I’ve sporadically posted on my own blog because I decided to do some writing for Kelly’s Closet’s blog, The Cloth Diaper Whisper.
When I began my cloth diapering journey, I was not set on any one distributor. I am loyal to Green Mountain for their prefolds, and for the owner’s commitment to only sell natural fibers for against-the-bum use. She’s been around for years and continues to get top scores for customer service as well as for product quality.
That said, I wanted to try out the stay-dry technologies, and those are NOT natural fibers. Okay, they once were (if you go back and look at the origins of polyester <-plastics <- petroleum <-swamp plants and ocean critters) but saying they’re natural is like saying McDonalds “ice cream†is natural. So I had to find another retailer.
I looked at several different stores, and they all had great incentives and advantages. I picked Kelly’s Closet out of the bunch because I wanted to shop primarily from one retailer, and I found that I was more likely to find what I wanted there, than from any other retailer.
How does that lead to “writing for diapers� The Cloth Diaper Whisperer regularly asks for reader submissions. All you need to do is contact them, and they’ll send you a list of topics. You’re rewarded with Diaper Dollars, which can be traded in for a gift certificate, and hence, more diapers.
The other reason I haven’t been writing more of these types of posts for our site is that our blog was never intended to be solely about cloth diapers. More posts will follow, but hopefully we can shift the focus a bit more towards techie/geek topics in the coming weeks.
Yes! The last time with traveled with diabossples (before we switched), DS had a blowout in our hotel bed at 5am. NOT FUN. We’ve now taken cloth for four trips of varying length, both car and plane.We use our Grovia AI2s for travel. We take all of our shells (12) and inserts (17) plus some random other inserts that will fit well, and all of our Grovia boosters. I also take a gallon bag with biosoakers just in case. All of this gets me to three days, which is my typical wash interval. We took one trip recently that was four days in a hotel and I chose to use biosoakers for the first day then start using cloth on the second day. The night we got home I just threw everything in the wash.We just started using cloth wipes at home, but still use diabossples for the diaper bag. We used a mix on our recent 10-day trip. I just emptied the peri bottle and squeezed the air out before packing, refilled with water when we arrived at our destination.I would not plan to use cloth inserts if we didn’t have laundry access. However, now with a baby we prefer a vacation rental with more space and laundry facilities to a hotel anyway. I generally just use whatever detergent is available where we are staying happy Tide user at home, but a few washes in another detergent won’t kill anything. I just make sure to wash hot and do an extra hot wash or rinse.For a road trip, everything is packed in the dry part of a large Planetwise wet/dry bag. For a flight we have to get more creative When taking a stroller that goes in the huge stroller gate check bag, I just threw the entire wet/dry bag in there (still room to spare). No one asks what’s in your stroller bag!!! When taking our umbrella stroller that has a smaller travel bag this strategy is less feasible (the extra space is taken up by my carrier). On two flights we had to check a garment bag since my DH needed his suit, so we just stuffed all of the covers and inserts (separated) into the outer compartments of the garment bag.I might end up flying to see family with DS for a long weekend on my own soon, so I was just pondering how I’d handle that situation. I think I would opt to pack our clothes and diapers in my travel pack, which has a large padded hip belt and a zip-off daypack. That should be enough room for our clothes and diapers, the daypack can be used as a diaper bag, my hands would be free to push the stroller and the car seat (still using a bucket) could hang from my forearm. Alternatively the travel pack can ride in the stroller and DS can ride on me.Wow, that was a long comment!