We use cloth diapers with Danny whenever we are at home and when we visit anyone with a washing machine. While I’d love to use cloth all the time, after an experiment or two we found that it just didn’t work well for us in hotels. But this week we are on vacation and we have three things that let us get diapers dry: sun, wind, and a washing line.
The first year we cloth diapered on vacation I packed flats. Flat diapers are like flour sack dish towels, and in fact we have 2 dozen that were sold as dish towels. They dry very quickly and are a great choice for a young baby. Flats are very easy to get clean but they dried stiff.
The next year we brought prefolds. Those got clean just fine but again they dried stiff. When we got home I had to strip the diapers to get the soap residue out. But otherwise they worked just fine.
This year we made pocket diapers out of old t-shirts using a pattern from Fern and Faerie. They take a longer time to dry but they dry soft, which is a big plus. We put snaps on some of them, which makes them more grandparent-friendly. Since Danny is 2 now I figure the snaps can also make them useful for potty-training.
I pack a little laundry kit in my suitcase. It has a soft bristled brush, a small bottle of Dr Bronner’s soap, a universal drain plug, and a jar of my home made diaper soap. I also have a camping bucket that folds flat. In the future I will put a bar of laundry soap in as well, but the hotel soap works ok. I try to make sure that the soap I use is biodegradable; many of the kitchen sinks here drain directly into plants.
To wash diapers I begin by rinsing them in a bucket of cool water. When Danny was younger and had softer poo I would segregate the diapers so that the pee diapers were washed first. After the rinse I agitate them in a bucket of soapy water using the diaper formula soap. I wring them out individually. Any diapers with stains get scrubbed with the Dr Bronner’s soap and the scrub brush. Then they all get rinsed out again, wrung out, and hung out to dry.
It is best to wash diapers first thing in the morning so that they can hang on the line all day. On this trip I’m having trouble doing that, so I’m going to try washing them at night and then hanging them out in the morning.
This method is pretty easy and is a good choice for camping or visiting somewhere where the environment is the main attraction. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving disposable diapers on my favorite island. Washing diapers uses water, but I imagine it compares very favorably to the amount of water we’d be flushing down the toilet if Danny was potty-trained. I think I use 10-15 gallons a day washing diapers.