OK, so apparently I don't understand this blogging thing too good because I just realized I have a ton of comments and didn't even know it. One of the comments was for the "ebay cloth diaper" post I did a year and half ago. This prompted me to write a follow up to these diapers and let everyone know how they are holding up to hopefully help future shoppers (bidders).
So as far as the ebay diapers go the brand that I purchased the most was Alva Baby, these I did not mention in the previous post because I found them much later in my cloth diaper journey, so if anyone is interested they are great.
Pretty much all of the ebay diapers I've purchased, about 24, have held up. I still use them daily, but now on baby D. I wash them weekly (I wash twice a week but I have a large enough stash that I can split it in half), I've used
Charlie's Soap,
Rockin Green and
Biokleen. I stick with Biokleen now because I can find it at my local grocery store.
I strip the diapers every 2-3 months, I found around that time they start getting funky. To strip, I load our top loader washer with freshly washed not dried diapers, hot water on the largest load and add boiling hot water in as many pots (of various sizes) that I can boil which is 4. I then add 2 scoops of an oxygen cleaner, a couple of squirts of blue dawn dish soap and a random amount of bleach just to help kill bacteria, not enough to change the color of the diapers. Then after the first load I rinse, rinse, rinse. I can't stress the rinsing enough, I usually takes me 6-8 rinses. I actually lower the water level as I go, to help save on water, I know weird but that's me. You want to look for bubbles, if there are no more bubbles then they are ready. I rinse by just running a new load of water, the first I might do hot again to help break down the soap and then I rinse with cold. I'm lucky enough to have a washer with the second rinse option so I only have to reset the washer myself only 3-4 times. I would suggest you start stripping early in the day, because the rinsing takes a while.
The only other things I use with the diapers are flushable liners to catch poop and
Biokleen Bac-out Spray after a poop, to eat up the stinkies. I have found this really helps with stinky diaper pails.
The only diapers I would not recommend out of all of the ebay diapers I have purchased are the Coolababy Charcoal lined diapers, for some reason these leak, the regular white lined Coolababy diapers don't leak but the charcoal lined diapers do. Also, very sad to say but the Teeny Tiny Hiney diapers I purchased pretty much lasted a month. They are super cute but for some reason started leaking pretty quick. So even though these two types of pocket diapers leaked I didn't give up on my money spent, I had some diaper covers from when I first started cloth diapering and hadn't found pocket diapers yet and I just use these to cover the leaky diapers. This way I still get good absorbency and no leaks.
How I use cloth:
I do not cloth outside of the home. I tried it and it didn't work for me. I bought all of the goodies to do it and it just didn't fit. I found that if I lost track of time and went over the 4 hour time limit, they would leak, I don't think this has anything to do with brand because it did it with every brand, it's just how long the insert can hold up, but now I have some pretty cute wet/dry bags that I use for other things.
We use disposable diapers outside of the home and at night. I couldn't find the right combo for overnight cloth diapers without spending a ton of money. Money is the whole reason I started cloth, not to save the earth, that's just an added bonus. Even though I do still use disposable we've cut way down on what we would have used. Instead of 4-6+ disposables a day we typically use 1 at night and most weeks I only leave the house once or twice a week. So with that said we only buy a big box of disposable diapers once every 2 months or so. However, while I was pregnant I really slacked with using cloth and while I'm sick but those are exceptions.
After the initial investment of probably $200-300, which was a slow process. It took me 2-3 months to build my initial stash once I discovered pocket diapers and then slowly added here and there. The $200-300 applies to when I first started with pre-folds and covers, then ebay pocket diapers, the 2
GoGreen pocket diapers I purchased and all of the other supplies, some used and some new. I would say we've made our money back ten fold, I also plan on reselling many of the diapers after baby D is potty trained.
I hope this has been helpful, please let me know if you have any questions on anything I talked about. Now that I know where to find the comments, I will answer you.
