Monday, May 23, 2011

Cloth Diapering and Cloth Wipes

I've been cloth diapering for a few years now; we started with Little Dude was a year old, right after we found out JR was on his way! At the time, I didn't know anyone that cloth diapered, but had seen a lady in TN (where we lived for Little Dude's first 9 months) doing it, and I was a bit intrigued, since she had all these cute covers.

Anyways, after realizing we were soon going to be doing double diaper duty with two under the age of two, I started adding up the cost and figured out pretty quickly that even with increased water, electricity, and detergent usage to do the extra loads of laundry, by FAR we would save a TON with cloth diapers. Especially since I got a lot of mine as "pre loved" ones from http://www.momforlife.com and ebay. Germ-a-phob that I am, I of course washed them with bleach a few times before ever using them on the kiddos.

So, now four years later, I am still super happy with all my cloth diapers and wet bags. LOVE doing it.

But as much as I love doing the cloth diapers, using cloth wipes never crossed my mind, for some reason. Now though, that the cost of the baby wipes I normally get have jumped up a bunch and the fact that I only have one diaper wearer now as apposed to two (yay, JR is out of diapers at night too now, YAYAYAY!)I am really considering the cost, and trying to figure how I can make it as cheap as possible.

So here are my thoughts:

One, I am going to use baby wash cloths (I have a ton for some reason, though I only use his mickey mouse one at bath time) and the "newborn inserts" that came with my cloth diapers. Now that Champ is bigger and peeing more, he is using just the regular insert folded to the small size setting, so what to do with all the newborn inserts? I am thinking they will be perfect baby wipes.

Two, I am so tired of pulling out the baby wipes from my wet bag before washing diapers, or worse, pulling them out of the diaper Velcro after being washed (the Velcro won't stick when the wipe is all stuck in it, so you have to pull every.little.bit.out. ugh.)

Three, I want to cut our costs more and as a bonus reduce the amount of trash I am creating for landfills.

I am also going to use a solution of baby wash with water in a recycled regular wipe container (I will test its water holding power in the sink before putting it on Champ's dresser, hopefully it will be water tight)and then just place the newborn inserts/wash cloths in there as needed.

When done? I'll just throw them in with my diapers in the wet bag as normal, but instead of pulling them out of the wash or bag later, I can just wash everything with no worries about my Velcro getting messed up. Yippie!

I did go ahead and order a travel wipes spray for the diaper bag, though I am fine with using regular wipes just for travel if needed.

So, off on the adventure of cloth wipes I go. I'll let you know how it turns out.

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