I’ve mentioned before that our daycare decision was made easier when our top pick was also the only daycare we interviewed that would allow us to bring in cloth diapers.
I was so excited for the money it would save us to continue cloth diapering at home & while I’m at work. And that’s very true. A pack of disposable diapers will last us a long time since we only use them overnight where as if we used disposables all the time, we’d quickly go through a 40 pack of diapers in two days.
To make it easier on their teachers, I decided we’d bring only prestuffed pocket diapers or AIOs to daycare. No cloth diapers that required multi-steps or covers.
When they first started going to daycare, we had approximately twelve AIO/pocket diapers from a variety of brands that I’d purchased, won from giveaways or been given over the last few years including itti bitti, AppleCheeks, BumGenius, FuzziBunz, Thirties Duo, Charlie Banana & SoftBums. We also had four Flip covers/inserts to use as daycare backups only since they were still pretty big for Zach.
My friend Poe then lent us a set of 16 BumGenius 4.0 AIOS in size medium. They’re a tad big on Zach for now but very handy when we’re behind on laundry. My friend Emilee decided against using cloth on her daughter after she’d already bought some. She sold what she could then graciously gave us what she had left ~ four Dry Bee’s AIOs & a couple random other pockets. I bought a few more of our favorites on sale & our stash of fluff was enough {for now}.
We need ten cloth diapers a day for daycare. Two for them to wear in the mornings & four each for diaper changes throughout the day. I’ve found we have enough diapers that I don’t have to do cloth diaper laundry but every other night. Of course, days that they poop {they still don’t poop daily}, we tend to do a laundry load or at least a rinse cycle over night.
I’ve continued to wash my cloth diapers like I started & mentioned in my first diaper post: cold rinse, add Tide Free & Gentle at the first line, then hot/cold wash with double rinse. We have had just a few times with super poopy diapers that I’ve needed to rewash them & had just a few stains that needed sunning.
I dry everything on low once then pull out & line dry the covers. Sometimes the first drying cycle starts as we’re going to bed & the second during Zach’s dream feed, if that’s the case, then everything might get dried a second time.
The pocket diapers get sorted by me, then stuffed by Jason & I while the babies are nursing or napping in the evenings. We’ll then place the four needed per baby in a wet/dry bag & add both bags to the diaper bag to be ready for the next day. I already had two Planet Wise wet/dry bags & a FuzziBunz wet bag. I soon purchased an additional Planet Wise medium bag so that we wouldn’t have to do wet bag laundry nightly.
We’ve taught daycare to place the dirty diapers in the wet section. And now they will even put poopy diapers in one wet bag & the pee only diapers in the other bag. So far, both their teachers & I feel like it’s gone very well.
*Note: I will admit that our water bill has gone up since the babies have been home from the hospital. From $44 to $93/month. *But* for the first four months, we had almost constant visitors which meant extra clothes, towels & sheets & dishes being washed. Not to mention that we did & continue to do clothes laundry pretty much daily for our clothes, the babies’ clothes, bibs & burp cloths. And we’re eating at home more to save money which also means we’re running the dishwasher more frequently as well as hand washing bottles & pump parts. Plus we now have two more in the household taking baths. Long story short, we can’t & don’t blame cloth diapering on our increased water bill & are saving more than the $49/mo water bill increase.
