Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Cloth Diapering - My Favorites

When I was trying to figure out which cloth diaper option I would choose, I enlisted the help of my pioneering cloth diapering mama friends who had ventured out on this road before me. As I mentioned in Cloth Diapering - 101, I encourage you to do the same (because there's nothing better than your own trial and error and the advice of people you know and trust). Based on their recommendations and on cost, the main cloth diapering route I chose was prefolds and covers. I use 3-4 dozen diaper service quality Chinese prefolds (NOT the kind you can buy at the store, i.e. Gerber, which are hardly absorbent enough to use for even a burp cloth) and 6 velcro covers (Bummis, Econobum, and Thirsties...Thirsties are definitely my favorite). I use a Snappi to hold the prefold in place before I put on the cover. The covers can be used multiple times throughout the day without washing - I usually rotate between 2 covers a day unless they get poopy which is very rare (or if they get at all smelly...but they usually last a full day without getting smelly). I wash a load of diapers and covers about every third day. I'll share my tried and true washing routine in another post.

When I'm going to leave the house I use all-in-one (AIO) or pocket diapers because they are much more compact for the diaper bag (these are also nice to have on hand for babysitters who aren't used to cloth diapers because they're just as easy to put on as a disposable). The brands I like most for these are Bum Genius and Fuzzibunz. I have 10 of these and I use a Planet Wise wet bag to carry the dirty ones in which works great. You can just throw it in with the rest of your cloth diaper laundry (I have 2 of these bags so I always have a clean one in case we need to leave the house).

Here's a recap of some of my favorites brands:

Bum Genius (for AIO's)
Bummis (for diaper covers and flushable liners - I'll talk about these liners in an upcoming post)
Econobum (for covers)
Fuzzibunz (for pocket diapers)
Planet Wise (for wet bags)
Thirsties (for covers)
Snappi (for pre-fold fasteners)

And these are my favorite cloth diapering resources:

Cotton Babies (online store)
Cloth Diapers by Cotton Babies (cloth diapering blog)
Simple Mom (cloth diapering info)
Weebunz (online store and cloth diapering info)

(Amazon is of course another great resource for purchasing cloth diapers and accessories...and if you're adventurous, you can find some adorable handmade diapers on Etsy).

That's about it for my favorites. Stay tuned for some more nitty gritty cloth diapering details. I'll leave you with a cute picture of our little guy sporting a white Bum Genius AIO (yet another benefit of using cloth diapers...they're SO much cuter than disposables!).

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