A big example of that in my life is cloth diapers.

For the past 2-3 months, I haven’t really been cloth diapering. And every single time, it seems, that people see me change my daughter’s diaper, they ask in shock- “What? A disposable diaper???” And every time, I feel guilty about it. Why am I not cloth diapering? Why am I using a disposable diaper? Have I lost my “frugal touch”?

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I’ve come to the sad realization that cloth diapers do not last forever, and that while cloth diapering is a good money saving idea, my cloth diaper stash won’t make it through another kid, and what I bought when Lee and Ike were born isn’t enough to last through another kid, and yes, even the stuff I bought when Anneliese was born are gonners. 

Yes, some people might be able to keep their cloth diapers in pristine shape for a few kids… But I’m not one of them.

My hardest task in the house is keeping up with laundry. 

We have a clothes line outside and a dryer inside. I try to rarely use the dryer for frugality reasons, but do resort to it occasionally when I’m just so backed up on laundry.

And laundry hanging outside- well, I need two hands for that, so I can only do that when Anneliese isn’t begging to be held. And on top of that, I don’t leave my house immodestly dressed, and sometimes I don’t feel like getting changed to hang the laundry, so it ends up sitting around, not getting done…

Which causes a big problem if you’re cloth diapering, because you need to keep on top of laundry for that…

Well, sad to say, there has been more than once that I forgot to do the laundry for a couple of days (ok, more like a week or more), so the diapers just sat there and sat there and sat there… and when I finally got around to washing them, I didn’t feel like hanging them up on the clothes line… so I put them in the dryer…

And since this happened far too many times, it REALLY put a lot of wear and tear on the diapers, and the last time that happened… when I opened up the dryer, it was all “lint” and the diapers were half gone…

Seriously.

One of the “still usable” diapers. Haha.

Half the machine was filled with cotton fluff, and the diapers that were in the machine were very, very holy. Some completely unusable, some in really bad condition, but if folded over a certain way could be used in a pinch, and some just really ratty looking.

In other words, the combination of dirty diapers sitting for a while (urine has ammonia in it, which disintegrates things), and the dryer, really ruined about 2/3 of my cloth diaper stash.

And hence I couldn’t really cloth diaper (full time) anymore, because I didn’t have enough cloth diapers left to last me from one washing to the next.

So I was buying the cheapest disposable diapers, and using them together with cloth diapers…

But it was really hard, because my diapers were shot, and it’s hard to use ones that were in such bad condition… Fortunately, my covers still work well.

I was contemplating what to do, because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be buying a whole new diaper stash at this stage in the game (Anneliese is 16 months, and my other kids were all potty trained before age 2), but then my friend decided that she was selling her some of her cloth diaper prefolds cheaply, so I decided to go with that. That wasn’t enough to be able to cloth diaper full time, so I also bought 12 more prefolds from the US that my friend brought back for me.

I figured that even with this outlay, its still cheaper to cloth diaper. Because even if Anneliese gets potty trained soon, I’m not done having kids yet, so I can keep these for future kids. And because even if my cloth diaper stash just lasts me one year and not for a few kids, that still saves lots of money on diapers. But hopefully it’ll last much longer than that, now that I’ve learned my lesson on cloth diapering. 

So now that I’m cloth diapering again, what lessons have I learned, and what am I doing differently?

1) Because the biggest reason why I fall behind on cloth diapering laundry once my kids are older and eat solid food and have grosser poops is because I put the dirty diapers in a bucket, and since I need to pre-rinse them before washing them, I don’t always feel like pre-rinsing all the poop diapers in the bucket (washing out 10 or more poop diapers in a row is really gross, not to mention that bending down to do that many at a time hurts my back), I let them sit far too long.
So I’ve started rinsing each poopy diaper before it goes into the bucket, so I can just do a load whenever, and not only when I have the time/energy to rinse off all the poop diapers.

2) Never use the dryer for cloth diapers.

3) And if I do fall behind on laundry, and I don’t have any clean/dry diapers, better use a disposable diaper here and there than stick my cloth diapers in the dryer.

So here’s to cloth diapering! Wish me luck that I don’t manage to ruin any more diapers…

And if you just happen to catch me changing Anneliese’s diaper and you see disposable, you’ll know that the reason is because I fell behind on laundry. Not the end of the world.

Are you a cloth diaperer? Do you have a hard time keeping up with laundry? Have you ever experienced dryers disintegrating your diapers or anything else?