I LOVE cloth diapers!

Hopefully, I won't bore all of you who read this blog by talking TOO MUCH about cloth diapers. One of the things I read over and over in my research is how much the moms who cloth diaper love to talk about it. Now I understand why.

We've been cloth diapering Tanner for three days now and I have absolutely loved it! I wish I would have considered doing this sooner instead of trying it now that Tanner is nearly a year old. The thought of how much waste we've added to the landfills makes me sick. I'm glad this has worked well for me because I can't stand the thought of contributing so much to the environmental problems we're facing.

We opted for the pocket kind of diapers (an outer shell that looks just like a disposable diaper, with a pocket inside to stuff the absorbant insert). We have five different brands of diapers that we've tried during various parts of the day, including Bumgenius, Happy Heinys, Drybees, Fuzzibuns, and Knickernappies. Overall, I prefer the brands with velcro instead of snaps. It took me a couple diaper changes to get the hang of the snaps and make sure I had them snapped in the right place to prevent leaks. I'll continue using the ones that I bought (Fuzzibuns and Knickernappies), but I doubt that I'll buy more of them. My favorite, by far, is the bumgenius brand. I can't wait for our tax refund to get here so I can order the rest of the diapers and say goodbye to disposables.

I haven't even had a hard time with laundering the diapers. I'm sure it helps that Tanner is older and eating solid foods, therefore having more solid poops. When he's had a dirty diaper, I just plop the contents in the toilet and that's it. I don't have to swish or dunk or rinse or anything. It'll be different, of course, when we have a newborn because of the runny poop, but so far the laundering hasn't been a big deal at all. The only downside to Tanner's #2 diapers is that I haven't yet switched to cloth wipes. It's gross for me to use a disposable wipe now because I don't have a diaper to wrap it up in. It just goes right in the garbage and smells Tanner's room up. So, I'll be using cloth wipes from now on.

I've had a few friends ask me to keep them posted on our progress and I'd like to say that if you're interested, even just a little bit, in cloth diapering, trust me and give it a try. If you go to Jillian's Drawers, you can try out a variety of diapers for $100 ($90 of which you get back if you don't want to keep the diapers). I purchased my pocket sampler from Wildflower Diapers and am sure I will use them to buy the rest of my diapers. Not that I'm an expert by any means, but I'll be happy to help you if you decide to try them out.

There are just so many things we can do to limit our negative impact on the earth. And to me, cloth diapering is a great way to do my part. As Jack Johnson would say, let's "reduce, reuse, recycle."