Our baby will be 8 weeks old on Saturday! She’s a very good baby who mainly eats and sleeps a lot! And like any baby, she needs diapers! For the first month of having our her, we used disposable newborn diapers since she was a smaller baby. For wipes, we started off with the hospital provided wet wipes, but soon after started using our cloth wipes. Once baby was a month old and started getting too big for her newborn diapers, we made the switch to cloth diapers instead of buying a bigger disposable diaper size and haven’t looked back!
Our stash – initial investment/cost – $472
35 cloth diapers – $350
We have a total of 35 Nora’s Nursery cloth diapers (in the pocket diaper style), all purchased from Amazon when they were 20% off. I was planning to go the route of a diaper raffle with contributions to my diaper sets instead of the traditional disposable diapers, but I bought all of my diapers when I saw they were having a sale. Each set of 7 is $70, so my total diaper stash was $350 without including the sale discount/tax. Here’s one set I have, but they have so many cute ones to choose from!
40 cloth wipes – $40
I LOVE our cloth wipes. We have two of these sets, so 40 total. Because we have so many and we can just wash them, I can be pretty liberal when using them. Note that they do stain occasionally, but it doesn’t bother me!
Set of 3 spray bottles – $10
These spray bottles are the perfect size and have the perfect spritz. We keep one in the diaper bag at all times and one on baby’s changing table. The third will likely go with our baby to daycare! If it isn’t clear, we use these to spray baby’s bottom while wiping her down.
2-pack diaper cream – $22
This diaper cream is awesome, and we also used it when she was still in her disposable diapers. We are just getting to the bottom of our first jar, but there was a week where I was using a very, very liberal amount to help baby get over a diaper rash.
2-pack diaper pail wet bags – $20
These fit right into my standard diaper pail. I’m not including the pail itself in my stash since it’s a pretty common purchase whether you go disposable or cloth.
10 charcoal inserts – $30
We haven’t used these much, but we keep them on hand to act as booster inserts if baby becomes a heavy wetter or starts sleeping through the night.
Our setup
At home, I just use one diaper station which is her changing table. I initially changed her diapers in the pack n’ play if we weren’t back in our bedroom, but bending over to change her was killing my back! Plus, I’d prefer to just have all of her diapering supplies in one spot. So at her changing table, I have a spray bottle, diaper cream, and a (secured!) glass container of wipes. In the top drawers of the changing table are her fully prepped pocket diapers. I never have to fit a full 35 in the drawers because some will always be in her diaper pail, diaper bag, hanging to dry, or of course on her bottom!
For on the go, we bring one of the wet bags that comes with every diaper set of Nora’s Nursery. We don’t put anything in there besides dirty diapers. Our clean diapers (usually just 3-4) we just put directly in the diaper bag. Then our cloth wipes, glass spritzer filled with water, and diaper cream all go in one of the green pouches that came with our cloth wipes. Of course, we also have a changing mat in our diaper bag.
Our diaper change process
Cloth diapering is so easy once you figure out the sizing of diapers. In our case, we have snaps and for information on setting the size of Nora’s Nursery diapers, check out her website because I am not a pro! To change baby, we unsnap her diaper and if it’s pretty dirty, I might first wipe her with a dry cloth wipe just to contain the mess a bit. Sometimes I even set a clean wipe down over the mess just to limit her getting her feet dirty. Once it’s pretty under control, I’ll spritz her bottom directly with the little glass spray bottle. Simply wipe off with a dry wipe! (And likely repeat! lol) Then we put her diaper cream on before snapping her new diaper on. There are only 3 rise settings on our cloth diapers, so once you have them set, you won’t need to resize the snaps for a while. We currently have her on the smallest rise setting, and the only snaps we need to worry about when putting on her diaper are her thigh and waist snaps. Because she’s still so young, we have her on the tightest setting for both. Finally, put the dirty wipes and diaper into the diaper pail or wet bag. All done!
Our wash routine
This really isn’t too bad! I first replace the dirty diaper wet bag in the diaper pail with a clean, empty wet bag. If I don’t do this, I probably would never come back and put my new wet bag in there, lol. I then make sure we didn’t have a wet bag of dirty diapers in our diaper bag. Next, I take everything to the washer. I take out each diaper and shake out any wipes (we like to put the dirty wipes in the dirty diaper) before pulling the insert out of the diaper’s pocket. I do this for all of the diapers then put the wet bag and any of its remaining contents into the washer, too. For a typical wash, I’ll have cloth wipes, inserts (these are usually the cotton ones that come with each pocket diaper), diapers, wet bags, and any clothes or bedding that was soiled.
Because our baby is breastfed and not eating solids, we don’t do any manual rinses at this point. We do a warm/cold setting for a normal wash cycle and plop a Tide Pod in there. We make sure to use a strong detergent instead of anything too gentle to ensure the diapers get clean. We then follow that cycle with a warm/cold extra rinse. Again, please note that this wash routine will definitely change once our baby eats solids!
When the washer is all done (this takes longer than necessary because I usually forget to go back and start the extra rinse), it’s time for the dryer! To preserve our diapers so they last as long as possible, I drape 4-5 diapers over a clothes hanger and hang it from this rod below our wire shelving. I really wanted a clothesline, but I must admit this works just as well and is probably quicker/easier to do and not weather dependent. Anything that isn’t a diaper gets thrown into the dryer WITHOUT a dryer sheet. I think this is supposed to protect baby’s bottom. IF we had a more modern dryer, I’d say we put it on tumble dry low for x amount of time. However, our dryer doesn’t have many settings and takes a long time to dry, so we have it run forever until we check that the clothes are done.
The longest part of the process is actually airdrying our diapers. If I hang dry them by early evening, they’ll be ready to stuff by the next morning. You could totally put them in the dryer and successfully complete a load all in one day, but again, I like to be extra gentle on the diapers since they’d be more expensive to replace. To stuff the diapers, hold one end of the cotton insert and quite literally stuff it in the pocket diaper, but make sure it lays flat in there to best cover any places that could get soiled/wet. Finally, I just button the outermost snap so they’re easier to store in the dresser drawer. That’s it!
For us (or Brandon would correct and say ‘for me’, since I do 99% of our cloth diaper laundering), each day we at a minimum are either stuffing the previous diapers or also starting a new load of diapers. I have never gone more than every other day for washing cloth diapers! I tell Brandon if I went more than two days I’d probably never do them!
Final thoughts
I am so happy with our cloth diapering! We’re super lucky that we work from home, have a working washer/dryer, and will have a home daycare that supports cloth diapering. Without that, it would be much harder to do.
Nora’s Nursery has been great for our baby, and I don’t have any reason to try out different cloth diaper/wipe brands. While I love our cloth diapers, I do think the cloth wipes are particularly AWESOME and something that is worthwhile even if you use disposable diapers. We noticed our baby didn’t fuss when wiping her down with cloth wipes/water compared to when we used typical wipes. Plus, the pros are endless. Your hands don’t get dirty or wet, you can use a bunch without feeling wasteful, and you don’t have to worry about running out as long as you keep up with washing them. Plus with the spray bottles, you can be so much more targeted when cleaning up! Finally, baby’s bottom is dry at the end of the diaper change if you do a final pat down with a dry cloth.
One thing I may reconsider later on for this baby or the next is whether we want to keep our diaper pail. It fills up pretty quick given that cloth diapers ARE bulkier than disposable, and if we had them in a basket instead, they’d be able to air out more and we wouldn’t have to reach our arm into the wet bag when putting them in the washer. For now it works fine, but just something I’m considering! TBH more often than not I just leave the dirty diaper on the changing table instead of taking a few seconds to stuff it in the pail. I think if we just had an open basket, I’d be more likely to drop them in there instead of leaving them to pile up on the changing table.
So far, our only ongoing expense with our baby’s diapering is maybe an extra container of Tide Pods every few months and reordering diaper cream. Everything else can just be reused for this baby and the next!
If you have any cloth diapering questions, I’m probably not the best person. I’m no expert and still have a lot to learn when our baby starts solids!
Thanks for reading!
Davien
fluted wood & marble 
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