Even before we knew we were having a baby we knew we wanted to cloth diaper. Our motivations to cloth diaper include concern for the environment (not sending thousands of disposable diapers to the landfill) and cost (making a one-time investment in cloth diapers that will last us through all our children). I also like the idea of our baby wearing natural fiber next to his skin instead of a plastic-based disposable diaper. Of course, like all parenting decisions, this is just what we've decided is right for our family. It's going to mean extra laundry on top of all the extra baby laundry and we were also lucky to find a day care situation that will cloth diaper.

Our cloth diaper stash is a mixture of hand-me-downs from my colleague who cloth diapers her three boys, a Craigslist purchase, gifts, and new purchases. Currently our cloth diaper stash includes:

So, choosing our cloth diapers. The cloth diapering scene is overwhelming! I feel lucky that there are so many options today but with all those options it's hard to know what will be best, especially when you've never done this before! So I turned to blogs that I trusted to see what their experiences were like:

Initially we thought we would just use bumgenius, one-size, all-in-ones because they should fit from infancy through toilet training and their all-in-oneness should make them easier for day care providers to use. I kept an eye on Craigslist for cloth diapers and when a set of 18 bumgenius diapers came up for sale I jumped on it.

When I went to buy the diapers I had an awesome small world experience. The couple selling the diapers was so nice and invited me into their lovely home where I was greeted by their chihuahua and adorable daughter. Their home was very tastefully put together and seemed familiar somehow but I couldn't place it. When the woman showed be down the hallway so that I could see how they had done their cloth diapering set up I noticed pictures of their daughter on the wall. She was in a white onesie on different fabric each month and each onesie said, "1 Month", etc...just like this. It clicked! I said, "You must read Young House Love!" And I realized their home seemed familiar because they had such similar taste, or were influenced by, Sherry and John. I loved that they also had a chihuahua. The woman said that she did love their blog and it was actually why she bought the bumgenius brand in the first place...which is also the reason I was looking for that brand! Love it.

Anyway. So I purchased 18 diapers in great condition and they also threw in the bumgenius diaper sprayer, all for $275. The mixture of colors is a bit pink heavy because they have a girl and at that point I actually wasn't event pregnant yet (plan ahead much?) but I knew we wouldn't care if we put a boy in pink diapers.

Based on friend's experiences I worried that the one-size diapers could be a bit large for a newborn and I felt that 18 diapers would just not be enough in the beginning. My colleague gave us several Thirties covers that she no longer needed so I decided to stock up on pre-folds and bought Snappies to keep them on. We watched this handy YouTube video to learn five different ways to fold a diaper. When I told my colleague about it she said, "There are FIVE ways to do it??" :)

We plan to hang the large Planet Wise wet bag on a door hook in the nursery or the door of the nearby laundry room and collect dirty diapers in that until we wash them. We don't plan to use a diaper pail because I'm nervous our dog would get into it. Right now I have Rockin' Green Hard Rock cloth diaper detergent (for our very hard water) in Bare Naked scent to use when washing diapers. We'll dry the diapers in the dryer or on a drying rack out in our sunny yard. With the Arizona summer approaching diapers should be dry and bleached of stains in no time out there.

When we travel we plan to use waterproof covers with disposable inserts, like these.

Right now we're still using newborn disposable diapers while we wait for Dashiell's belly button to heal. But within the week we should be making the leap to cloth diapers. I know it'll be a transition but I'm excited to get his bum in all of our cute cloth diapers.