Try Cloth Diapers Risk Free

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Like Tweet

Retiring Your Cloth Diaper Stash

I'm a cloth diapering mother of twins. You know what this means? I have a ton of cloth diapers. Mostly pockets, some prefolds. Mostly store bought ones some I made myself. A ton of cute ones and some eh ones. My twins are 21 months old and potty training will soon be nearing. It makes me bitter sweet. I love my diapers and I love them in fluff. As much as I love their diapers I also hate spraying and washing them. I hate playing the guess-who-did-it game and sniffing butts just so I can clean a mess in those cute diapers. This makes me think what am I going to do with all these adorable diapers when we don't need them anymore? They were expensive and will have a ton of life in them when we do use the potty full-time. It seems a waste to just throw them away. Part of the reason why I started clothing was to save diapers from the landfill and now I'm tossing all these expensive diapers in there? It didn't make sense to me so I started thinking of ways to reuse them. Not just reuse prefolds because their are a million things to reuse prefolds for but also the diapers with PUL in them.

Some ideas for reusing prefolds are:

-Rags: Prefolds make the best rags and wipe away the messiest of messes.
-Spill cleaners: As you know these things are super absorbent. Another glass of milk just spill? Hand me a prefold instead of a towel please.
-Garage hand wipes: I'm sure daddy wont mind using a diaper to wipe his hands off instead of one of your nice towels.
-Hot plate holders: Set a hot plate on them instead of your counter. Or use them as a back up to your oven mitt when you need to grab something out of the oven.

Diapers with PUL you have to get a little more creative with. Don't get me wrong there are still plenty of ways to reuse them. My stash is filled with PUL diapers so I tried to find ways that would benefit me when the twins are out of them.

Some ideas for reusing PUL type diapers are:

-Doll diapers: What a great way to see those cute prints you love so much then to hand them down to your child to play with on her dolls.
-Reusable snack bags: Make some snack bags out of the PUL to reuse when you're out and about.
-Momma cloth: Momma cloth is made with PUL and what a better way then to reuse that PUL every month. There are a lot of great tutorials out there to make momma cloth. They aren't hard to do. The site I love is http://www.pamperedcheeks.com/mamacloth.php She has great instructions to sew them up without needing much sewing skill.

As a cloth diaperer you will probably have a couple wet bags that you're sad to see go also. Wet bags have a million uses for them like prefolds do. With wet bags think outside of the box because they aren't just for soiled diapers. They are excellent swim bags. Instead of getting your dry clothes wet put your wet clothes into your wet bag. You can piece together a wet bag by using the PUL from the diapers. Make each family member their own wet bag for swimming trips! Those momma cloths you just made out of the diapers stash them in there when they are used. When your child is staying the night somewhere throw a wet bag in with their stuff for dirty laundry.

There are other ways to reuse your diapers if you aren't worried about keeping them for yourself.

-Give them to a friend or family member to try out cloth. This is a great way to see them on occasion being used for someone you love.
-Sell them off. There are many diaper swapping sites out there. People pay for your used diapers so they don't have to get expensive new ones. www.diaperswappers.com is a great site for buying and selling used diapers.
- Donate them. This has to be my favorite one of reusing cloth diapers. There are some charities out there that will take your used diapers to give them to needy families. They don't have to be in perfect condition or a certain type. They can have relaxed elastic or some staining. They also take prefolds, aios, pockets, hybrids, or any of them in between. The site I love for taking donations is http://www.givingsdiapersgivinghope.org

When you give your diapers to someone else its always a good idea to make sure they are stripped first. This will not only give the new owner a fresh start with them but if you are shipping it will keep any stink down.

So this makes me happy that I can reuse my diaper stash and wet bags. Don't let this get out in the open but I'm hoping for a couple more months before we even start potty training. What can I say, I love my diapers and I love making cute custom ones for their little butts.

By Nancy E - I'm a SAHM to a set of b/g twins. We cloth diaper full-time. I loved using cloth so much I started my own a business at http://www.etsy.com/shop/2Bugaloos

1 comment:

Bethany said...

The link to http://givingdiapersgivinghope.org shouldn't have an "s" after the first giving...in case anyone else had trouble with this.