Why We Bother with the Cloth Diaper (bonus recipe!)

Truth be told: I had no plans to cloth diaper. I had thought about it, looked at them, and said "meh". I moved about my life as normal. I began to watch www.babysteals.com while I was pregnant so I could grab super cute awesome things that were super fantabulous. Poor Pumpkin (1 year) gets the shaft in comparison to Sweet Pea (3 years). Second kid, I suppose! They put the GroVia AIO cloth diapers on there for (wait for it) ..... a steal! So I stole them. Lots of them. I vowed that I would "show 'em how it's done" and that I would NOT invest any unnecessary money in disposable diapers. The reason I chose cloth:

MONEY

Remember, this was the 3.5 years ago me. The one that ate like a little piggy out of the crappy box food and sat in front of the television. Yeah, that one. We shelled out about $500 for these darn things, we might as well use them! And so it began. You know what's great about them? I stick the liner in, put it on a baby butt like a disposable and away we go! Really. It's not hard, not at all. I carry a wet bag if we're out and about for the just in case diapers. They've held up through two children with HARD use. We do not ever not use them. <----weird sentence!

So we continued to use them, but now with many reasons outside of money. We have had to replace a few here and there (Would you have guessed that I find them on the babysteals site still?) and have tried a few other brands with no luck. They work for us, why mess with it? The reasons have changed significantly since we began:

Chemical Free
Organic material
Comfortable Fit
One size (newborn-ish to age 2 -- Sweet Pea was potty trained by then, I'm sure they'd go farther!)
No stuffing, fighting, and the shells can be used several times before switching them out (less laundry!)
Earth preservation/eco-friendly
Money

Now, I'm frugal. Darn frugal. Money just isn't as important when it comes to the safety of our children. Until recently, I'd been using the Huggies brand sensitive wipes. Wanna know what's in them?

http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/product/140359/Huggies_Baby_Wipes,_Gentle_Care,_Sensitive_%282008_formulation%29/

Check that out and tell me you're still comfortable with the "sensitive brand". Parabens are NOT safe and they're in all sorts of crap! Ridiculous. So I switched to a more Earth friendly brand but will be sewing up some cloth wipes this weekend from some old receiving blankets. I'm pretty stoked about that little project!

We used to wash our cloth diapers in regular detergent. Not so smart for up keeping the dipes. Really, it's not. Build up, grossness, yeah...ew. So, I ran out of that chemical filled detergent and started looking for my own. Found a bunch of sites, recipes, etc. and generally follow one specific recipe. I love this recipe. It's as easy as dumping ingredients and shaking the canister to mix them and there's NO borax, so my 3 year old can help. Yup. Child labor, I'm there. She loves to dump and pour. Why in the world would I deprive her!? :-D

Here's our fancy recipe:

• 1.5 c. epsom salt (use more salt for harder water)
• 1 c. washing soda
• 1 c. baking soda
• 1 c. baby oxiclean (I've used regular out of desperation...)

Pour it all in and shake it up baby!