Sooooo, what will you do when your babes are all grown up and you have to stop buying super cute diapers and move on to something else? What about diapers for you? If you know what I mean? You don’t…………okay I mean Cloth pads for Mamas.

I know. I know. EWWWWWW Gross. I thought the same way. Until I made the switch and now I’m just as caught up in making cute pads for myself, after all I keep telling myself that we are going to potty train….soonish.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of places to buy cloth pads, I know! Who knew! Etsy (online shopping) is full of such stores just type cloth pads into the search bar. Since I have made my own I’m not comfortable recommending any online stores since I haven’t tried their product. But the all seem to have the same basic shape and they often come with snaps to secure them in your pants (like wings on disposable but with a snap instead of sticky stuff). Many cloth pads come with inserts just like pocket diapers, that you can wash, but I prefer the one piecers.

Launching right into the TMI portion of the post, I don’t wear ‘panties’ but instead have always been partial to boxer briefs so the winged pads that are seen most often didn’t work for me. And since I’m cheap thrifty innovative, I made up some of my own.

Here the pad is folded in the manner that it is placed in your underwear, I generally put the ties towards the back so they don’t create bizarre bulk in the front and stay relatively clean, as you’ll use the ties later to secure the used pad.

This is a picture of the pads rolled and secured. I usually carry them in my bag this way until I’m ready to use them, then after they are used the can be secured, soiled side in, this way and placed in any waterproof bag. Many of you probably already have nylon or cloth diaper bags in your repertoire these are perfect for you used pads.

Washing: So, how do you clean them? The pads shown in this post have been in ‘circulation’ for about a year as you can see they are not stained. The key to clean pads is soaking. I usually keep a receptacle in the bathroom, such as an over sized jug (lucky for me my husband is a potter) in the bathroom filled with water** that I keep the used pads in. When it is full I simply dump it into the washer with detergent and allow it to soak (usually overnight) in the morning I run the washer as usual and ouila! Clean pads.

Cloth pads, like cloth diapering isn’t for everyone. One of the reasons I switched to cloth pads was that post partum I was never able to get a good tampon fit (my first choice) once I made the switch to pads, it seemed obvious to go with cloth. It was much easier than I thought and my fabric stash lends it self to fun pads.

Interested? Check out some of the cloth pads on Etsy there are some super cute ones.

The truly green and crunchy among us might use that water on their rose bushes…..

I have been having problems with The Stinkies.  It first started when my friend gave me 2 diapers with The Stink.  They infected my poor stash, and I totally re-did my wash routine, and now I can’t get rid of The Stinkies.  So I need help and advice.

My issue is that I live in a city with extremely hard water.  It’s so hard to get detergent out of stuff, and I don’t think that it even really suds properly.  My solution to that was to add powdered Calgon to our laundry.  I started this before we had an issue, adding a tablespoon to each load (we have a front washer), along with the detergent.  After we had noticed a problem, I started adding about a quarter cup to the wash, thinking that maybe it will help remove any mineral build up.    This?  Did nothing, and I was going through Calgon like a mad woman.

I also thought that it could be a bacteria thing, so I tried washing my diapers with Oxyclean as well.  The first time I tried it, I added a full scoop of Oxyclean, and then rinsed eleventy million times.  Just in case.  That didn’t seem to fix the problem.

I had heard about the mysterious powers of blue Dawn, so I picked some of that up, and put it in the wash.  It made a lot (A LOT) of bubbles, but no help with The Stinkies (although I used it straight on my pockets, and they haven’t had a smell issue since, so I guess it kind of helped).  I haven’t been adding it to the wash regularily, so maybe that’s something to try.

I have even been hanging things out in the sun, even though you cannot convince me that this will help.  There’s no way that the sun can kill bacteria, otherwise we would live in a sterile world.  I do believe that it will bleach out stains, and the fresh air can’t hurt the fabric, but I didn’t have high hopes for this curing my diaper plague.

My last idea was that maybe I need to switch detergents.  There’s a lady on the Diaper Swappers board who lives in my city, and she has great results with Sunlight brand laundry detergent.  I might try this, once my Nellie’s Washing Soda is all gone (I spent money on it, I should use it!).  I’m fairly skeptical that a change in detergent will fix all my diaper woes, just because Nellie’s among the top recommended for diaper care.  Oh well.

Any advice?  Things I didn’t try?  Things I should think about?  I don’t have access to RLR (unless one of my friends in the States wants to donate to my cause - and even then I’m petrified to use it in my front loader!), so that’s the only thing I’m not willing to try (that and boiling my PUL - that also scares the poop out of me).

I love summer.  It’s warm, the sun is out, and we get to wear shorts and tank tops (for those of us who dare to).  Summer also means that we can finally strip the layers off our babies and let them run “free”.  For those of us who invest in cute diapers, we get doubly excited because we can finally see what our hard-earned cash has bought us.

Personally, I love to see Kitten run around in her little Piddle Poddles and her new Mutt*.  I do love to see her little tushie in just about every diaper we own, but those two get the biggest thrill out of me.  I am a little nutty, so I tend to make sure that she has co-ordinating shirts so she’s wearing an “outfit”.  But maybe that’s just me.

I also love summer cloth diapers because my diapers dry SO much faster outside.**  They’re pretty crunchy when they come in, but a quick tumble in the dryer softens them up.  I also like that the sun bleaches my inserts and the diapers.  And why do I love the sun so much for it’s bleaching powers?  Because no one told me about “summer poo”.  I don’t know if Kitten just isn’t adjusting well to the heat, but her diapers are a lot mushier and harder to clean out than they used to be!  I used to be able to just roll that sucker out into the toilet, but we’re back to elbows in the toilet scrubbing out poo.  ::sigh::  I meant to buy a diaper sprayer, but still haven’t got there, so I guess that’s my own fault.  So we’ve had our first (and second, but on the same diaper) stain ever.  Every day I throw this diaper out in the sun, and every day it looks a little better, but I’ll be glad when this heat breaks and Kitten’s digestion goes back to normal.

It’s my own fault, really.  If I wasn’t so darn proud of my stain-free diaper stash, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  But no.  It’s a giant big deal!  The diaper that is stained is my Mother-Ease One Size - not my favourite diaper, and even if I sold it, I don’t think that I would get much for it.  But the stain just sits there and mocks me.  Maybe this is just God’s way of telling me to be a little more humble?  It sure seems like it.

*We accidentally bought a Mutt (don’t ask me how).  It’s a medium front-snapping one, I don’t know anything else about it, other than it’s yellow with blue and burgundy flowers with a blue velour inside.  I will say this - it stretches like no tomorrow, and it’s unbelievably absorbent.  I swear that it sucked up more than half the toilet water.  What was it doing in the toilet?  Oh, Kitten had a GIANT POO in it not 15 minutes after I put it on her, and I didn’t want it to stain.  Luckily, crisis was averted, and it did not stain.  It might even be beating out the Piddle Poddles for my favourite, except that we get wing-droop with it that we don’t get with the Piddle Poddles.

** I use a drying rack to dry our clothes, not a line.  It was taking everything a really long time to dry because everything was folded over the bar in half, rather than being hung with pins.  I went and bought 50 pins for $1 (you should be so proud!), and now I’ve hung everything up with pins and boy howdy does it dry faster!  I seriously recommend this to people who use a drying rack.  Plus, when the wind comes up you aren’t chasing your underwear down the street!

I just saw this and I had to share it with you guys.  Because who doesn’t love free diapers?  And bumGenius diapers at that!

Enter to win a bumGenius 3.0 Starter Kit: 18 diapers, diaper sprayer, a dozen cloth wipes, and a bottle of odor remover.

So what are you waiting for?  Enter!  Though, you have until the end of July so there isn’t really any rush here. But STILL.  Free diapers!

Today I’m taking advantage of the projected *90 degrees and have my Fuzzibuns drying outside. All twelve of them. Yes, sigh, twelve. That is all the cloth I own. It’s ridiculous really, but I started late, at the tail end (ha!) of my last child’s diaper cycle. So it was hard to get excited about buying! more! diapers!

I really wanted pre-folds to work for us. I love, LOVE, the idea of pre-folds but my kid? Not so much. He hates them, the pins, the snappys, the bunching. Everything about them makes him irritable. So Fuzzi Buns it is. Tried and true.

If you need me, I’ll be haunting diaper swappers for a good deal on fuzzibuns. As much as I’d like to channel all my monies into little wooden toys that are so adorable, poop catchers will be my new priority. *sigh*