Apartment Diapering

When we decided that we wanted to cloth diaper our first child, we were living in a 2nd story apartment with no laundry facilities. Every other week I would cart baskets of laundry down a flight of steps to the car and then drive across town to the laundromat then cart them the whole way back across town and up the steps home. I didn’t think they would appreciate me washing poopy diapers in the public machines, and I also wasn’t really interested in making that trip several times a week, so we had to come up with a different solution.

I’ve read the articles on how to wash your diapers by hand, but as a full time working mom I was not excited about the time it was going to take, (and whoever said that breast milk poop is water soluble never tried to hand wash my daughter’s poop out of a diaper. That stuff sticks to the insert like you would not believe.

I finally found and fell in love with a $200 portable washing machine and spin dryer, and after penny pinching for months we were able to buy it. Now my diapering routine looks something like this…

When we do a change, the diaper goes directly into a wet bag, because YUCK. Generally every other day (or third if I’m lazy) I take the wet bag and empty the whole shebang into my portable washer. I rinse, wash, rinse and rinse, then I pop the load into the little spin dryer which gets the water out so well that most of the items feel almost dry to the touch and only take a few hours on the drying rack to be completely dry. The whole process may take half an hour, and I can wash dishes or clean up in between cycles.

We built our stash through our baby registry and an online used diaper forum, so all in all we have spent under $300 including the $200 for the washer. I love the independence of knowing that even if we fall on hard times, our daughter’s bum is taken care of and we don’t have to worry about if we can keep her clean and happy. My next step is going to be transitioning to cloth wipes and trying to convince my babysitter to make the cloth diapering leap with me!

Bio: Beth Nyhart lives with her husband Jason and daughter Eden in Pennsylvania. She is a full time working mom with a love of a good challenge, especially if it means saving a few dollars!


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