Cloth Diaper Hacks, Tips, and Tricks

What are your mama hacks for using cloth diapers?  Today for Cloth Tushie Tuesday, we are discussing the hints and tricks that help make it easy for you to cloth diaper.  What's something you've discovered about cloth diapering that makes it easier for you?  What can you share about your routine that is really making it work for you?





Here are a couple of mine: 

1.  Your wet bag is your friend.  Don't leave home without it.  Use ones with zippers, the drawstring ones are cheaper, but leak/smell.  You need at least one big one for the changing table or door knob, and small ones for the diaper bag and daycare.  Buy as many as you can in cute colors and prints, and keep them where you can grab them when you are on your way to daycare, to grandma's, etc.  Yesterday I was shopping with the wee one when she had a poo I could smell from across the store.  While in the changing room, I decided to discreetly change her diaper, so that I could seal the poo up in the zippered wet bag, and protect all the other shoppers from the smell.  Only ... I didn't have a wetbag.  Thankfully I did have a diaper bag with a zipper ... that is washable.

2.  Use the simplest system that meets your needs, (and its cousin: find a system and stick with it).  I'm all about trying lots of different cloth diapers.  But when your stash is 10 different kinds of diapers, it's hard to organize and hard to use.  Do your research, yes.  But then: decide.  And if it isn't broke, don't fix it.  Prefolds and covers is one of the simplest diapering systems to use.  We would still be doing prefolds and covers, except for a request from daycare for a "one piece" diapering system.  Now I have prefolds and covers, fitteds, pockets, AIO's, and wool.  I keep saying I'm going to downsize, and haven't.  Keep It Simple, Sweetie!

3.  Here's an interesting trick: don't clean poopy pocket diapers right away.  I learned about this from daycare - I would read the Wee One's report sheet from daycare, and it would say she had a loose BM.  I'd check the diapers for the poopy one to dunk-and-swish, and when I came across the only one with poo, I would think "that's not really 'loose'."  Then I figured out: the microfiber insert continues to absorb the moisture, so what used to be covered in mushy poo is now a semi-solid little mass that you can flick off into the toilet.  I'm not saying let them sit around and grow stuff, I'm just saying a few hours never hurt anything.

4.  Use pockets that unstuff themselves.  I use the Thirsties Duo Diaper, and you don't have to unstuff it when you put it in the washer.  In the first rinse, the insert comes out of the sleeve in the wash.  Fabulous!  If I have a wet bag full of those diapers, I can just dump the whole contents into the washer.  With other pockets, I have to stand there and pull wet inserts out.  Not with the Thirsties.  I have also tried the Pocket Change diapers and those do the same thing - but they aren't as fabulous as the Thirsties!  Now, these pockets "unstuff" themselves in the wash, but I have yet to meet a pocket diaper that "restuffs" itself after the dryer! 

I'm totally drawing a blank here.  I usually have so many little tricks that I've thought of, and now I can't think of any.  What are yours?  Link up your post below!  Be sure to follow me (@MommieV1) or @funkymamabird on Twitter to get next week's topic!

CD 101 - Updates and Index Post

So I've done some updates to some of the Cloth Diapering 101 posts.  Here is a summary and an index to all the posts in case you missed any.  You can also get to them by using the tags, but this can help you link directly to the one you are interested in.

Wetbags - in preparation for the 5-day trip (wherein I have no idea if we will be near a laundromat, and not sure I trust my diapers to a laundromat machine, so I may have to carry 5 days of dirty diapers with us) I needed another wetbag.  While at a signing playgroup at Mama's Hip in Louisville, a beautiful Wahmies wet bag caught my eye, so I bought it (impulse shopper!).  It is (a) beautiful, (b) smaller in size than my Loving Touch one, and the PUL is a little thinner, but (c) it has a neat feature ...

A clip on the hanging loop means that you can loop it through bars on a crib or changing table.  Nifty!

Covers - in the covers post I talked about Thirsties covers alot, since I think they are the best covers out there.  I mentioned that I was using the sized covers, and hadn't tried the Duo Wraps yet.  Well, when I got the Duo Diaper prints and fell in LOVE, I decided to get my favorite print in the cover.  With the pockets, after a two-hour stint they sit in the wetbag until washing.  With a cover, you can keep them on longer and just change the prefold inside.  So now I can say that I HAVE tried the Duo wrap, and it works exactly as perfectly as the sized covers - except that the Duo covers two sizes and will save you money.  How freaking awesome is that?

Prefolds - I found a new prefold.  It is incredible and wonderful and I just had to tell you about it.  It's kinda pricey, but it may be worth it.  It's an awesome diaper.  It's the Thirsties Duo Hemp Prefold.  This is an ingenious idea.  They've always sold the covers, but then you had to buy the prefolds from someone else.  Now you can buy your entire diapering system from them.  Very cool.  But the best part ... is the design, the material, and the size.

Design - the Duo prefold is sewn in a large loop.  This will make it easier for the layers to be washed clean, and should shorten drying time.  Important, because the material is mostly hemp, which takes a long time to dry.  The first few washes did take a long time to dry, but drying time shortened during the prep process.

Material - the material is their hemp/cotton jersey, and it is so soft.  When they say "buttery soft" in their promotional writing, they are Not Kidding.  It feels like the ideal material to have next to your bottom.  Hemp is very absorbent, which makes it perfect.  Hemp takes more prep - 3 washes before first use and several more to get it to its optimal absorbency.

Size - in traditional prefold sizing, there is a gap between "infant" sized prefolds, and "premium" size.  For most babies outgrowing the "infant" size, the premium size is too long, and becomes bulky if you have to fold down the extra.  Two solutions previously existed - buy "capri" length, or have your prefolds cut and re-serged.  Then Green Mountain Diapers came out with red-edged prefolds (what we currently use).  They fit in a medium sized Thirsties cover, or the Size Two Duo on small snap setting, very well.  These Thirsties hemp prefolds (size Two) are the size of the red-edge cotton prefolds.  In other words, they fill that size gap very well between the infant size and the "too big" size.  There is a Size One Duo prefold, that I didn't get.  It is designed to fit in the Size One wrap, and I imagine it is probably around the size of the green-edge "infant" prefolds.

Nighttime Diapering - since the demise of one of our nighttime diapers, and the other two becoming increasingly too tight around her thighs, we have altered our nighttime diapering system.  We now use a Thirsties Duo Diaper with its normal microfiber/hemp duo insert, supplemented with a bamboo/zorb insert from Bam Booty Baby.  She's a Canadian mama that had a store on Hyenacart, and I can't for the life of me find a link.  But here and here are some that are kindof similar if you are interested.

And now for an index of the posts in the Cloth Diapering 101 series, as well as posts I'm working on.
Cloth Diapering 101 - The Posts
Wool (this was before the CD 101 series debuted, but has some good information in it!)
The Overview
Materials and Fabrics
Prefolds
Covers
AIOs and Pockets
Wet Bags
Nighttime Diapering
Pocket Inserts
Laundry Routine
Pocket Reviews
Cloth Wipes
Changing Pads
Fitteds
Traveling with Cloth

This is helpful.  I realize that I haven't done a post on fitteds, even though I intended to do that a while back.  And I'm way overdue for the Cloth Wipes post.  Stay tuned, there's more to learn about cloth diapering!!!

Cloth Diapering 101 - Wet Bags!

Ok, MommieV, all this stuff about cloth diapers is so great. There's different kinds, and they're all cute and stuff. But what do you DO with them. When, you know, they get ... DIRTY????

So this post addresses how to store your dirty diapers. It's much easier than you think. What you need is ... a wet bag.

A wet bag is any bag that is waterproof or water resistant, that can store wet and dirty diapers. Therefore it can be a plastic grocery bag. But wouldn't you rather have something more cute, versatile, and durable?

Loving Touch Wet Bags, size M


Cloth diaper wet bags are usually made of PUL, the same fabric that we have previously discussed for covers and other diapers. Some wet bags are a single layer of PUL, others are a PUL liner and a cute fabric print outside.

Mommy's Touch Wet Bag, size S, periwinkle - action shot since this is the one I keep in the diaper bag most of the time.


Wet bags come in a number of sizes. Smaller sizes are great for the diaper bag - they will hold a few wet/dirty diapers as you change them while you are out and about. When I get home, I dump the dirty diapers into the big wetbag and put the empty small wetbag back into the diaper bag for the next trip out of the house. Larger sizes can be used as a hanging diaper pail at home. The medium sized one is the one that I send to daycare.

Loving Touch Wet Bags, hanging pail


Newborns that are exclusively breastfed have yellow, mustardy poo. This poo is really water soluble and easily washed out of diapers. Therefore, if you have a breastfed infant, you can just throw the dirty diapers into the wet bag and on laundry day, dump the diapers into the washer to be washed. The cold rinse that you start your wash routine with will rinse out the poo.

Once they start solids (or for babies that take formula), it gets a little more interesting. This is when I started doing dunk-and-swish. I just swish poopy diapers in the toilet to remove the poo, then wring and put the diaper in the wet bag until laundry time. Some mamas keep a plastic spatula by the toilet to help remove the poo into the toilet.

There is also a fabulous invention called a diaper sprayer. Many mamas swear by them. I had planned to buy one to attach to the toilet when I bought my new house. But the dunk-and-swish works really well for us, so I haven't been motivated to do it. I keep cleaning wipes in the cabinet under the sink, so after the dunking and swishing and wringing I can clean the seat for the next person to use the toilet (um, given that I'm single, that's probably going to be ME anyway).

FYI - even when using disposable diapers, you are supposed to remove the solids to the toilet before throwing the diaper away. Landfills are not designed to treat human waste. Most diaper packages refer to this. So this step isn't supposed to be any different from what you would do with disposables - if people followed the directions. That's another thing that totally grosses me out about disposable diapers going to landfills.

Fuzzi Bunz Diaper Tote, pink. Perfect size for the diaper bag.


One suggestion I can give, you probably want a wet bag with a zipper closure. I tried one wet bag with a drawstring closure and it didn't work well. Especially for your diaper bag, or especially when your babe starts eating turkey and has poo that stinks up the general vicinity in a 5-mile radius (not that that's happening to us right now or anything!)

My second suggestion is to have more than one of whatever size you use in your diaper bag. If you have one in the wash when you're on the way out the door, you'll be glad you have a second. And since you can always use them for other wet things, like soiled clothes, swimsuits, etc, it's good to have them around. Because of that, its difficult to find them used online, since mamas often can use wetbags even after their LO is out of diapers.

It's that simple! For newborns, just put the diaper in the wet bag. For solid poo, dunk and swish or spray off and put in the wet bag. On laundry day, do a cold rinse, a hot wash with detergent, and an extra rinse, and you're golden!

Updated - I have now tried the WAHMIES brand wetbags - see photo and more info here.  It's smaller in size than the Loving Touch size M and has thinner PUL.  The advantage is its clip on the hanging loop - so you can loop it through slats on a crib or changing table, rather than just having to hang it over a doorknob.
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