Who's the stiff?

I lately relocated from the Adirondacks to Utah. Utah is much dryer. So much dryer, in fact, that I can easily dry a rackload of cloth diapers in the BASEMENT in less than 12 hours. One upside to gas-forced-air heat. In the Adirondacks, I had to run dehumidifiers in my house even in the winter, so drying indoors on a rack was pretty tough.

Thick diapers dry in less than 12 hours in the desert. Even in your basement!

Since the biggest energy-savings of cloth diapers by far comes from air-drying, getting away from the electric dryer is the way to go. My kid poops in a toilet, so the lack of sunshine isn't a big deal because the diapers don't smell when they come out of the wash.

The main undesirable outcome of indoor air-drying - especially with the dry gas-forced-air heat in such a short amount of time: stiffness.

Incredible house of diapers. Made only of structurally-dried cloth diaper jerky.

You can twist and yank these crusties immediately before use, or you can throw them all in the dryer with a tennis ball on no-heat for ten minutes. Not perfectly soft, but no longer usable as a building material. In any case, tough diapers will encourage your kid to get out of them and onto the pot faster...

How to fold cloth diapers

Here's my first ever video blog! Here, I demonstrate how to creatively wad cloth to staunch the flow of pee and whatnot that comes out of a small human.

Bear in mind that I'm not demonstrating the textile origami needed to turn a huge square of flimsy cloth into a diaper. I start with prefolds. They're way easier and worth it. Prefold is a funny name because they're really manufactured multi-layered cotton pads of varying size. I suppose that some folding is involved somewhere in making a prefold, but you really can't see the magic by looking at one.

The other misleading thing about prefolded diapers is that you still have to fold them to use them, and they don't come with instructions. In the video below, I demonstrate what I learned through trial-and-error about how to fold and use a few different size prefolds with a Thirsties Duo diaper cover.

Also demonstrated in the video is how to make-do with three sizes of diapers by changing how you use them for different size kids, night/day use, and different size diaper covers. Enjoy!