Cloth diapers

Let's get this blog started! We'll start off with one of things that I am definitely passionate about.... Cloth diapering....

I had thought about doing it and was almost planning on it the whole time I was pregnant, but between my mom, my husband and a bunch of others telling me how it would just be too much work, gross, etc etc. I didn't end up doing it in the beginning. Not to mention the NICU stay threw everything off track. When the boys were about 6 months old something sparked the thought back into my mind, I asked ONE friend, Megan, about cloth diapering because I knew she did with her son. She told me the brand she used (Bumgenius) and that's when I began trying to talk my husband into it. He was totally against it until we came across a video of someone demonstrating usually a diaper sprayer (for those poopy diapers). Then he finally agreed! Plus we ordered through Kellyscloset.com and they offer a 45 day guarantee if you don't like them, you can return them as long as you haven't voided any warranties, minus any shipping charges. Which in our case, we chose the free shipping anyways! We got them and started using them and haven't looked back. Of course there's been times that we've used disposables again due to traveling, rashes, etc but neither of us (yes I said neither) can really stand disposables. Our boys got rashes to most brand of disposables, with the exclusion of Pampers and Huggies so it was next to impossible to save money on diapers. When you have twins, you know it's all about savings! Then when Pampers made their changes to their new CRAP with dry max, it left like burns on my babies' bottoms! Cloth diapers are not only a money saver for you, especially if you buy one size that adjusts from newborn to typically potty training time, but it's also so much healthier for your baby and the environment. Disposable diapers take up to 500 years to decompose!! And all of those yucky chemicals in them, bleh! We spent about $450 for 24 cloth diapers, 2 drawstring wet bags to use in our diaper pails, 2 diaper bag size wet bags to throw your dirty diapers in when you're out and about (yes, we even use cloth when we are out of the house!), 24 cloth wipes, a diaper sprayer, and our first box of cloth diaper safe laundry detergent. We used to spend $150/month on disposable diapers and wipes. So in just 3 months of disposables diapers we could of bought cloth diapers. We started at 6 months old, so for 4 months we bought diapers for them since the first 2 months they were in the NICU. That's $600 on diapers and wipes in 4 months.. Add another $300 if you want to consider the NICU months. $900 spent on diapers for 6 months! What the heck!? Or how about $1800 for a YEAR. Imagine if we used disposable diapers till about 3 (the typical age to potty train) $5400 for 3 years! YIKES! Instead we spent $600 for those first 4 months.. And another $450 for all the cloth diapering supplies. And yes we've bought (ok ok maybe my sister Traci did cause she loves her "gremlins" as she calls the boys) disposables here and there like when we didn't have a home for 3 months due to moving, but still we've spent $1050 between cloth & disposable since the boys were born. That's still saving about $4350.. If you want to figure in the times we've bought disposables for one reason or another.. let's just round it off and say we will end up saving $4000! Even if we only had one kid, $2000 is still INSANE.  I have a friend Amy, who's definitely done a better job then me by buying used cloth diapers, making her own laundry detergent, etc. That's my next step... finally making my own detergent because I've had the stuff sitting around for a few months now.. How sad. I'll even include a link to a Youtube video that hubby & I made for friends and family to see when we started the journey of cloth diapering. It'll show you our diapers, how to stuff them, put them on, and spray them out if they're poopy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpXfXIPuGrU