I know this is a little off track for the Technical angle we usually take on this blog but it follows suit on my own post on the Inconvenience of Saving our Planet that I wrote about last week. A inside joke here at 2 Fat Dads.com is we’re doing it for the diapers, any ad revenue, donations or commission we can make off the Amazon Store all go towards keeping our little ones in clean diapers. So the whole diaper issue became an interesting conversation point here and I though it was about time to break the embargo and actually bring up a real Dad topic for once.Another Popular things used for new born babies are moses baskets.
Moses baskets are woven baskets made to hold a baby. it had been given its name based upon the story of how baby Moses was placed during a woven basket that was waterproofed and placed into the Nile to save lots of his life. The story itself reflects security for a baby and this might be why the thought of a moses basket for baby would offer security within the eyes of a family and their precious child. this is often one among the explanations these baskets have always been so popular.
Moses baskets are very portable and straightforward to hold . they do not take up much room and storing them is extremely easy due to this. A mother or father can keep their beloved baby within arm’s reach at any given time making it very easy to stay a watchful eye on their baby. Transporting the baby from one room to a different are often done very easily without having to disturb their precious sleep.
These baskets from infantcore.com are designed together with your baby in mind. The inner fabric is usually mentioned because the liner, bumper, or bedding and may be made up of many various fabrics that are usually mechanically cleanable . This fabric also can be ordered separately from the basket or the basket are often crammed with a blanket from home. the dimensions of the basket is ideal for a baby between one and 4 months old and may be wont to store toys or other items after the baby has outgrown the basket.
As I mentioned before, most if not all of our Fat Dad blogger have a baby under 2 years of age. My wife and I recently welcomed twin boys into our house and one of the points she insisted on was that we would use cloth diapers for two main reasons:
- A) To save money
- B) To be gentler on the environment
Cloth Diapers are too Expensive
This just isn’t true anymore. The two first starter kits will cost you about $450.00 and see you through until your baby is about 30 pounds. What you get is this: (Kits taken from Bummis boutique in Pointe-Claire)
-
- Kit 1
- 24 small bio cloth diapers (7 à 15 lbs / 3 à 7 kg)
- 1 New Born Super Chou Chou overs (7 à 10 lbs / 3 à 5 kg)
- 2 Small Super Chou Chou overs (8 à 15 lbs / 4 à 7 kg)
- 3 Super Brites small colored overs (8 à 16 lbs / 3.5 à 7 kg)
- 1 roll of through away inner liners (100 feuillets)
- 1 Miracle Inner liners (5)
- 1 Large waterproof bag
- 1 Déodisk
- 1 Detergent à Lessive Claudia’s Choices (770g)
- 1 pale
-
- Kit 2
- 24 large bio cloth diapers (15 à 30 lbs / 7 à 14 kg)
- 3 Super Chou Chou medium overs (15 à 30 lbs / 7 à 14 kg)
- 3 Super Brite medium over liners (15 à 30 lbs / 7 à 14 kg)
- 1 roll of through away inner liners (100 feuillets)
- 1 Miracle Inner liners (5)
- 1 Large waterproof bag
- 1 Déodisk
- 1 Detergent à Lessive Claudia’s Choices (770g)
- 1 pale
Now that is a pretty good starter kit considering that we change our boys about 5 times a day, each. With a this starter kit we can last about 5 days before we need to wash the diapers. Of course you can get a few extra diapers to make the kits last a full seven days. And as the babies get older, there bladder control improves and you don’t need to change them as often as the newborns. When Les Boys were in the hospital we used the disposal diapers and one 5 day pack of 50 newborn diapers cost us $50.00 (preemie size are expensive). That is $10.00 a day for both boys until there first birthday and then about half that price until they are potty trained, both my daughters were trained, with occasional accidents of course, before they were 2 years old. Now if you get the diapers from Costco or Walmart, you’ll spend about $40 per pack of 100. If you sum all of this up you end up spending about $1500/year in diapers, not to mention wipes, Sudocrem (medicated zinc oxide) and swim diapers which you would still have to buy if you used cloth.
Cloth Diapers are Just Too Much Work
Now I’m pretty sure you’re either thinking about huge savings, $1000 is a lot of money in these days of hard economic times (you may drink). Or you’re thinking about the hassle factor of cleaning the diapers and your time spent doing it. Of course that is if you’ve decided against using a diaper cleaning service for added savings. We have a huge concrete sink in the basement, it has has a great high pressure tap and because we heat our water with natural gas it’s always warm is not hot. Yes there is some soaking involved but we haven’t had to scrub the diapers yet so it’s a pretty simple process. We wash the child cloths and the cute cheap baby girl clothes fairly often as they do seem to puke and dribble like any other baby so doing a full load of laundry instead of half a load or three quarters of a load doesn’t actually cost us any more in our front loading washing machine. This basically factors out the extra cost of running the washing machines and detergent, and as we would have to wash all of our cloth anyway, the cost of our time is negligent too. There is one important point to factor in here, the twins make up half of out kids… so we are always doing laundry.
My Daycare/CPE only wants us to bring in disposables.
Unfortunately, this one is mostly true. And this continues to be the only real issue I can see preventing more people for using cloth diapers again. If our boys went to day care, we would have to provide disposables for the daytime. It’s very very hard to find a daycare service that would respect our lifestyle choice of cloth diapers. Apart from all the green and economic issues, I think that the daycare issue is probably the biggest hindrance in most people’s choice. And then there is the thought of bringing home a bag of wet and sometimes smelly diapers every night that can be rather off putting for most. Now I remember a few camping trips where you had to pack out everything you brought in and that included your own doodies. Let me tell you that “Zero Impact” camping is a little hardcore even for me.
So what it all boils down to is that the economic impact of cloth diapers is definitely worth taking a look into if you have the good fortune of being home for the first few years of your child’s life.
As for the green impact of the using the old school cloth diapers, I can definitely attest that on the weekends where we use disposables, we throw out a full black Glad garbage bag of household refuse. Whereas we on the weekends we have a full compliment of cloths at hand, we throw out about 2 IGA white bags of trash. You might argue that this might also be do to the fact on those weekends we also have a take away and are too busy to cook and clean as we normally do.
I’d love to have straw poll in the comments about what kind of diapers you have used for your kids.
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Read more on this:
Should My Baby Wear Huggies?
Disposable vs. Cloth – the Diaper Debate
Virtues of Cloth – Compare for Yourself
Less Stuff: The Zero Waste Challenge
