I Think I Like Cloth Diapers Better

[Nat]

I have two cloth diapers. One was given to me last year and I got a free one again yesterday because this guy at the AB/DL gathering brought his box of stuff over and he was getting rid of it. He had a cloth diaper in there and I took it home with me. I put both diapers on after my shower to make them thick and then I put on plastic pants over it.

They feel better than disposables and more comfortable and I don't have to worry about them bunching up and I can masturbate in them all I want and not worry about messing the insides up. I am thinking about starting to get them on ebay little at a time since they are so expensive. $19.99 for one pair and I need more plastic pants too. They are wearing out. I had to toss one of them out last night because it was ripped.

I did win a reusable diaper on ebay yesterday and it only cost me $9.99 total.

[redneck diaper boy]

I have used cloth diapers for most of my life.

There are plenty of sources for them.

Check out:

http://www.adultclothdiaper.com

http://www.angelfluff.com

A good cloth diaper will last for many years if taken care of.

I wear diapers every night. I have some that are 4 years old

I hope this helps.

RDB

I have two cloth diapers. One was given to me last year and I got a free one again yesterday because this guy at the AB/DL gathering brought his box of stuff over and he was getting rid of it. He had a cloth diaper in there and I took it home with me. I put both diapers on after my shower to make them thick and then I put on plastic pants over it.

They feel better than disposables and more comfortable and I don't have to worry about them bunching up and I can masturbate in them all I want and not worry about messing the insides up. I am thinking about starting to get them on ebay little at a time since they are so expensive. $19.99 for one pair and I need more plastic pants too. They are wearing out. I had to toss one of them out last night because it was ripped.

I did win a reusable diaper on ebay yesterday and it only cost me $9.99 total.

[clothbaby]

Cloth is the only way to go. I have a great selection of plastic panties from Fetwear,diapers from Mountainview and diaper pins all colors. My diaper pail is in the bedroom,wash with baby Dreft once per week and you are ready for your diapering the next week.

[babylin]

Welcome to the comfort of cloth diapers. You will find you can go a lot longer between changes as cloth holds more. Nor do you have to pay expensive prices. Try Goodwill and look for 30x30 or larger receiving blankets (in various baby patterns, pastels and fabrics) to use as an outside diaper and then stuff them with real baby prefolds you can buy at Target for less than $15 a dozen. To upgrade get 36x36 heavyweight birdseye diapers and 21x40 super soft gauze diapers from Granitsmith on eBay. Mine are several years old and holding up quite well. Quality plastic pants at B4Ns.

HAPPINESS IS WEARING COTTON DIAPERS

[Nat]

I washed the cloth diapers this morning on permanent press and dried them on permanent press. What settings do you guys wash your cloth diapers on?

How many do you go through a day?

How often do you wash your cloth diapers?

When was the last time you bought cloth diapers?

What is the oldest cloth diaper you have? How many years have you had it? Is it still in good shape?

I am thinking about switching to cloth and only wear disposables when I head out of town or out of my apartment. If I wash them everyday, I'd be spending about $45 a month on washing them. It costs me 75 cents to wash them and another 75 cents to dry them. If I keep getting more, I won't have to wash them everyday. I also need to get more plastic pants. I should buy a pair as I buy cloth so that way I kill two birds with one stone.

[dldad]

I have enjoyed cloth diapers for some time, over disposables. Yes they are more expensive, but reuseable, and I think much more comfortable, though more noticeable. and about the same for noise due to the need of the covers, some of which are very quiet, just as are the cloth cover type disposables. I have had to do some mending on the mulitlayer ones as the pins ended making holes in them, as they do get rather weighty when saturated.

[babylin]

What settings do you guys wash your cloth diapers on? Rince in warm water. Wash in hot-hot. then rince with cold with a cup of white venegar added and then rince again in plain water.

How many do you go through a day? A set is seven diapers: one 36x36 with six 21x40 folded down the center; nine for a movie; twelve (double diapered) for overnight. All comfortable!

Sometimes three sets a day and an overnight also.

How often do you wash your cloth diapers? As needed. Since I'm keeping the secret I have to await an opportunity----sometimes once in two weeks I'm alone with the washer. Sometimes

these past months, the diapers were in 5-gallon buckets in the garage, quite frozen, undamaged.

When was the last time you bought cloth diapers? Six years ago for myself. I collect a yard sales and have given away hundreds of infant prefolds and flats with plastic pants and wraps to

three young women in hopes they would use them instead of wasting all their welfare on diapers. No luck. Too much work!

What is the oldest cloth diaper you have? How many years have you had it? Is it still in good shape? I have some Curity diapers from the 1930's and 40's and a bunch from the 50's. I use

better Curity diapers in rotation with my Granitsmith 21x40's.

Thanks for asking these questions. Hope you find cloth enjoyable. Get plastic pants that have snug elastics but are plenty big and wide of crotch so they do not tear as easily as tight fitting plastic pants do.

HAPPINESS IS WEARING COTTON DIAPERS

I

[CDLover]

Spokane Girl,

Like the others, it is nice to read of another that has found the comfort of cloth diapers. I have never been able to be comfortable or trust disposables.

I just bought 6 44"x44" 4-ply gauze flat diapers from adultclothdiaper.com a couple of weeks ago. I don't have a 69" waist like the web site says they fit up to... in fact I have about a 33" waist. Since they can be folded, I fold them so the thickest part is where I need it.

At night I wear 3 diapers layered and in the morning I rinse them in the wash on cold. They go in the diaper pail next to the washing machine and they are washed diapers about every 3 days (9 at a time). I wash on HOT with Dreft, Borax and rinse on cold with vinegar.

My oldest diaper is only about 3 years old. Its in pretty good shape. But part of the fun for me is buying new diapers and plastic pants! (along with washing, folding wearing and using...)

From the other side of the state,

CDL

[Loveable_guy]

I like cloth products too. Nothing like hanging them out to dry on the outside line between the bed sheets and tee shirts for that fresh smell. Not to mention that the natural sun light will help bleach any stains.

[Guest LOSTinDiapers]

After a little search, I found that Granitesmith has a website now @ www.doodlestextiles.com. I have been thinking about trying cloth for a while. My says wife would rather have me wear cloth, instead of disposables, because she thinks the chemicals in disposables are harmful. She wants me to try the AIO or pocket diapers that are popular now. I think I would rather try prefolds with pull-on plastic pants.

[froggy]

I am a fan of cloth diapers and plastic pants too. I started back in diaper play in the early 1980s with attends disposables and plastic pants. Very quickly I shifted to cloth and have used them since. Cloth is just more comfortable to me. Additionally, I was originally a cloth baby from before disposable time.

Froggy

[CDLover]

I have been watching this thread and find it interesting that the responses have come from many of us "older' folks, if you look at the ages its really almost funny....except for lost in diapers, I think the average age of respondence is around 50.33 years...

qwack

...and I was put in cloth diapers when I was 5 (1958) because I wet the bed... Those memories are still with me )

CDL

[PamperedinthePoconos]

For the most part I prefer disposables, but when I get into my baby mode I do prefer going with cloth; I feel that it brings me back to what I was originally brought up on. But I'd also like to add at night I do use one of my cloth diapers as a doubler with my Abena.

[Topguy]

It can be difficult to find plastic pants that fit well over cloth diapers. I found a heat seamer years ago-and just resorted to working out my own patterns. I finally have some I am totally happy with,but it took me years of trying to finally get it just right.

[Angela Bauer]

Going back to the mid-1970's when Pampers and Huggies became easily available in stores debate has brewed about the cost and environmental impact of all diapers. I mention this because Oregon had laws against disposables for many years. Despite our family being diaper-friendly, they were anti-disposable as recently as 1981 when I moved to a dorm and started wearing Attends. Still, growing cotton is hardly environmentally-friendly. In some places washing cloth diapers is a bigger problem than disposing of paper diapers.

As soon as Don Davis and I became a couple I returned to wearing pinned gauze diapers at home for bed. Don already had a good washing machine in his home. In our current home we have both a Maytag Neptune front-loading home size washer and a 30 pound commercial front-loader. For drying we have a Neptune and a 50 pound commercial. Of course these do not have coin slots. Purchase cost of these machines was not cheap, but although we do a lot of loads, we spend little on service calls. The claimed benefit of front-loading washers is they use less water and detergent. I believe this to be true, since controls allow us to tell either washer the size of the load. We can also program the pre-rinse, wash and rinse. Same goes for the drying. We can set the conditions and sensors figure out when the load is dry. We heat our water using gas and the driers also heat with gas. I doubt the cash cost of the water, gas and electricity for a minimum load of diapers is as much as US$0.25. Probably the DREFT detergent I use costs as much.

When I was a kid my family had a decent top-loading home washing machine. With all us kids several loads were run daily. Between us we used 2-3 loads of gauze diapers daily. The upside of that was that the gauze remained unstained. Opinions vary about how long you can leave urine in cloth. Some people who do not wear many diapers only wash them once a week, a practice I do not encourage. I do advocate washing as frequently as practical. There does not seem to be an advantage washing more frequently than every 3 days. Obviously cloth diapers that were messed with poop need immediate attention.

Something to consider is the cost of your time washing and folding cloth diapers. To be fair you need to add this to the cost of the washing itself. Before I met Don I was just starting as a licensed attorney and lived in a studio apartment. I was working 60-85 hours a week, meaning I had to use a laundry service. I did not have the guts to ask them to wash my diapers. At the time I felt disposables were a better deal for me. The problem is I prefer the feel of pinned gauze diapers even when I am not in an AB mood. I make-do in disposables for convenience and to be discreet.

Since March 2006 Don has been retired, so most days he has the spare time to wash, dry and fold my gauze diapers.

Over my gauze diapers I wear soft vinyl pull-on panties. That vinyl is thin and slightly stretchy. It really needs to be washed gently soon after wearing. Fortunately that takes only a few seconds by hand. I let them air dry inside away from direct heat. I do not care how long the drying takes since I do not need to stand there and I have enough vinyl panties.

These days I buy my gauze diapers from ACD and my vinyl panties from Kins. Inside the 2-ply ACD gauze diaper as soakers I use standard infant Gerber Birdseye prefolds, 1, 2 or 3 depending on the situation. On a typical evening I change into my gauze diapers as soon as I get home, about 6pm, using only 1 soaker. Typically I wet while eating so I change about 7:30. Because I get up very early I am changed for bed before 9pm. Usually Don changes me and uses 2 soakers. About midnight Don changes me again without waking me and uses 3 soakers. I wake up at 4am, remove my gauze diaper and put it in the pail, then I wash any accumulated vinyl panties since I will remain awake. Don washed the previous panties after changing me for bed, but not at midnight since doing so keeps him awake. Thus on an average day I wear 4 square flat adult gauze diapers and 7 baby prefolds. This is about a half-load for a Neptune, so it is no problem if Don misses a day washing them. At any given time I am cycling through 16 of the adult square flat diapers and 36 of the baby prefolds. I order the ACD 12 at a time. When I am down to just a few new ones I order another 12. I find they last way over a year. Unfortunately Gerber Birdseye prefolds are not always in stock at local stores. When I find them I buy as many as possible. A couple of years ago I bought a case of 6 dozen which I have not even opened. This means some of those I am wearing are over 2 years old. An advantage of gauze diapers is that they get more comfy with age and absorb as well as when new. A little wear is not a problem. Using very sharpe pins the gauze does not get damaged much. Since the ADC are square, they can be turned so that the pins go into different places, and that is the only wear. When I was a child Mom even would sew patches on the corners of diapers damaged by pins. So far I have not needed to do that.

At any given moment I cycle through 10 of the Kins vinyl pull-on panties. Once a week all of the current set are run in the drier along with a load of diapers for the first 20 minutes. The clean panties are placed inside an old all-cotton pillow case to protect them. Kins recommends doing this and it really helps keep the vinyl soft and resistant to cracks and rips. Before use I check for rips and stiff spots. Every month of so I need to toss one of my panties, so I figure each lasted about a year or slightly more than 100 wearings. Doing the math this is about US$0.14 per wearing, which is more than the cost of the gauze diaper. Not that I really keep accurate records of such things.

My suggestion is to run the wash on the hottest setting available. If you wash gauze diapers every 2 or 3 days and they did not have poop mess, I do not find it necessary to use a pre-rinse. After the hot washing I use a singe warm rinse, because the Neptune rinses so well. In the top loader Mom always used a warm rince followed by a cold rinse. Your skin will tell you how many rinses. I totally find spending a bit extra for DREFT is worth it because my gauze diapers stay soft and last longer, without needing a second rinse.

In the days when DPF was still in business I bought 12 Baby Heaven 101 adult gauze prefolds at a time. DPF had been out of business over a year when I needed to re-order, with 4 new diapers on hand. At that time some of the ones I used were 3 years old.

Given a plan to wash and dry cloth diapers and waterproof panties on a schedule they will last long enough there can be a cost savings. Still on your own bottom it comes down to what is practical for you and what you consider comfy. When diapers are also part of a fantasy, then obviously they need to fit that for you. I feel much more like a comforted big baby in my pinned gauze diapers. Wearing any sort of disposable diaper helps me stay in my responsible discreet adult mode. It is up to each of us to decide!

I washed the cloth diapers this morning on permanent press and dried them on permanent press. What settings do you guys wash your cloth diapers on?

How many do you go through a day?

How often do you wash your cloth diapers?

When was the last time you bought cloth diapers?

What is the oldest cloth diaper you have? How many years have you had it? Is it still in good shape?

I am thinking about switching to cloth and only wear disposables when I head out of town or out of my apartment. If I wash them everyday, I'd be spending about $45 a month on washing them. It costs me 75 cents to wash them and another 75 cents to dry them. If I keep getting more, I won't have to wash them everyday. I also need to get more plastic pants. I should buy a pair as I buy cloth so that way I kill two birds with one stone.

[Aurelius]

Expect me to take a strong interest in cloth some years from now. I'm leaning more and more towards wearing all I can (really nothing against 24/7 when I can manage it properly... and very enjoyably) and wearing these at home makes sense. Wearing cloths is cheaper, contrasting (and sometimes better) and slightly more environmental. I'm also drawn to the thickness/cute factor and so on. but not yet .

[Angela Bauer]

G'Day Aurelius,

Certainly a downside to wearing cloth nappies/diapers is that they require responsibility and organization. Cloth is not practical unless washing and drying equipment is conveniently, discreetly and affordably available.

My husband Don and I will be flying into Melbourne this November a couple of days after the race. From there we will eventually drive through Hall's Gap to Adelaide. We have loved all our previous trips to Down Under. So far we have had no worries buying me enough disposables there. Adelaide is a big city so I assume you lot have disposable adult nappies in your stores.

Angela

Expect me to take a strong interest in cloth some years from now. I'm leaning more and more towards wearing all I can (really nothing against 24/7 when I can manage it properly... and very enjoyably) and wearing these at home makes sense. Wearing cloths is cheaper, contrasting (and sometimes better) and slightly more environmental. I'm also drawn to the thickness/cute factor and so on. but not yet .

[leafy kille]

Expect me to take a strong interest in cloth some years from now. I'm leaning more and more towards wearing all I can (really nothing against 24/7 when I can manage it properly... and very enjoyably) and wearing these at home makes sense. Wearing cloths is cheaper, contrasting (and sometimes better) and slightly more environmental. I'm also drawn to the thickness/cute factor and so on. but not yet .

this is about where im at as well, im wearing 24/7 now (tho im not sure if i want to) and cloth would be cheaper in the long run.... but i hate doing laundry and in my flat i have no outside drying area and no electric dryer, so nappies on all the radiators most of the time would kinda make it a bit obvious and i do have normals round from time to time...

[Aurelius]

Adelaide is a big city so I assume you lot have disposable adult nappies in your stores.

I always thought of adelaide as a very modest and boring city. Really, it is. I've only found 2-3 stores, like I said, but I guess I haven't looked at that many (maybe ~10 pharmacies or so, only 2 have). Specialist stores are reasonably common in most major cities and so often the best place to go.

Enjoy your trip here.

[crampindonut]

"Cloth diapers...not just for older ab/dl's anymore!"

I wasn't into cloth diapers until about 4 months ago. Like many of the like minded younger folks around the site I always found the crinkle of the plastic of disposables exciting, especially when going out or even crawling around the house. The crinkle reminded me of when I was younger and was a constant reminder of what I was wearing and why. I was skeptical when a friend offered to sell me several cloth diapers (that he had gotten that were just too big for him) which he claimed were more babyish than disposables. I was an unbeliever until I arrived home from work one day to find a box on my front door step. As I sat on my bed emptying the contents I was amazed at the softness and I couldn't wait for Mommy to get home. The first cloth diaper my Mommy pinned on me had pictures of Winnie the Pooh and it had matching plastic pants. I wish I could wear them everywhere, even though bambino's still have their purpose (they don't make your butt look so big if your in public). If the diapers themselves don't enhance your baby experience the vast amount of different plastic pants can fill any need your infantile heart desires.