using a
> "sports" bottle with pop-up spout that we keep on the
> changing table.  If the diaper is just wet, it and the
> washcloth AND the flushable liner go into the diaper pail;
> one of the great things about the liners is that, although
> they dissolve like toilet paper when flushed (our upstairs
> toilet is VERY particular but does not object to them!),
> they somehow survive machine-washing and can be used again
> up to 4 times or until they get pooped on.  If there's
> poop, we take the diaper to the toilet and drop in the
> liner and all the poop on it.  Sometimes the liner shifts
> out of place, so some poop gets on the diaper.  We have a
> plastic scraper (supposed to be for dishes) that we use to
> clean it off, but that's our least favorite part!  It's not
> that poop won't come off in the wash; it's that we prefer
> to put as much of it as possible into the toilet rather
> than into the washing machine where we wash all our other
> laundry as well.
>
> Away from home, we're usually changing in a restroom and
> can wet the washcloth in the sink.  We keep a small wetbag
> in the diaper bag to store used diapers, then put them in
> the pail at home.
>
> Every 4th day, I take the wetbag full of diapers out of the
> diaper pail and empty them into the washing machine.  I run
> a presoak cycle with hot water and Bio-Kleen Bac-Out, which
> is a natural microbicide.  20 minutes later (or whenever I
> get to it) I start a wash cycle with hot water and natural
> laundry soap.  When that's done, I get the diapers out and
> hang them on the drying rack in our laundry room.  Two days
> later, Nicholas and I take them off the rack into the
> basket, and then he puts them into the dryer, and I run a
> 20-minute "fluff" cycle with no heat.  This makes the
> diapers softer, and the fluffing of their layers improves
> absorbency.  (We use a heated dry cycle only if we're
> behind schedule and need the diapers before they've had
> time to air-dry.)
>
> It's not that hard, and I enjoy handling the clean diapers.
> They are so cute and feel like clothing, not like biohazard
> containment devices.  It's just part of taking care of my
> baby.
>
> In addition to the odor difference I mentioned previously,
> I'm surprised at how other parents put up with the poor
> containment abilities of disposable diapers.  I often hear
> giggling, eye-rolling stories about the "blowouts" that
> result in a complete change of baby's outfit and sometimes
> parents' outfits and furniture too!  This has never
> happened to Nicholas--and he loves beans and fruits, so
> it's not that he's producing less messy stuff; it just
> stays in his diaper or at least in his diaper cover.  I
> often hear about toddlers wetting the bed, while wearing a
> diaper, because a disposable can't hold as much as their
> bladder.  We just add extra layers to the diaper for
> overnight.  So I feel we're using a far superior system!
>
> Our electricity and water bills have increased by only a
> couple of dollars a month due to diapers.  The change in
> the gas bill for the extra hot water is so small we can't
> see it.  While the IDEA of poop in our washing machine is
> gross, the machine doesn't smell bad or seem dirty; we feel
> like our regular laundry is as clean as ever.
>
> Any other questions?
> ---'Becca
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