Baby

16 Reasons To Use Cloth Diapers And Love Them

Amanda February 7, 2017 one Comments

Lots of people don’t know anything about modern cloth diapers. I didn’t. And I sure couldn’t think of any reasons to use cloth diapers besides saving money! All I had to go off of was some old flats, prefolds, and safety pins that my great-grandmother gave to me during my first pregnancy. My mom had told her that I was curious about cloth diapers. They sat untouched until my oldest was five months old when I finally decided to look up cloth diapers on Google.

I was blown away by the simplicity of them! Here I was, wildly intimidated by those pieces of cloth sitting on my shelf, and I had no idea how modern they had become!

Being a stay-at-home mom, I wanted to contribute to our finances any way I could. For me, that was with this. I decided to buy a twelve-pack of pocket diapers for $60. They lasted us until he was potty trained! It saved us SO much money in the long run! I now use those old flats and prefolds as extra inserts in my pocket diapers!

So needless to say, I love cloth diapers, and I hope you will give them a try! I think you’ll love them too! Here’s sixteen reasons why.

16 Reasons To Use Cloth Diapers And Love Them

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16 Reasons To Use Cloth Diapers

1. They Save You Money

This is the biggest reason for me and lots of other parents. The average baby gets changed 6,100 times before they’re potty trained. That’s $1,900-2,900 for disposables VS $450-700 for cloth. I bought and made my current diapers for less than $100! Think of what you could be spending all of that extra money on!

2. They’re Safer

Disposables have harmful chemicals in them, like sodium polyacrylate, a chemical banned from tampons for causing toxic shock syndrome. And dioxin, which is linked to cancer. I have friends that had to use cloth because their babies were sensitive to the chemicals in disposables. Diaper rash was rare before rubber plastic pants were invented in 1940’s. My boys rarely get it.

3. Better For The Environment

Americans are throwing out five garbage bags full of diapers every second. 8 billion diapers every year, the weight of 65,000 school buses! If disposables weren’t invented, there’d be 16 million more trees on this planet. Diapers are the third largest one-time use item in our landfills. This is just in the U.S.! It’s estimated that it takes 300-500 years to decompose a disposable diaper in landfills. That’s a lot of trash piling up!

4. They Don’t Leak As Much

One year when we were tent camping for a week during Sukkot, I bought a pack of disposables for then, two-month-old, Ronen. I had cloth at home, but they’re not very convenient for camping. Every time that boy pooped there was a big ‘ole mess up the back of his onesie! The diapers even had back elastic, but that just didn’t cut it. I learned to just take his clothes off right when he started going so I didn’t have another orange stain to deal with! I’m sure most parents can relate. I couldn’t wait to use his cloth diapers again when we got home! They are snug all around so that nothing escapes and diaper blowouts are very rare!

5. They’re Just Adorable

I don’t know about you, but I can’t find anything cuter than a baby with a 16 Reasons To Use Cloth Diapers And Love Them fluff butt. Although, those sweet baby feet are a close second! You can pretty much find whatever your heart desires as far as designs go. There are prints for the nerdy, natural, plain, geeky, artistic, anything goes! You could even have a work-at-home-mom custom make them to your taste. I’ve made some pretty cute ones from old t-shirts.

6. Potty Train Faster

Children that use cloth diapers potty train an average of six months earlier than ones using disposables. Cloth helps them feel the wetness sooner than disposables.

7. No Trips To The Store Just For Diapers

You won’t ever have to worry about forgetting to put diapers on the store list.
Just wash when you start to go low and you’re set for a couple more days, depending on how often you wash. You’ll never run out of diapers again!

8. Skip The Wipes, Too

If you’re already cloth diapering, it’s really easy to switch to reusable cloth wipes as well. That’s more money in your pocket and another thing you won’t forget to buy.

9. Taking Out The Trash

Disposables account for 50% of a household’s waste. So you’ll only be taking out the trash half as much!

10. Variety Of Cloth Diapers

Lots of cloth diapering parents choose to use old-fashioned flats and prefolds with a cover (I have a few of them), but that’s only a couple of all the types of diapering systems there are! I personally have used prefolds, flats, pockets, fitteds, fleece covers, PUL covers, and wool covers. And there’s more I haven’t tried! Here is a post that explains some of the types of cloth diapers. My favorites are fitteds with fleece covers for at home and pockets for when we go out.

11. Comfy For Baby

Who wants to have paper and plastic rubbing on their butts all day and night? I sure didn’t care for adult diapers during postpartum. I’ll bet they never get their padded butts hurt from falling either.

12. Babies Can’t Take Them Off

I have heard so many horror stories of babies taking off their disposables and smearing poop all over the walls. I have yet to hear of a baby being strong enough to undo the snaps or velcro on a cloth diaper.

13. Your Babies Can Share Cloth Diapers

If you have one size diapers, they are adjustable normally from birth to potty training. You’ll need more than the minimum to have enough until wash day, but no more buying multiple sizes of diapers. Unless you want to. There’s also sized options.

14. They’re Easy

You just dump the solids in the toilet and toss in a pail until wash day. If it’s stuck, you can use a diaper sprayer or handheld shower head, or scrape it off with a spatula used just for that. Pee diapers go straight into the pail. If you exclusively breastfeed, then those can go straight in the pail, too, until baby starts eating solids. Breastfed baby poo is completely water soluble! And did you know that you’re actually supposed to dump the solids in a disposable into the toilet before throwing it in the trash? It should say so on your disposable diaper packaging.

15. They Pair Up Awesome With Baby Leg Warmers

I didn’t know baby leg warmers were a thing until I saw pics of a fluff butt baby wearing 16 Reasons To Use Cloth Diapers And Love Them
them. SO ADORABLE! Cloth diapers don’t like to squeeze into regular pants very easy, so they’re great for around the house with a onesie. They are also super quick and easy to sew! I’ve made tons of them!