a huge part of our life is laundry. a huge part of our laundry is diapers. we decided way before the babies were born that we needed to figure out a way to use cloth diapers. i went back and forth, doing research, reading articles in mothering magazine (which is a little granola for me, but still has a lot of good info), and we finally decided to do it. we just kept thinking of the landfills filled with twice the disposable diapers of a normal family that wouldn't biodegrade before 500 years and couldn't be ok with that.
there are a ton of choices, from gdiapers (which are super cute and seem like a good idea, but are exPENsive) to the good old tri-fold with the plastic covers. we landed on bumgenius. at the time, we thought we were having a boy and a girl, so we got all different colors... which means that our boys wear pink undies. whatever. bumgenius diapers are either pocket or all-in-one, i still don't know the difference, but we have what we call inserts and outserts: the outserts are the outer cover that house the absorbent insert and wick the moisture away from their skin. they're shaped like a normal diaper and have a velcro strip on the front, and velcro tabs on the sides. we have two diaper pails, one for each part. surprisingly, they don't smell... or we've just gotten used to it. hopefully not that one.
we have 40 diapers, which was a huge chunk of money in the beginning. however, they will last until the boys are potty-trained. when we came home from the hospital, they were 5ish pounds, so they couldn't wear the cloth diapers yet. by the time we started using them, we had already spent more money on disposables than we had on our cloths. pretty sweet. at about a year, all of our velcro tabs started wearing out. which means i got to rip off and sew on 80 new tabs... not cool, especially when we paid $16 a diaper. but it was good, i got some good sewing experience. one thing people always tell me is they would do it if they could handle the poo. i understand this completely. here's where the bumgenius diaper sprayer comes in - it's a tool you connect to your toilet that sprays the solid into the water, then you don't have to dunk your hands in the toilet water (which, apparently, is what my parents did- blech). it has made this process so much easier! and i don't think more than one or two of our diapers is stained - after 14 or so months of using them!
after reading all of the message boards having to do with the velcro tabs wearing out, everyone suggested line-drying. another something that was going to take up more of our time. but again, these weren't cheap so we're going to get our money's worth! bryan hung some line in the laundry room, and now we've added this extra step in the process. we wash twice a week, a wash, a wash, and a rinse for the outserts and inserts. usually after the babes go to bed. lots o' water. that's a whole other debate, whether it's better to use more water, because apparently, it's the same cost when it's all said and done - i just think of the landfills and can't possibly come to disposables as the better option.
i bought two itso boxes at target, the diapers go in these on the second shelf of our changing table. i didn't do this on purpose, but i thought the rainbow was particularly pretty. as pretty as cloth diapers can be.
a lot of people can't believe we do this. i honestly don't think it's that big of a deal, and i guess i should have prefaced by saying that we aren't a completely-100% cloth-diapering household. we use disposables when we travel, when we run out and haven't started laundry yet, even if i just don't feel like cleaning another dirty one... one of my friends told me in the beginning, don't try to save the world all by yourself. which i understood, but at the same time, i didn't really think i was trying to save the world. it just made more sense, especially since we were having twins, to do it this way. it's our small contribution to saving the world.
