A Rose by Any Other Name

How do you keep fish from smelling?

Cut off their noses.

How do you keep your diaper pail from smelling?

You don't. It has poop and pee in it. Keep the lid closed. Wash the contents every other day.

Don't waste your time washing the pail - just try to let it air out after the diapers go in the wash and before a new diaper gets in there. If it gets really gross, I guess you could wash it. I try to drop diapers into it in a way that doesn't spread the contents around.

I've read about the wet and dry methods. They both sound like a hassle.

The Drying Game

I'll write more about general cleaning later. Right now, I'd like to address a radical bit of information - a 2008 study by the UK Environmental Agency. If you go looking for information on the apparent benefit of cloth diapers, you'll find a lot of would-be-greenies shrugging and saying - "well, I guess it's a wash - may as well use disposable."

They actually say that - "it's a wash" - again and again and again. (For shame, Sierra Club). It's like Pampers paid for the slogan to be written.

Some people refer to a 2005 study by the UK EA, but they updated it in 2008. It contains this oft-overlooked nugget:

Combining three of the beneficial scenarios (washing nappies in a fuller load, outdoor line drying all of the time, and reusing nappies on a second child) would lower the global warming impact by 40 per cent from the baseline scenario, or some 200kg of carbon dioxide equivalents over the two and a half years, equal to driving a car approximately 1,000 km.

40% reduction in carbon dioxide. Geez. I guess if you actually try to save energy while using cloth, you might could. Go figure. If you're really into numbers, read this ass-stomping rebuttal dry, factual rebuttal (the link to the good one died...) of the 2005 UK EA study. Maybe that's why they re-did it.

I live in a climate even worse than the UK as far as line-drying clothes goes - so I tried the following experiment: I hung the diapers on a drying rack in the kitchen overnight. It worked fine. The diapers were really stiff and my wife complained - so I now throw them in the dryer on low for 20 minutes first. I could probably get away with 15 minutes.

Now the diapers are softer, and the electric drying time was reduced from 60 minutes to 20 and the temperature from medium to low. And if you think you'll run out of diapers waiting, or need to buy more: I have 24 diapers and I wash them about every other day.

What's really odd to me is that the trumpeters of the British Life Cycle Assessment seem to have hung out to dry any concerns about landfills. Landfills are nasty. They degrade groundwater, they smell, things in them don't biodegrade - contrary to popular opinion (take note biodegradable diaper users: personally, I don't care - just don't be suckered by the packaging).

The discussions about landfill environmental impact are hard to find, because it's just assumed that they are a very bad solution to long-term waste management. My feelings about it go like this: like landfill? Go ahead.

What's at stake is that with cloth, you have choices. You can choose to lower your impact. The decisions you make affect your ecology, your wallet, your shopping habits, and the amount of trash to the curb. If you use disposable, your ability to choose is far more limited.

Up next: A smell just as sweet.

You Can't Stop It - Your Only Hope is to Contain It

Once you get a poopy or pee-y diaper, you have to put it somewhere until you wash it. I use two of these. One is for regular laundry and diaper covers (which get a little poopy, but can be washed with dark colors with no detriment to the laundry). The other is for soiled diapers and the rags I use to wipe baby's butt. (I also don't like wipes - mostly because of the fragrance, but also because of the feel. There's a reason you wash your body with a cotton rag and not a paper towel. Paper, however soft, has never been recommended by anyone to rub on your face. Why use it on baby's butt if you don't have to.) The waste pails have removable plastic liners. I don't use bags. I empty the crappy pail into the wash and sometimes spritz the liner with a little Lysol if it smells really bad. It gets a little damp and funky in there, so I let it air out a little whenever I do the diapers. The pails are about 3 gallons, which is enough to run a small batch of diapers about every other day - which is about as long as you can let that gross stuff hang out in there. There are some opinions about "wet storage" which involves soaking all the stuff in water - but that just sounds nasty - plus you have this 3-5 gallon bucket of water to deal with. The proviso at the moment is that my kid is about 11 weeks old and exclusively breastfed, which makes his poops a lot more manageable than solid food or formula poops. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. You can get a Diaper Genie, but the product has been designed like Gillette razors and consumer-grade vacuums to force you to perpetually purchase disposable, refillable, replaceable bits and pieces on a regular basis. And when you're done with babies, you have a nasty old Diaper Genie. When I'm done with babies, I have two great wastepaper baskets. I'm trying to tackle things in the order they come - but I feel compelled to deal with a part of the Big Carbon Footprint issue - so: up next...The Drying Game!

No Job too Small, No Cover too Small

Ask my wife: it can take me an hour to work myself up to buying a cleaning product, only to put it back on the shelf before leaving the store. Like Yossarian, I'm convinced that they're all out to kill me (think about it for a second, and you'll notice it's true) - and on top of that, I don't really enjoy spending money.

I didn't have time to get around to ordering any cloth diaper stuff before the baby was born, so the boy was in disposables when we took him home. Left on my own, it would have probably taken me an eye-bulging month on the internet to buy anything to put the poop in.

Luckily for me, I have great friends. The kick-ass folks at Dogwood Bread Company pitched in and bought me my first cloth diapering rig (you'll see these referred to elsewhere as your "stash". Not sure where these cats grew up, but around my house as a kid your "stash" was small green and smelly and generally kept in your sock drawer.)

The diapering gear was shipped to our house and got there maybe a week after the boy. We got 6 Thirsties Duo diaper covers (made in USA), 24 pre-fold organic cotton unbleached small diapers, and 12 big ones. They came from punkinbutt.com.

We also got a wicked-cool object called a Snappi - which was really fun, until I figured out a better way to use the covers and diapers without it. The Snappi is still pretty fun - I used it to put a diaper on the cat.

The boy was born 6lbs 5oz, and by the time we got home from the hospital, he was 6lbs. He is what they call a "banana baby" - meaning long and lean. He's also breastfed, which keeps him pretty lean as he grows. The Thirsties Duo cover has a pretty nifty system for adjusting the size, so you can technically use one set until about 9 months and another until potty training. (By-the-by - I hate measuring babies by age. Who's stupid idea is that? Measure them by weight.)

Unfortunately for us, the banana boy's spindly legs weren't fat enough to fill up the inner gusset in the cover - which is the levy for the whole system - no gusset, no containment.

So, we used the disposables until he was four weeks old, and then the covers fit. We had to buy one more full box of the disposables before we got into the cloth. Could we have figured out a way to do cloth the whole time? Probably.

But, you know, I was really damn tired, and my wife was sore, and we had no general idea what the hell we were doing. Give yourself a break every now and then. You're going to make up the difference in the long haul.

Up Next: Containment!

Early Guest

Our son was born two weeks before the due date. He was also 6lbs by the time we got him home.

I figured I had those two weeks to finish my research and shopping for cloth diapers and covers. I didn't. The hospital used Pampers Swaddlers - Size N - on the baby. They worked great, and fit well, but I really detested the baby powder smell, and the reactionary types tell me that phthalates are a no-no.

Disposables are also supposed to give baby more diaper rash. Didn't seem to on this kid until later.

Not surprisingly, the baby survived. Also, the hospital lets you loot the postpartum room, so we made off with enough diapers for a couple weeks, which was great because we didn't have any at home when my wife went into labor.

One of those packets about fills an 8 gallon garbage bag when it's done soaking up baby droppings, though.

Earth: 0. Me: $20 savings.

Next up - cloth diaper covers are too big!!

About Whippersnapper Wrapper

There's some cyclical wisdom I'd like to share: don't bite the hand that feeds you, and its postprandial corollary: don't s*** where you live. Which is why I started this blog.

As of today, I'm 35 and I'm the father of a 2-month-old son. I knew going into parenthood that my kids would wear cloth diapers as much as possible. I figure if you're going to have a kid, you may as well try to leave them a planet about as nice as the one you had to grow up in.

I'm not so much an eco-zealot as a rational pragmatist. I don't conserve water because I have feelings of nostalgia or romance about the planet. I don't think planets are romantic. I conserve water and use renewable energy because it's stupid and wasteful not to. I think less like a greenie, and more like my Depression-era minded grandparents.

Cloth diapers - less plastic, reusable, renewable, washable, durable, simple - right?

Unfortunately, the more I looked, the more complicated things got. It takes a tall step stool to get on that moral high-horse. The benefits of cloth diapers are mitigated by many factors.

On top of that, there are practical questions: there are a lot of choices! Compounding the problem of choices is that the 10% of us that use cloth diapers seem to be in love with the idea of being members of an elite and beleaguered club. As such, cloth diaper bloggers, reviewers and even purveyors use impenetrable cloth diaper jargon and acronyms: AIO, stash, ld, lo.

Whippersnapper Wrapper pledges to use only plain English when describing diapers, techniques, and products. I'll also tell you what works for me - bearing in mind that my philosophy is less-is-more.

I'm a dad. I'm after results, not appearances; real conservation, not moral high ground.

If you need the straight poop on poop, read on - and welcome!!