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!

Cloth diapers cure depression

Economically, that is. Birth-to-toilet (isn't that a sublime turn of phrase?) the cost of disposable diapers is $2500. Compare that to as low as $500 for cloth. We got some as shower gifts - and I think I might be in the ball-park of $300 spent, plus whatever two or three loads of wash each week set you back (maybe $2-$2.50). If your kid is in diapers for 100 weeks, that's another $250 for washing and drying. You can cut that in half with line-drying instead of electric. Here is a cost/load calculator I found: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/laundry.html

Here's a good story on diaper parties that describes the effect of the economy on diapers, as well as some well-worn fears of cloth diapers. #1 fear: poop. Surprise.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139234779/diaper-business-does-well-in-down-economy

Also, here's some info on the life-cycle cost of a new washer from the California Energy Commission. Short version: as much as $850 over the life of the washer. Before you run out and buy one on credit, make sure you're not going to cough up $850 in interest on the payment plan...

http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/appliances/washers.html

gDiapers, marketing, and Green Fatigue

Good story from NPR about gDiapers. Describes them pretty well and discusses some marketing points.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88461868

Bigger Diaps, Colder Water

Month 20 has arrived, and we have a couple of pees in the potty, so there's a yellow-y light at the end of the tunnel...

In the meantime, a subtitle for this post could be called "bigger boy, more pee." We've got the next size of the Thirsties Duo (there are only two sizes, which have adjustments so each size can be three sizes, for a total of six, if you follow). My experience with the Thirsties has been largely good, though at the margins of the sizing in the Duos (starting out when the Boy was very small - then transitioning to the Duo Size 2) there's some compromise. When we made the size leap, the size ones looked a little like bikini briefs, and the size twos were a touch big even on the smallest setting. The offspring has admittedly slender thighs, which has been an issue with all gussets.

I would recommend hang-dry only for your Thirsties - the velcro wears out really fast if they make it into the dryer. I was hoping to get some mileage of my Size ones when offspring 2 happens by, but some of the size ones aren't going to make it, I'm afraid. The threads also blew out - I think also related to throwing them carelessly in the dryer.

We got some big organic cotton prefolds called 4-8-4's which means they're pretty thick in the middle - the numbers refer to the layers of cotton in each third of the diaper. The pace of diapering has changed, so we have a couple dozen big diapers, and only ordered 6 of the Thirsties Duo Size Two - and that all seems to be plenty.

As for the G-diapers - I applaud the reverse-pointing velcro tabs as difficult for the willful toddler to remove, but I can't recommend the G-diaper cloth inserts for anything. I have used them sort folded up in another diaper to extend the night-time soakage factor - but that's so ridiculously bulky I stopped. Basically, one good whiz from Mr. Whizzer will soak a G-diaper cloth insert completely through. Then it kind of wads up in the diaper and does nothing.

I remain a HUGE fan of the G-Diaper flushable inserts, which can be doubled up into a large cover (Thirsties or whatever) for super-soakage, long drives, whatever you might need it for - I've even done that overnight.

Along with this change in size has come an improvement in communication and a toughening of the butt, eliminating the need for much, if any diaper cream. Poops are speedily identified and disposed of before they can get mashed around. Mostly, they happen once a day, and I find that the whole cloth-diapers-are-better-for-the-skin thing really comes into play at this point. The difference between two or three hours in a cloth diaper and a few hours in a disposable is pretty dramatic in terms of the happy-looking skin under the cloth, as opposed to the squashed and sweaty-looking skin that appears from under a disposable.

As a result of the swifter poo detection and the absence of diaper cream, cold water wash seems to do a great job once more. I have switched soaps for diaper washing. I was using Seventh Gen laundry soap (they make a concentrated one for diapers that I never did use). I picked up a bottle of Method super concentrated laundry soap and a refill bag. Avoid the "Lavender Cedar" scent - it's kind of patchouli inflected - the other scent is something bland like Mountain Air or Fresh Breeze and it smells more or less like laundry. It was a touch pricey but really easy to use, reusable dispenser, refill bag - incredibly low-waste and because low volume, lower carbon footprint to transport. I found mine at Target.

I'm going to post a video of me folding up some diapers and putting them in the covers, since I couldn't really find information about that and had to make it up myself. 

Water Water Everywhere!

If you read the last post, you'll know that our battle against diaper rash has caused an escalation of unguent. Since the heavy-duty creams are harder to wash out of the diapers (though they have succeeded in staving off the rash), I have had to "break down" the diapers - meaning wash the s*** (literally and metaphorically) out of them. I do this by using a hot wash or two. That works pretty well.

I have been washing the diapers on cold only - heated water being the second-most energy intensive part of cloth diapering next to heated drying. So I tried an experiment - not to break down the grease film, but to expand the time between break-downs.

Normally after a cold wash in a small amount of water (adequate for the entire first 9 months at least) a film, or ring of diaper-grease would form around the inside of the wash at the top of the water line. The cold water couldn't keep the residue dissolved until it drained - so it stuck to the washer instead (as far as I know, the inside of the drain pipes look like Dick Cheney's femoral artery...). This film was also indicative of what was left on the fibers of the diapers.

There are two ways to increase the carrying capacity of the water to dissolve the solution: increase the temperature of the solution, or increase the amount of water. So I'm experimenting with washing the diapers in the next-higher water setting. Seems to work so far - no ring around the washtub.

Of course, which of these methods you use might depend on where you live. If you live in an arid area, but you have access to passive solar - use hot water from the roof! If you live in a cold area (like me) with more water than you know what to do with - and you have to heat it with $3.50/gallon #2 heating oil - it makes sense to try using a little more cold water.

Hope that was refreshing!

Tao of Poo

Funny thing about having a kid, a job, and another blog: you don't get much time to write (or reflect).

Mr. Whippersnapper is nigh on 14 months now. Much has changed - especially the consistency of his poo - which, now that he is eating more human food, is more like the kind of poo you step in on the sidewalks of NYC than the innocuous cheezy custard of his early months.

Current solution for removing sticky, sat-in poo from a diaper: old rubber spatula in a jar behind the john. Works pretty well. I'm still laundering the same way more or less: less line drying (hard to time everything out with the job and the sunny days). Mobile kids also eat up more time and 14-month-olds are awake a lot more, so that's even more of a jam.

The sticky older baby poo also seems to increase diaper rash problems, which requires the use of more heavy-duty cream - I use A&D Ointment - a combo of lanolin and vaseline, basically - for the base layer, and then a thick paste of off-brand Desitin - essentially 40% strength zinc oxide.

It helps.

I've also virtually eliminated the bowl of warm water at this point. The frequent wetting and rubbing of the bum exacerbated the rash problem. Instead, in the event of a poo, I use off-brand scentless, alcohol-free wipes (note: these say "flushable", but I accidentally put one through the wash, and it came out in perfect condition. Wouldn't flush these if you really care about your plumbing - definitely a no-no if you're on septic).

After the wipes, I smear on gob of A&D which works like a make-up remover and odor-eliminator. I wipe some of that off and then apply the zinc cream. I have to do this pretty much every time because he's a pretty regular kid, and you never know when he'll drop the bomb.

If he pees and things look pretty good, I just reapply some ointment and cream and go with it. That seems to cause less damage than all the cleaning.

The use of the heavier creams has made the laundry a little scummier, which brings me to the title of the post. Rather than subscribing to some formula for getting things clean, listen to your diapers. Watch your washer. They are telling you a story about poo and goo. Go with the flow - use different amounts of soap, switch between hot and cold water if you think it's necessary. Don't wash your wife's pretty things right after the diapers.

If you can, line-dry. It's still the best energy saver and smell-and-stain remover.

May the poo be with you. Always.

g-Wiz

Welcome to month 8!

Catching up on a few things.

Firstly, we have some poops acquiring the consistency of tomato paste. Whippersnapper has been eating "solids" - which are actually purees, plus whatever biscuit bits migrate into his stomach after copious slobbery gnaws. He's mostly breastfed still, but eats this stuff daily. We get poops every 2-4 days.

I throw the poopy pants into the dry diaper bucket and throw everything in the wash - still on cold, still with vinegar, and it comes out fine. I did do a hot wash of a bunch of diapers I suspected of diaper cream buildup, but it was more for psychological reasons than rational ones: the diapers were still performing more or less the same. I've read of "breaking down" the diapers every three months with a hot wash or two - diapers that had become essentially waterproof.

I don't know what those folks are using for diaper cream (axle grease?) but I haven't encountered any pee beading up on the cloth...

Number 2...hahahahaha....

Jocoseriously, I got some gDiapers. We're on the verge of going up a size from the Thirsties Duos Size 1, which work great - but being an epic dabbler, I had to try out the gDiapers.

On the whole, it's a toss up. If you're using Duos and you like them, I can't recommend switching unless you're just dying for a change of scene. On the upside, you don't need as many g covers because they have snap-in "liners" or pockets that actually take the diaper. I have 7 Little gPants and about 15 liners. I bought some extras, and some two-packs of the gPants had an extra pocket/liner each in them.

The gDiaper has a good disposable liner which I can recommend. It's biodegradable, and flushable - if you follow the instructions, and you're not on septic...and if you have relatively modern plumbing. If you're on septic, you'll just fill it up, and if your house is prone to clogs, you'll certainly have trouble flushing these blobbies - but in a new home on sewer, they're fine. You have to break them apart with a little swishy-stick.

I haven't had the opportunity to try out the flushability firsthand - I'm on septic AND I have old plumbing.

The gDiaper disposable liner does seem to cut down generally on waste if you're working back and forth between cloth and disposable. Added benefit: you can preload a snap-in pocket with a disposable liner and take it on the road with you for easy change. Functionally, the benefit over the Duo is that the gPocket thing constrains the diaper on all sides, front and back - the Duo only loads in the front, leaving some creative folding and stuffing to be done while fastening and fending off arms and legs.

The gPants cover has some nice comfort features - wider waistband comfy thigh gussets. They also cleverly fasten around the side toward the back - timely if your tyke is getting grabby with the front-fastening diapers (which is everything else on the market - including all disposables).

The Duo has a narrow elastic waist, and generally tends to bunch down in the front in a way the appears a little uncomfortable. On the upside, the general construction of the Duo seems to breathe better, and we're still using some Thirsties Small covers for nighttime use with a great wad of diaper to keep the butt dry (we've been having rash problems).

The snap-in pocket/liner of the gDiaper is really pretty much plastic as far as I can tell - great for dry outside, but no breathing inside. The Duo is polyester lined with neoprene, so it breathes pretty well and stays dry outside. The gDiaper restricts the diapering function to the "hot zones" and leaves more area not needing absorbency generally open to the world - which is good for those parts.

The gDiaper constitutes a system, including the disposable liner, and a custom cloth liner made of polyfleece and cotton. These are pretty nice, soft on the baby side, but are a little light-weight when it comes to absorbency, and tend to wad (not quite wide enough). I should mention that were using "Medium" gPants and "Medium/Large" liners. The disposable liner looks big enough to size up, but I'm skeptical of the custom cloth liner - it's only just big enough to fill the Medium gPants. I mostly use a folded up cotton prefold that stays in place better and absorbs more than the custom liner. We use custom liners for times in the morning when we know we'll change him again soon - maybe he likes a break with the softer ployfleece.

(Probably it's all in my head - the kid eats carpet and sits in his own excrement without batting an eye. Studies have proven that sad babies don't care if they're wet or dry - they'd rather just be picked up and held.)

The Duos promise to get your kid out of diapers in two sizes - which is a big cost benefit. If you started out with a small kid and end up with a big one, you could be into 4 sizes of gPants. On the other hand, you'll need at least 8, and preferably 10-12 Duos in each size, whereas you could get maybe 6 gPants and 6 extra snap-in pockets in each size of gDiaper.

Laundering is the same for both. I'm curious about how the pockets will hold up after repeated washings, but I imagine they'll do fine. The gPants do take longer to line-dry. They're double-layered poly-cotton. The Duos dry really fast, even indoors - maybe a few hours at most inside and an hour or less outside on the line. The gPants take about as long to dry as a t-shirt.

If you're brand conscious and you want a stylish baby, the gPants clean up. Other than that, it's probably just preference. I would recommend getting a gDiaper rig to try - and if you're a gDiaper user and you need to go up a size, try out a Duo. Go with what you like. I don't know about anything else because I haven't used it. I guess you could pack a paper bag with straw...

Fun Shapes

1.19 x 10^57 atoms pack a lot of cleaning power

Bleach. HA!

Hot water. HA! HA!

Dryer? meh.

Check out the awesome atomic power of our own sun!
This is a cloth cotton diaper stained with poop. I washed it in cold water with 7th Generation liquid and some vinegar. This picture is post-wash just after I hung it up.


Then I hung it in the sun. Not even the direct sun. It was pretty overcast, but bright. Below is the result.


It hung out there for about 5 hours. During that five hours, I did other things while the atomic power of the sun did its thing. It's too bad my cell phone can't record smells because a line dried diaper should have its own cologne. Maybe I'll pitch it to J-Lo.

Save your money, save the planet. Line dry some stuff.

Unctuousness

Isn't that a great word. It means a lot of things, (like insincere) but it also means "oily."

Whippersnapper has developed a stubborn rash, and so we're trying on some different diaper creams. We used to use some olive oil based balm from a great place in the St. Lawrence river valley (which smells great and works very well on garden variety diaper rash. It also came in handy for use on cradle cap, various dry spots, and dad's hands and cuticles).

We used Burt's Bees Diaper Cream and some regular old petroleum jelly. In response to the rash, we've upped the ante, using the goo more liberally, and we also starting using Bordeaux's Butt Paste. I just did a load of diapers after adding to our arsenal, and for the first time, there was an unctuous (but very sincere) ring around the inside of our washer.

It doesn't look too bad, but if it persists, I might have to find a solution. My first response was to get an old rag and wipe away the ring of oily stuff from inside the washer before it got too thick.

I'll post again about whether this becomes a persistent problem and if I discover any cheap, friendly solutions to it.

Also, as soon as I find my adapter, I'm going to post the awesomest before/after photo of a lined dried diaper that will convince you that bleach and heavy detergent is totally useless compared to the awesome atomic power of the Sun.

How do you keep a fish from smelling?

...Cut off its nose...

The offspring will be four months old tomorrow. During his first month, he was very small, and we were a little under-prepped for cloth diapering. We didn't start until he was 1 month old.

In my last post, I exhorted the efficacy of cold-water washing. I remember now, I left out a point - I wash on cold, but I use the "heavy soil" cycle so the diapers really get agitated. (They calm down again before we use them.)

In the last few days, I've noticed the offspring developing a pretty strong urine smell when he pees even a little, and after the last cold/cold wash, I noticed that a general baby-diaper smell was starting to accumulate and not go away so much in the diapers after the wash.

Today, I threw everything in for a hot wash with a tiny amount of Borax to break down some of the odors and stains. I'll see if that doesn't help with the accumulating urine odor. Keep in mind, that this is a single hot wash after three months of use - and all the diapers and butt rags are in there.

If you're trying to save on water or energy, and you mix in a hot wash every now and then, think about other ways to save energy and water:

• Are all your toilets low-flow? If not, a new toilet is only about $100 and very simple to install. If you can change a bike tire and connect a garden hose to a sprinkler, you have the skills to replace your toilet.
• Do you have CFL bulbs in all commonly-used lamps?
• Got night lights? How about LED night lights instead?
• How about a low-flow shower head (appx 1.5 gallons per minute)? Mine has a shot-off valve on the shower head, and I turn it on the get wet and to rinse, and off to lather up. (TMI?) Anyway, it save a lot of water!
  

And so on. I'll let you know if the hot-wash does the trick on the urine smell, or if the kid is just developing an odor internally.

50 Million Tons of Thermoplastic Resin Later...

'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder

January 19, 2010 | Issue 46•03

A local resident discards a plastic bottle—just as he has done his whole life—with no perceivable effect on the environment.

WASHINGTON—Wishing to dispose of the empty plastic container, and failing to spot a recycling bin nearby, an estimated 30 million Americans asked themselves Monday how bad throwing away a single bottle of water could really be.

"It's fine, it's fine," thought Maine native Sheila Hodge, echoing the exact sentiments of Chicago-area resident Phillip Ragowski, recent Florida transplant Margaret Lowery, and Kansas City business owner Brian McMillan, as they tossed the polyethylene terephthalate object into an awaiting trash can. "It's just one bottle. And I'm usually pretty good about this sort of thing."

"Not a big deal," continued roughly one-tenth of the nation's population.

According to the inner monologue of millions upon millions of citizens, while not necessarily ideal, throwing away one empty bottle probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, and could even be forgiven, considering how long they had been carrying it around with them, the time that could be saved by just tossing it out right here, and the fact that they had bicycled to work once last July.

In addition, pretty much the entire states of Missouri and New Mexico calmly reassured themselves Monday that they definitely knew better than to do something like this, but admitted that hey, nobody is perfect, and at least they weren't still using those horrible aerosol cans, or just throwing garbage directly on the ground.

All agreed that disposing of what would eventually amount to 50 tons of thermoplastic polymer resin wasn't the end of the world.

"It's not like I don't care, because I do, and most of the time I don't even buy bottled water," thought Missouri school teacher Heather Delamere, the 450,000th caring and progressive individual to have done so that morning, and the 850,000th to have purchased the environmentally damaging vessel due to being thirsty, in a huge rush, and away from home. "It's really not worth beating myself up over."

"What's one little bottle in the grand scheme of things, you know?" added each and every single one of them.

Monday's plastic-bottle-related dilemma wasn't the only environmental quandary facing millions of citizens across the country. An estimated 20 million men and women wondered how wasteful leaving a single lightbulb on all night really was, while more than 40 million Americans asked themselves if anyone would actually notice if they just turned up the heat a few degrees instead of walking all the way downstairs and getting another blanket.

Likewise, had they not been so tired, and busy, and stressed, citizens making up the equivalent of three major metropolitan areas told reporters that they probably wouldn't have driven their minivans down to the corner store.

"Relax," thousands upon thousands of Americans quietly whispered to themselves as they tossed two articles of clothing into an empty washing machine and turned it on. "What are you so worried about?"

Running Hot and Cold

NOTE: At the moment of writing, the little bugger is 100% breastfed, which has a certain mitigating effect on the condition and odor of the waste product.

I did a lot of reading about what would get diapers clean. I read about rinsing in the toilet, I read about a hot rinse in the washer, then a full cycle of hot wash, hot rinse, I read some stuff about vinegar and Borax and other hippie-type cleaning agents.

Here's what I did.

First, I washed with hot, rinsed with hot. I used 7th Generation laundry soap. I read complaints somewhere about residue and reduced absorption, but I haven't seen it. I added 1 cup of vinegar to the wash cycle, and another cup into the fabric softener cup. I read about adding vinegar in the rinse to remove odors, and I was doing that with regular laundry anyway.

I thought what a drag to have to go down there and figure out when it was rinsing, so I studied the mechanism in the softener dispenser and discovered that it only came out during spin cycles, which would work fine.

I also added about 1/4 of Borax to the wash. Borax is bauxite. It's mined. It's not man-made, so the hippies dig it, but it's still not good to eat or put in your eye. Bauxite undergoes a mild reaction in water and generates some H2O2 - hydrogen peroxide - which is a very mild bleaching agent. Bauxite also has a tendency to leave behind some alkaloids in the fabric, which cause rash pretty effectively.

The bauxite, hot water combo makes your diapers pretty stain free - sans chlorine.

I wash the diapers on the "Small" load selection to conserve water.

I dried the diapers on hot. They came out fluffy and soft.

Then I read the British LCA on cloth "nappies" and found that the best way to lower the carbon footprint of your diapers was to hang them dry. Now I do that. They're a little crunchy, but nobody minds.

Then I started washing the diapers in hot and rinsing them in cold. I cut down on the amount of Borax to ease the rash. They still came out really clean and smelled pretty good.

I also tried reducing the wash load to "Extra Small" - but that wasn't enough rinse water to get the soap out of the diapers. Back to "Small."

I then tried cold wash cold rinse. Got rid of the Borax (still with the rash). Now the diapers have noticeably dark stains and a very subtle, but not unpleasant, odor when they come out of the wash. By the time they're dry, the odor is gone and they smell pretty much like nothing.

I don't rinse them at all before putting them in the wash. This may change when we introduce some solids. I'm looking forward to better weather, when the UV rays can bleach and odor-eliminate for me. I hear that works quite well.

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!!