Here's Henry practicing to be my intern when he stayed home with me last week.
Tonight is the second-part in my cloth diaper primer. Tonight i'll be covering the questions that deal with what you do with the soiled diapers and how involved the clean-up is.
It's pretty straightforward. We have a garbage can in Henry's room with a locking lid. With cloth diapers we change him about every 2 hours during the day. If the diaper is wet you throw everything (cover, diaper and fleece) in the garbage can/diaper pail and close the lid. If the diaper is dirty then you take 1 more step. We generally use paper liners that you lay on top of the fleece. This paper liner is flushable. If the diaper is dirty you simply set the diaper aside until you're done changing, and then drop the liner in the toilet-- the rest of the diaper goes in the pail.
If everything is working in the old G/I tract then you can get away with not using the liners at all. You simply take the diaper to the toilet, give it a good shake, and then throw the rest of the diaper back in the pail.
On wash day i take out the garbage bag, empty it into the washer and run a rinse cycle sans detergent in warm water. After the rinse has finished i do a full wash cycle on hot with minimal detergent and oxyclean. You can't use fabric softener as it makes the diapers not absorbent and you have to keep the detergent to a minimum so that no residue is left on the diapers to irritate little baby skin.
When the wash cycle is done, you simply throw everything in the dryer.
I wouldn't attempt all of this without my own w/d, but once that is in place it's very convenient and much cheaper to use cloth (plus they're cuter and don't have Sesame Street characters on them.)
One final note, all bets are off during stomach bugs. We switched to disposables during this time to keep clean-up as easy as possible.
2 comments:
There are some great PUL diaper pail bags available- I know Bummi's and Mother of Eden are a few brands. Great to re-use them.
Just put the hole of the bag in the washer and push the diapers out of the bag. Bag is now inside out and you wash it with the rest of the diapers.
Wow! Henry is really reminding me of JT when he was that age. And life with cloth diapers sounds so easy now- but I am really glad to here that you give yourselves a break and switch to disposable at those crucial times! Love Oma
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