Low Waste Mama: Cloth Diapering

We have been at this cloth diapering thing for over a year now, so obviously I have some THOUGHTS. Too many thoughts for one blog post. I tend to be horribly long-winded when I write, so I’ll probably break this down in a couple of posts. This one will just go into how we decided to go for it, what we took into consideration, and how we came to the final decision that it made sense for us as a family, because we were definitely on the fence initially. I also want to acknowledge that although there are some workarounds, I also recognize that choosing cloth diapering is a privilege made easier for us by living in a very sustainability-minded community, our income, our work schedules, and a number of other factors. I hope none of this comes across as ‘cloth diapering is easy! And everyone should do it!’ Because cloth diapering is great, and I want it to be a reasonable option for everyone, but it may not be for you or your family, for a number of reasons, and that’s ok. Ultimately I hope it becomes something that is accessible to all families who want to give it a go. 

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s dive in!

Like a lot of parents, Peter and I must have spent hours researching the ‘best’ of all the things for those first months of life: the best stroller, best way to sleep train, best parenting books…and yep, the best diapers. We didn’t personally know anyone who cloth-diapered and had heard conflicting info on whether it was the most eco-friendly way to go; some argue against it because of the cost, or because of the amount of energy used washing and drying, when you could buy compostable diapers instead. We ultimately decide to try cloth diapering (CD) for a number of reasons: 

Composting diapers is…complicated. Many sources offer compostable diapering as a reasonable eco-friendly alternative to CD. The reality is much more complicated. For us, it was very difficult to compost- pick up compost organizations will not accept human waste, and our sibling/roomies ultimately veto’ed a backyard compost for our home, so that was out. Which meant that in our situation, any fancy, expensive compostable diapers would just really just be expensive, single use diapers going straight into a landfill. That didn’t feel great to us. 

We found ways to mitigate cost. Depending on how you calculate things, yes, cloth diapering can be very expensive. Just like any capitalist venture, people will try to sell you the newest, the best, the most advanced/easy/convenient system, etc. If that brand new, high tech system is what you go for, then, yes- cloth diapering is going to get expensive. 

But- there is another way. We ultimately bought one new set of newborn diapers, large and small wet bags, and a couple of other items along the way, and purchased everything else secondhand. Larger sizes of diapers included. This may not be appealing to some, I get it. But having done this several times, I feel pretty comfortable diapering our kiddo in secondhand diapers. They were always perfectly clean when purchased, and we washed them before using them with E. As far as I can tell, she has never had an infection related to diapering. I never felt that we were compromising on hygiene. (Actually, I feel like her skin hygiene is better in cloth than in disposable diapers- more on that later.) 

We found ways to maximize usage and decrease waste. A super common argument against cloth diapering is that it’s not as energy-saving as folks tout it to be, and that can be true. Think of it this way: what if we bought 24 brand new cloth diapers and inserts, used them for 6 months, then ditched them for disposable…we really aren’t maximizing that product’s use, are we? Now think about using the same diapers twice, for 2 kids, over the course of 18-24 months per kid, and then selling, gifting, or donating them to a charity like this one that refurbishes old diapers and gives them to folks in need? You’re certainly getting a lot more bang for your buck.

Similarly, people like to point out that you use a lot more energy washing them- and yes, it’s true, you’ll do a ton more laundry. There’s no way around that. But you can line dry, you can maximize your load usage, you can throw towels into the second wash (cloth diapers require a hot a cold wash)- basically, there are ways to be more efficient with your energy use. 

I also want to throw a note out there on another common and pretty strong argument against CD. It is time consuming. It basically triples your laundry. Easily. This is true- I can’t argue against it. We wash our child’s diapers about 2-3 times per week. Peter washes. I reassemble. I don’t have a great argument for this one. We both work and choose to spend a lot of our time cleaning our child’s cloth diapers. You might decide you’d rather dedicate your time to something else besides doing cloth diaper laundry 3 nights a week. No judgment. If money were no object I might have looked into sending our cloth diapers out for cleaning, which some local companies do in our area. It’s getting more common to see cloth diaper services like this all over the country, which I think is great. 

Lastly, if this sounds intimidating to you and totally not your jam, I want to add that just like anything in life, this is not an all or nothing game. We do not use cloth diapers at night. We have taken breaks from them- like when we traveled to England and South Dakota, and when we were going through a TFMR with our second child. We’ve gone as long as a month using no cloth diapers at all. There is a quote by Anne Marie Bonneau that I really like: 

We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.

I think that applies so well in the parenting space.

This isn’t a race, nor is it a competition. This is the long haul effort to consume less and reduce waste, ultimately to improve the future for our children. Which is why I’m perfectly happy to sit on the sofa at 8 at night watching netflix and shoving cloth inserts into cloth diapers multiple nights per week :) 

That’s all I’ve got for part one of our experience with cloth diapering! What else would you like to know? Leave questions in the comments, and I’ll share my answers or any other takes in the next part of this post!