Recently, we purchased a gDiaper starter kit in medium from Whole Foods.  I thought it was the perfect solution for a “diaper on the go”.  We could keep the kit in the car and we would have a change of diaper for each kid (since both Evie and Liam fit in the mediums… go figure!).  And it got me to thinking about our first gDiaper starter kit that we got when Evie was just a month old.  And how excited I was to try it on her!  And how it made me take a good long look at cloth diapering.  And how, from that moment on, I never looked back.  I bought my first bumgenius diapers and that was that.

I will always regard gDiapers fondly, as they were our “gateway” diaper.  I didn’t like the cost of the refills, as one of the reasons I wanted to cloth diaper was to save money.  And it would be more expensive to keep buying the refills than it would be to buy the cheapo diapers we were using at the time.   So I started looking online for resources on making your own reusable refills to use with the gDiapers.  And since I don’t own a sewing machine or even really know how to sew, it looked like a pain in the rear.

But in all that research, I did learn more about cloth diapering and what was available out there.  I found Diaper Swappers and countless “Why Cloth” articles and I was enchanted.  We used up the rest of our starter kit refills and when Evie outgrew them, I sold the pants and liners on Diaper Swappers.  I owe a lot to gDiapers.  In that regard, I was very happy to purchase another starter pack to keep in the car.   I know we’ll get some good use out of them.

So what was your “gateway to cloth”?  Did someone give you some hand-me-downs?  Did you receive a diaper service as a shower gift?  Or did you just get curious one day?  What was your FIRST cloth diaper?

Tags: gateway, gDiapers, starting out

I didn’t consider using cloth because I had a strong conviction about all the diapers in the landfill, nor because I thought that the possible health consequences of disposables, but because my neighbor (we had just become friends) used them, and I wanted her to like me.  Truthfully, right around that time, I was starting to be interested in being environmentally conscious, but the deciding factor wasn’t that - it was that L and I would have just a little more in common.

My husband is a rather frugal guy.  He’s starting to wear off on me, and I’m starting to be able to admit that I will try anything for about two weeks… but I will usually quit after that amount of time.  So when I said that I wanted to try cloth diapering, he pretty much told me that it wasn’t going to happen.  He thought that we would spend a lot of money, and I would quit far before we got our money’s worth.  We had an agreement - L would lend me 6 Indian Cotton prefolds, and I would buy 2 covers and 6 fleece liners.  We spent as much on the covers and fleece (and shipping!  Oy vey!) as we would have spent on a box of diapers so we had to cloth diaper as long as that box would have lasted - one month.  And by we, I mean me, because lets face it - Rob is NOT a fan of prefolds.

So we started with my itty bitty stash.  It grew quite quickly, considering that was back in April.  Two months later, we have a considerable stash going on.  We still use the 6 prefolds (most of them have been embellished by me now), 4 covers, 5 pocket diapers, 1 AIO, 3 fitted diapers, and 1 fleece soaker.  I also have 3 more fitted diapers on the way to me, and we’re now branching out into cloth wipes!

My friendship with L has grown quite a bit as well.  It’s not all about the diapers for us, but being able to identify with each other with the highs and lows of cloth is definitely a plus.

Tags: covers, prefolds, starting out, stash