Cloth Diapers for a Working Mom: in action

So I realized that I have left you hanging in the saga of the Cloth Diapers for a Working Mom:

When I last posted (about 10 months ago), I mentioned that daycare was warming up to cloth diapers. The director called me back 2 weeks later and said she had checked in with their sister location to get the skinny on cloth diapers in the daycare setting. She said also that the director there told her how cool and "modern" cloth diapers have gotten. Even they can't resist the cuteness.



PlanetWise Wet/Dry bag
(via PlanetWiseInc.com)

It turns out that all we needed to do was provide a place to keep the soiled ones, "double-sealed," and take said dirty diapers home every day. For us this meant we would buy a plastic container a little bigger than a shoebox (like this one, but with a handle, which seems convenient, though we don't really carry it around ever). We would also get a wet/dry bag (we use one from PlanetWise), which we bring empty every day and keep it in the plastic container at school, and then bring the full bag home at the end of the day and empty into our pail in the nursery (or right in the washer, if it is diaper-washing day). And I also bring a fresh load of diapers a couple of times a week.
Of course there were some issues, too: they were worried about space in the classroom. The plastic container is stored on a shelf behind a locked cabinet (it was required that dirties be stored out of reach of babies) where there just happened to be extra space. Since each child has an allotted amount of space to keep their diapers, extra clothes, etc., if all the kids wanted to do cloth diapers, there just wouldn't be enough space. However, we have since changed daycares (for a totally unrelated reason) and they just ask us to keep the box outside a door that opens to a courtyard (side note here, too: when we previously asked our current daycare about cloth diapering before our baby was born, they'd said no, but by the time we transferred over they didn't bat an eyelash at our question).

Another drawback to cloth diapering full time is that there are more opportunities to forget stuff. We no longer just bring in a jumbo pack of diapers and wipes and forget about it for a few weeks. I have to keep tabs on how many clean ones are left each day, and wash when I need to. If I forget, we keep a handful of disposables there, too, for backup. However, I no longer have to work in a trip to the store on a school night, or have an emergency order shipped to the house, stat. I just do a load of laundry.



How clean diapers are stored at daycare
(via ClothDiaperBlog.com)



Now that our boy is 1, he seems to use fewer per day, which means our bare bones "stash" (I'll elaborate on this in a future post exactly what our working stash contains) lets us just wash on Wednesday and Sunday. It isn't recommended to go much longer between washings, since the dirty diapers can start to mold.

A short time after we started using cloth I started noticing another little box next to ours on the shelf at school, and another basket stuffed with candy-colored diapers. Yay!

Of course We still use some disposables. As I mentioned, we keep 5-6 as backup at daycare. They are so infrequently used, however, that I just noticed this week that they are a size behind what he currently would wear. I was checking, because we had brought in disposables that day, because M was going to spend an extended weekend with his grandparents, and would be using disposables with them. They feel more comfortable with it, the visit was longer than a fully clean stash would last, and I didn't want to worry them with washing instructions.

PS. I don't want to scare you that I haven't posted in 10 months because cloth diapering is so overwhelming :) At a friend's suggestion, I decided to follow up where I'd left off!