using cloth nappies
I have a small confession to make. For the first four weeks of the little fella’s life we used disposable nappies. Not entirely, we had a foray into cloth the few days we were at home, but mostly it was disposable. The hospital required it, and I’m not sure I could have managed the six long days in the car with a bucket full of stinking nappies.
But now that things have settled down and we’re back at home, we have gone the last week using entirely cloth nappies (even out and about) and we won’t go back to disposable (unless we have to do another long car trip etc). I have to say that using cloth nappies is really not that much more work than using disposables. We are currently using terry towelling flats. They are inexpensive (we purchased them at $1.70 each), easy to wash and dry (much quicker than fitted nappies – a night on the clothes horse in the laundry is sufficient at the moment).
If you’re interested, below is how we fold our nappies. It fits a newborn bum well and is a good fold for boys.
Fold the corners into the middle to make a smaller square. It would help if our nappies were square to begin with.
Fold one side about 1/3 of the way across and fan out the top corner.
Fold the other side over the first and fan out the top corner also.
To make the nappy slightly more compact, I fold down the top edge.
Turn the front up and wrap the sides around baby’s waste. Fasten with a snappy. Bub’s asleep, so I’ll have to take photos of the nappy on some other time.
We do use disposable liners at the moment as they make cleaning up easier. I have cut up chux into small squares to use as baby wipes. We just use water at the moment to wipe him (and bath him). As the little fella had thrush thanks to the anti-biotics I was taking, we give him a nice smear of cream at most nappy changes.
Great advice from a reader (thanks Fiona) is to get a whole heap of nappies and use more than one bucket. At the moment I’m pretty much washing nappies every day and when the bucket is full, they end up sitting in the tub waiting for the next load. And as we live in a two story townhouse, it would be good to have a bucket upstairs and down (although I get more exercise this way)! We still wash in cold water and use homemade laundry detergent and hang dry (we don’t own a dryer anyway, but terry flats dry fairly quickly).
The only thing stopping me from buying more nappies is that we are starting to practice natural infant hygiene or elimination communication (EC). EC is where you respond to baby’s cues and hold him over a bowl or tub so that they can toilet naturally, rather than them soiling nappies all the time.
Today I ‘caught’ our first ‘number two’ in an old ice cream container. Whoohoo, one less nappy to wash! It was followed by not one but three wees on a towel on the carpet. Whatever the little fella’s cues were I missed them, it’s a learning process for both of us.
The difficulty is that bub likes to toilet at the same time as feeding, which makes things complicated. I soon discovered that pulling a nappy on and off while feeding was too much of a hassle for both of us so I have a nappy under him just in case and I don’t wear jeans while feeding him (and hope I don’t get a tinkle in the face 
). It takes time and patience to EC, so we are just trying it a few times a day to get used to it and not at all at night.
If you’ve had experience with EC, I would love to hear from you and how you are going with it.
Have you read these posts?
- in one end and out the other: cloth nappies six months on
- Showcasing: Nurture Nappies
- The Ultimate Guide To Making Your Own Diapers/Nappies
- bags, west wing, nappies and other miscellanea
SAVE MONEY AND TIME ON THE GROCERIES
THE FRUGAL AND THRIVING WAY
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[...] if you consider the extra time spent having to go out and buy disposables. Which brings me to the savings. We calculated that we would save around $2,000 in one year by using cloth nappies instead of [...]
How much money do you think you are saving using the cloth ones? Have you done a price comparison? Just curious.
I read once that using cloth nappies was more expensive than disposable – I was quite mad until I sat down and did some numbers. It can be true – if you buy the expensive fitted nappies, wash in hot water with brand name detergent every day and use a dryer, then it can be more expensive to go cloth.
Our cloth nappies cost $1.70 each. I wash every day or two (nappy gets worn about 3 times a week), so over the course of a year the capital expenditure is less than 1 cent per wear (assuming they last that long). To wash them I use cold water, make my own detergent and line dry. Electricity = 4c (calculated as per last bill), water = 6c (calculated from rates notice), detergent and soaker = 20c (approx. and this amount washes 14 nappies. Altogether the washing cost is 30c divided by 14 nappies = 2.14c each). Plus liner = 3c. So each nappy with capital cost and washing and liner costs around 6c each per wear. This is compared to a Huggies nappy (the brand we bought – the other brands leaked) at 72c each. Quite a significant saving if my calculations are correct.
Hopefully we will have less washing soon since we are practicing EC. We have gone two days now without a pooey nappy (bub poos in the potty instead – so much easy to clean up – no poo smear everywhere!)