Living A Little Green

Cloth Diaper Parade

I have been cloth Diapering Jack now for 4 weeks. He wore his first cloth diaper minutes after coming home from the hospital! I must admit I didn't really know what I was getting into with cloth diapering. I had done some research, and talked with my cousin who uses cloth for her boys. After all of my research I realized that it was pretty costly to start a stash of cloth diapers. There are sites that offer trial packages with many different kinds of cloth diapers. Jillian's drawers does this. (jilliansdrawers.com ) You try out the diapers and if you choose to keep them you pay some additional money and if you choose not to keep them they refund your money. I thought about doing this but really didn't want to spend the money.

I continued on with my research and after going to various sites and finding relatively the same prices all around I dug a little deeper. I started googling free "soaker" patterns. Soakers refer to the lining in a cloth diaper that soaks up urine or it can also refer to shorts or pants made out of wool or fleece. My cousin was making wool soakers and covers for diapers for her coming newborn. I am a crocheter so I started looking for a pattern and then went to buy some wool.This is the pattern I used for my soakers. withatangledskein.blogspot.com/2008/02/little-fire-crochet-soaker-pattern.html  I made them in a few different sizes.

Here is Little man Jack wearing his wool soaker. Can you see all the diapers hanging in the background?

I then became sucked into the cloth diapering world..... I was on the Internet everyday looking for more patterns. That is when I came across some sites for patterns on making your own diapers. I owned a sewing machine so I thought I would give it a try. I started out making more covers out of fabric. Then I ventured on with making my first "fitted" diaper. I then continued on to make my first All in one diaper. I also made a wet bag a wipe bag and nursing covers. 

Here are The first things I made. A cover, an All in one, soaker on the bottom is a fleece soaker and 2 fitted diapers. I am now obsessed with finding fabric deals I try to avoid Joann fabrics unless there is a major sale! I have a mass supply of fabric that I have to start using soon. I need to make a bigger size fitted diaper for Little Man Jack soon he is growing out of his newborn size. I have made around 30 fitted diapers, 3 all in ones, 5 wool soakers, 3 fleece soakers, and 7 covers. I also have 24 prefolds.Oh and I made cloth wipes. It didn't make sense to use disposable wipes with cloth diapers! I can go about 3 1/2 days before I have to wash diapers. 

This is a normal wash day... but now that I have even more diapers it is a little more now. I use Rockin Green Laundry detergent(rockingreensoap.com ) for my diapers and whites. I was turned onto Rockin Green by my cousin as well. I ordered a bag to try and I also won a bag off of a blog that I follow called Green Grandma ( thegreengrandma.blogspot.com ). The blog writer is the mother of a friend from Pittsburgh. You should stop by and check out her blog. I have learned a lot from this blog on ways to live a little bit greener. I love her Vinegar Friday posts. 

In closing of this post I want to say that it feels great to know that I have saved a landfill from approx. 324 disposable diapers in 27 days!