My daughter pointed me to eco friendly modern cloth nappies and now I believe that organic reusable nappies are great. I just wish we had them when my children were babies. They’re fun to use as there are so many different colours, floral twirls and textures. Disposable nappies are uninteresting as they are all the same. With cloth diapers you look at your store of diapers and coordinate it with whatever your baby is wearing. The garbage bin does not overflow with soiled diapers and they won't be sitting around in landfill for an eon or so either.
Up to date cloth diapers are sold in many different forms and are identified by confusing range of names. To start there are fitted diapers, all-in-one diapers, pocket diapers, one size fits most diapers, prefolds or sized diapers. It goes on but you do have to use diaper covers over the fitted diapers and prefolds though. There are even reusable diapers. In America they are known as diapers, cloth diapers, modern cloth diapers or merely a ordinary diaper.
Up to date cloth diapers are great as they are long lasting diapers – you just wash them after each use and use them repeatedly again, they last for a few years. They are far economic to use than disposables in the long term and you don't have to run down to the supermarket in the middle of the night if you run straight out of diapers. Just have a store and wash them occassionally!
How to wash your new age cloth diapers.
The right way to look after your new cloth nappies is to wash them in the right way. You start by keeping all of your dirty nappies in a dry bucket with a lid for at least 2 days. If there's a poo in the nappy you can spray it down the john with a nappy sprayer which you attach to your toilet, or you need to use biodegradable liners in your nappy and simply flush the liner down the loo. Then you put the nappy into your bucket.
On wash day you gather up your diapers and put them all into the washing machine and give them a rinse and spin. Then you add some washing powder (half of what you would routinely use) or some washing powder developed particularly for modern cloth diapers. Put them thru a normal cycle and then an additional rinse. Then the best thing to do is to peg them outside on the clothes line as the sun basically helps to make them white again and loses stains. It's really quite extraordinary.
If after a while if your diapers begin wiff a bit or they stop soaking up as they should you may have to do a softening wash. You may either do a wash with some funk rock, or do a very hot wash with a drop or 2 of dishwashing detergent and then a few cold rinses with some vinegar in the final rinse. This will loosen all the build up out of the absorbent diaper material and make them soft and absorbent again.
From a washers’ view, once nappies are washed a few times they look the same so its just down to design and I suspect the best cloth nappies are cheaper ones like Pixie Poppits because they are so straightforward to use, they fit well and dry very fast. They're reasonable nappies “a one size” pocket nappy.
Find cloth nappy and nappy care and washing tips in Melbourne City and suburbs using the online index dLook.