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My wife and I cloth diapered both of our children. In addition to being radically cheaper it also resolved rashes/eczema in both kids as well as accelerated pot

My wife and I cloth diapered both of our children. In addition to being radically cheaper it also resolved rashes/eczema in both kids as well as accelerated potty training. There is an 'ick' factor but liners and a toilet sprayer take care of 99% of that.

paulryanrogers 9y ago
Diaper services can also be better for the environment and the wallet.
- beagle3 9y ago
  That depends on your location; my experience in NYC was that diaper services were just a little more expensive than buying small bags of disposable at CVS, and vastly more expensive than ordering bigger bags of disposable at Amazon.
soperj 9y ago
I found with liners it was even better than diapers. No smell because everything goes down the toilet. Mind you, my kids were eating solids before we put them in cloth.
corvallis 9y ago
A lot of people don't live in places with an in-home washer/dryer. They have to go elsewhere in the building for pay laundry or to the laundromat. This makes it logistically and financially nearly impossible to use cloth diapers. Not to mention the substantial up front cost for cloth diapers, which makes them inaccessible for people living paycheck to paycheck. This is an example of how having money allows you to save money.
- mc32 9y ago
  I imagine for those, you could use a washboard in a shower/tub. It's not a huge volume and the "dirt" is not caked in, for the most part, so it should be a fairly easy wash.
- akira2501 9y ago
  When I think about UBI I worry about responsible spending and wonder if just subsidizing common items food, clothing (diapers) and household goods wouldn't be a smarter solution overall. In relation to the case in the article, I wonder if we couldn't subsidize certain items and allow parents to receive a one month supply at low to no cost? Why should we give disadvantaged people $180 a month just to let several middlemen take a cut via the corner drugstore?
  - MereInterest 9y ago
    The main idea behind UBI is that the government doesn't know exactly what each individual needs at any given time, but does know that those things can probably be bought for money. One person might need diapers, another socks, and yet another a car payment to take their child to school. Given money increases flexibility, as opposed to a fixed list of items that may or may not be needed.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    This has been done in the past, e.g. government cheese. It turns out that letting the market deliver necessities based off of demand is far more efficient than the alternative. That would be a government anticipates how much a community will use, what styles of diapers they'll want, etc.
    - zeth___ 9y ago
      [[citation needed]] And I mean a comparison between governments of equally developed nations. That means that you compare the USSR to Brazil and not the USA. Since the difference in HDI between the USSR and Brazil was smaller than that of the USSR to the USA.
    - eesmith 9y ago
      Really? Do tell me more about the benefits of water system privatization in the US. Story upon story like https://heavy.com/news/2018/02/risks-costs-private-water-lead-poison/ https://heavy.com/news/2018/02/risks-costs-private-water-lea... doesn't make me conclude that letting the market deliver water is "far more efficient than" a public water system.
- shiftpgdn 9y ago
  You can hand wash them in a bucket with washboard (though we didn't) and line dry them. We actually line dried ours about once a month to air them out and sun-bleach the cloth. About 30 $5-15 cloth diapers lasts you 3-4 days between washes.
  - cobalt 9y ago
    where are you line drying them? In your bathroom, most people are lucky if they have an outside space to do this when living paycheck to paycheck
    - j4kp07 9y ago
      Correct. In your bathroom. Honestly, there is an epidemic of self defeatist in our day and age.
      - nroach 9y ago
        In my area, where relative humidity is often 60-90%, this form of drying would result in moldy cloth, not dry diapers. My guess is Tampa's microclimate is probably similar and line drying isn't an option.
        janekm 9y ago
        People line dry everything in south-east Asia, in >90% RH. Though I suppose that’s usually out a window or on a balcony.
        flukus 9y ago
        How do you think people washed and dried clothes there 100 years ago? How do you think they do it in more humid and poorer places today? Do you leave your towel on the towel rack and let it dry there or do you throw it in the dryer every time? Mold thrives in moist, dark places, not most sunny ones.
        romwell 9y ago
- maxk42 9y ago
  You don't need a washer / dryer. You wash them in a bucket with soap. Only takes a few minutes.
- astura 9y ago
  Well, I mean, I personally know people who are living paycheck to paycheck who cloth diaper, it's not basically impossible like you suggest. It's really, really not.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  Even if you go with a diaper service instead of washing them yourself, cloth can be cheaper than disposable. It depends on your local rates and the number of diapers you need per week; typically the more you need the cheaper a diaper service is per-diaper.
bgirard 9y ago
Same, at first I wasn't sold on the concept but my wife wanted to try. It's way cheaper and better for environment. Now I don't regret it and find the idea of using 100% disposables silly. We still use one disposable each night because they absorb better or one here and there when we're out. The upfront cost was $150 so that might be an issue for some.
- JackFr 9y ago
  If you didn't have in home access to a washer and dryer (that is, assuming you do) would your opinion change?
  - bgirard 9y ago
    It depends. If I can afford it then I'm likely to exclude any residence that doesn't have a washer and dryer. And if I can't afford it then I'm more like to use cloth diapers because then the savings is significant.
war1025 9y ago
We cloth diaper too (3 kids, a two and a half year old potty trained for about a year now, and 5 month old twins). Personally, I find disposable diapers to be way more disgusting than cloth. With cloth, you rinse it out and the majority of the gross stuff is down the drain. With disposables, you end up with a garbage can literally full of poop. Its like having a mini pit toilet in your house. We have also noticed, like you mentioned, that cloth diapers are easier on the babies' skin and makes potty training significantly easier. For anyone who is reading this and may be interested in cloth diapering: Get some quality covers and then buy a ton of flour sack towels. They make the best inserts. Super absorbent, cheap, and unfolds to a single layer, which means they get cleaner and dry faster.
- dancek 9y ago
  Props for doing that. We tried with our twins, but eventually decided cloth diapers are for people with single kids that aren't burnt out.
  - milesvp 9y ago
    Ugh. Yeah, I regret deeply buying cloth diapers for my twins. The economics looks better for twins, since you only need like 50% more, but the time premium is higher than expected with twins, so it ended up eating into too much prescious downtime. Worse is we couldn't get them to stop drinking the majority of their fluid intake before bed, and the pee at night required us to use absorbant disposables anyways. In the end I'm not sure they were a net positive investment, even ignoring the higher than expected opportunity cost of havings twins.
  - josefresco 9y ago
    "cloth diapers are for people with single kids" Maybe not for twins, but "one kid at-a-time" is more than doable and the second kid is where the real money savings come in.
    - dancek 9y ago
      Yeah, I meant that by single (English is my second language). And of course cloth diapers are probably a good idea for twins too, but I just couldn't handle it. There comes a point where you'll give almost anything to get five minutes of free time every now and then.
craftyguy 9y ago
how does this not contaminate your washer with feces?
- Aloha 9y ago
  Detergent and water gets just about anything clean.. However, you presoak them, and scrape a majority of the feces off into the toilet at change time.
- white-flame 9y ago
  Do you think your washer is somehow not already contaminated with feces, from washing underwear? I read an article a while ago that tested and found substantial fecal residue in typical washing machines, without cloth diapers going through them. Can't find it now among all the cloth diaper related search hits.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Good point.
  - astura 9y ago
    My grandma always used to wash undies by hand separately and then pour boiling water over them. I found it to be very weird when I was a kid, but she might have been onto something. I would do this if I was living with an immunocompromised person but its probably overkill for a healthy family. It's also suggested you clean the washer every once in a while too. Fecal bacteria is found everywhere it seems, so that's why frequent hand washing (especially before food prep) is important.
- mirimir 9y ago
  You rinse diapers in the toilet before washing them.
stevekemp 9y ago
We're also using cloth diapers, except when travelling (which is pretty rare), but it has had no impact on the childs exzema. (As expected really, half of the rashes are on his arms/torso and completely away from the diaper-end!)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lnsru 9y ago
We did the same. Putting this thing into cloth removed ‘ick’ factor: https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/B00E5NN4KQ/ref=mh_s9_acsd_top_b4Kbwkh_c_x_1_w?pf_rd_m=A3JWKAKR8XB7XF&pf_rd_s=mobile-hybrid-3&pf_rd_r=RC9EXB7TJKS2TZ5TBBBD&pf_rd_r=RC9EXB7TJKS2TZ5TBBBD&pf_rd_t=30901&pf_rd_p=3e584788-68e7-51f7-859b-a6906949c89d&pf_rd_p=3e584788-68e7-51f7-859b-a6906949c89d&pf_rd_i=3969102031 https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/B00E5NN4KQ/ref=mh_s9_acsd_top_... It can be washed 2-3 times if nothing serious happened.
collyw 9y ago
Its a whole lot more environmentally friendly as well. And that's something that will probably affect your kids more than you.
dbatten 9y ago
Serious question(s) from a father of 2 under 2... How do you get the cloth diapers clean? Like, really clean so they don't still smell after they've been cleaned? My wife and I were planning on cloth diapering. We bought some high-end cloth diaper and liners and started on our merry way. We found that no matter what we did, our little guy smelled like piss all the time. My wife was washing diapers 2 or 3 times in between wearings, "stripping" them to remove remaining smells, etc., etc. Our water bill went up by literally $50 a month, we were buying all kinds of detergents to try and get the smells to go away, and we had already invested a ton of money actually buying diapers in the first place. Not to mention that my wife was spending all her time washing, re-washing, and folding diapers _and_ our kid still smelled like piss. In our case, disposables were a god-send. The little dude is happy, he doesn't smell, my wife doesn't spend half her day cleaning diapers, and (especially since we buy diapers in bulk on good sales), we've found disposable diapers to actually be far _cheaper_ than what we were paying for water, detergent, startup costs, etc. on cloth. I would never go back, just because of the time savings alone.
- jetcata 9y ago
  You need to soak them in something stronger before washing - something bleach based. Napisan is great for this (and also for any white shirts etc).
- sailfast 9y ago
  Have you tried putting them in the sun? Sunlight does a lot of good on diapers. If you have the option I'd put them on a line outside. As for the other stuff, we used a double-rinse with powdered detergent and things seemed to work pretty well. The time factor was _super_ annoying. Maintenance for cloth diapers is a full-time job sometimes, but it felt good not to add a billion pounds of waste to the landfill. Full disclosure: Now that we travel a lot more, we're pretty much only in disposables.
- chevman 9y ago
  We used cloth diapers on my son (who is now almost 4). Our technique was as follows: -One wash cycle in warm water using no soap. -One wash cycle in hot water using soap. -Dry Every couple weeks we would put white vinegar in the no-soap cycle. This helps cut the smell down. Every couple months we would put a small amount of bleach in the no-soap cycle. Any more frequent than this and we found the diapers then irritated our son's skin. If I had to do it all over again, not sure how I would choose. As you call out, there are additional costs to the cloth diaper approach (water, detergent, etc) that add up, plus it takes quite a bit of time. One advantage that we found is that our son, and other folks we know who used cloth diapers, all had kids who ended up potty training sooner (anywhere from a couple months to 6+ months earlier) than kids wearing disposables.
castlecrasher2 9y ago
Where did you get cheap cloth diapers? I haven't looked too much into it but some women in my family recommended against it because they said cloth diapers are expensive.
balls187 9y ago
We travel a lot with our son. No way we were gonna do that with cloth diapers.

paulryanrogers 9y ago

Diaper services can also be better for the environment and the wallet.

beagle3 9y ago
That depends on your location; my experience in NYC was that diaper services were just a little more expensive than buying small bags of disposable at CVS, and vastly more expensive than ordering bigger bags of disposable at Amazon.

soperj 9y ago

I found with liners it was even better than diapers. No smell because everything goes down the toilet. Mind you, my kids were eating solids before we put them in cloth.

corvallis 9y ago

A lot of people don't live in places with an in-home washer/dryer. They have to go elsewhere in the building for pay laundry or to the laundromat. This makes it logistically and financially nearly impossible to use cloth diapers. Not to mention the substantial up front cost for cloth diapers, which makes them inaccessible for people living paycheck to paycheck. This is an example of how having money allows you to save money.

mc32 9y ago
I imagine for those, you could use a washboard in a shower/tub. It's not a huge volume and the "dirt" is not caked in, for the most part, so it should be a fairly easy wash.
akira2501 9y ago
When I think about UBI I worry about responsible spending and wonder if just subsidizing common items food, clothing (diapers) and household goods wouldn't be a smarter solution overall. In relation to the case in the article, I wonder if we couldn't subsidize certain items and allow parents to receive a one month supply at low to no cost? Why should we give disadvantaged people $180 a month just to let several middlemen take a cut via the corner drugstore?
- MereInterest 9y ago
  The main idea behind UBI is that the government doesn't know exactly what each individual needs at any given time, but does know that those things can probably be bought for money. One person might need diapers, another socks, and yet another a car payment to take their child to school. Given money increases flexibility, as opposed to a fixed list of items that may or may not be needed.
- linkregister 9y ago
  This has been done in the past, e.g. government cheese. It turns out that letting the market deliver necessities based off of demand is far more efficient than the alternative. That would be a government anticipates how much a community will use, what styles of diapers they'll want, etc.
  - zeth___ 9y ago
    [[citation needed]] And I mean a comparison between governments of equally developed nations. That means that you compare the USSR to Brazil and not the USA. Since the difference in HDI between the USSR and Brazil was smaller than that of the USSR to the USA.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    Really? Do tell me more about the benefits of water system privatization in the US. Story upon story like https://heavy.com/news/2018/02/risks-costs-private-water-lead-poison/ https://heavy.com/news/2018/02/risks-costs-private-water-lea... doesn't make me conclude that letting the market deliver water is "far more efficient than" a public water system.
shiftpgdn 9y ago
You can hand wash them in a bucket with washboard (though we didn't) and line dry them. We actually line dried ours about once a month to air them out and sun-bleach the cloth. About 30 $5-15 cloth diapers lasts you 3-4 days between washes.
- cobalt 9y ago
  where are you line drying them? In your bathroom, most people are lucky if they have an outside space to do this when living paycheck to paycheck
  - j4kp07 9y ago
    Correct. In your bathroom. Honestly, there is an epidemic of self defeatist in our day and age.
    - nroach 9y ago
      In my area, where relative humidity is often 60-90%, this form of drying would result in moldy cloth, not dry diapers. My guess is Tampa's microclimate is probably similar and line drying isn't an option.
      - janekm 9y ago
        People line dry everything in south-east Asia, in >90% RH. Though I suppose that’s usually out a window or on a balcony.
      - flukus 9y ago
        How do you think people washed and dried clothes there 100 years ago? How do you think they do it in more humid and poorer places today? Do you leave your towel on the towel rack and let it dry there or do you throw it in the dryer every time? Mold thrives in moist, dark places, not most sunny ones.
        romwell 9y ago
maxk42 9y ago
You don't need a washer / dryer. You wash them in a bucket with soap. Only takes a few minutes.
astura 9y ago
Well, I mean, I personally know people who are living paycheck to paycheck who cloth diaper, it's not basically impossible like you suggest. It's really, really not.
bzbarsky 9y ago
Even if you go with a diaper service instead of washing them yourself, cloth can be cheaper than disposable. It depends on your local rates and the number of diapers you need per week; typically the more you need the cheaper a diaper service is per-diaper.

bgirard 9y ago

Same, at first I wasn't sold on the concept but my wife wanted to try. It's way cheaper and better for environment. Now I don't regret it and find the idea of using 100% disposables silly. We still use one disposable each night because they absorb better or one here and there when we're out. The upfront cost was $150 so that might be an issue for some.

JackFr 9y ago
If you didn't have in home access to a washer and dryer (that is, assuming you do) would your opinion change?
- bgirard 9y ago
  It depends. If I can afford it then I'm likely to exclude any residence that doesn't have a washer and dryer. And if I can't afford it then I'm more like to use cloth diapers because then the savings is significant.

war1025 9y ago

We cloth diaper too (3 kids, a two and a half year old potty trained for about a year now, and 5 month old twins). Personally, I find disposable diapers to be way more disgusting than cloth. With cloth, you rinse it out and the majority of the gross stuff is down the drain. With disposables, you end up with a garbage can literally full of poop. Its like having a mini pit toilet in your house. We have also noticed, like you mentioned, that cloth diapers are easier on the babies' skin and makes potty training significantly easier. For anyone who is reading this and may be interested in cloth diapering: Get some quality covers and then buy a ton of flour sack towels. They make the best inserts. Super absorbent, cheap, and unfolds to a single layer, which means they get cleaner and dry faster.

dancek 9y ago
Props for doing that. We tried with our twins, but eventually decided cloth diapers are for people with single kids that aren't burnt out.
- milesvp 9y ago
  Ugh. Yeah, I regret deeply buying cloth diapers for my twins. The economics looks better for twins, since you only need like 50% more, but the time premium is higher than expected with twins, so it ended up eating into too much prescious downtime. Worse is we couldn't get them to stop drinking the majority of their fluid intake before bed, and the pee at night required us to use absorbant disposables anyways. In the end I'm not sure they were a net positive investment, even ignoring the higher than expected opportunity cost of havings twins.
- josefresco 9y ago
  "cloth diapers are for people with single kids" Maybe not for twins, but "one kid at-a-time" is more than doable and the second kid is where the real money savings come in.
  - dancek 9y ago
    Yeah, I meant that by single (English is my second language). And of course cloth diapers are probably a good idea for twins too, but I just couldn't handle it. There comes a point where you'll give almost anything to get five minutes of free time every now and then.

craftyguy 9y ago

how does this not contaminate your washer with feces?

Aloha 9y ago
Detergent and water gets just about anything clean.. However, you presoak them, and scrape a majority of the feces off into the toilet at change time.
white-flame 9y ago
Do you think your washer is somehow not already contaminated with feces, from washing underwear? I read an article a while ago that tested and found substantial fecal residue in typical washing machines, without cloth diapers going through them. Can't find it now among all the cloth diaper related search hits.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Good point.
- astura 9y ago
  My grandma always used to wash undies by hand separately and then pour boiling water over them. I found it to be very weird when I was a kid, but she might have been onto something. I would do this if I was living with an immunocompromised person but its probably overkill for a healthy family. It's also suggested you clean the washer every once in a while too. Fecal bacteria is found everywhere it seems, so that's why frequent hand washing (especially before food prep) is important.
mirimir 9y ago
You rinse diapers in the toilet before washing them.

stevekemp 9y ago

We're also using cloth diapers, except when travelling (which is pretty rare), but it has had no impact on the childs exzema. (As expected really, half of the rashes are on his arms/torso and completely away from the diaper-end!)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lnsru 9y ago

We did the same. Putting this thing into cloth removed ‘ick’ factor: https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/B00E5NN4KQ/ref=mh_s9_acsd_top_b4Kbwkh_c_x_1_w?pf_rd_m=A3JWKAKR8XB7XF&pf_rd_s=mobile-hybrid-3&pf_rd_r=RC9EXB7TJKS2TZ5TBBBD&pf_rd_r=RC9EXB7TJKS2TZ5TBBBD&pf_rd_t=30901&pf_rd_p=3e584788-68e7-51f7-859b-a6906949c89d&pf_rd_p=3e584788-68e7-51f7-859b-a6906949c89d&pf_rd_i=3969102031 https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/B00E5NN4KQ/ref=mh_s9_acsd_top_... It can be washed 2-3 times if nothing serious happened.

collyw 9y ago

Its a whole lot more environmentally friendly as well. And that's something that will probably affect your kids more than you.

dbatten 9y ago

Serious question(s) from a father of 2 under 2... How do you get the cloth diapers clean? Like, really clean so they don't still smell after they've been cleaned? My wife and I were planning on cloth diapering. We bought some high-end cloth diaper and liners and started on our merry way. We found that no matter what we did, our little guy smelled like piss all the time. My wife was washing diapers 2 or 3 times in between wearings, "stripping" them to remove remaining smells, etc., etc. Our water bill went up by literally $50 a month, we were buying all kinds of detergents to try and get the smells to go away, and we had already invested a ton of money actually buying diapers in the first place. Not to mention that my wife was spending all her time washing, re-washing, and folding diapers _and_ our kid still smelled like piss. In our case, disposables were a god-send. The little dude is happy, he doesn't smell, my wife doesn't spend half her day cleaning diapers, and (especially since we buy diapers in bulk on good sales), we've found disposable diapers to actually be far _cheaper_ than what we were paying for water, detergent, startup costs, etc. on cloth. I would never go back, just because of the time savings alone.

jetcata 9y ago
You need to soak them in something stronger before washing - something bleach based. Napisan is great for this (and also for any white shirts etc).
sailfast 9y ago
Have you tried putting them in the sun? Sunlight does a lot of good on diapers. If you have the option I'd put them on a line outside. As for the other stuff, we used a double-rinse with powdered detergent and things seemed to work pretty well. The time factor was _super_ annoying. Maintenance for cloth diapers is a full-time job sometimes, but it felt good not to add a billion pounds of waste to the landfill. Full disclosure: Now that we travel a lot more, we're pretty much only in disposables.
chevman 9y ago
We used cloth diapers on my son (who is now almost 4). Our technique was as follows: -One wash cycle in warm water using no soap. -One wash cycle in hot water using soap. -Dry Every couple weeks we would put white vinegar in the no-soap cycle. This helps cut the smell down. Every couple months we would put a small amount of bleach in the no-soap cycle. Any more frequent than this and we found the diapers then irritated our son's skin. If I had to do it all over again, not sure how I would choose. As you call out, there are additional costs to the cloth diaper approach (water, detergent, etc) that add up, plus it takes quite a bit of time. One advantage that we found is that our son, and other folks we know who used cloth diapers, all had kids who ended up potty training sooner (anywhere from a couple months to 6+ months earlier) than kids wearing disposables.

castlecrasher2 9y ago

Where did you get cheap cloth diapers? I haven't looked too much into it but some women in my family recommended against it because they said cloth diapers are expensive.

balls187 9y ago

We travel a lot with our son. No way we were gonna do that with cloth diapers.