Going cloth was a big deal for me. My husband and I saved for awhile because we were getting ready to shell out a lot of cash to "save for the future!". In all honesty, I'm not sure if we saved, but it's nice not realizing you're on the last diaper and need to run to Walgreens to buy overpriced diapers unexpectedly because your Amazon Mom Subscription won't arrive for a few weeks. That unexpected diaper run comes to a weeks worth of lunch and totally killing my campaign for being a stay-at-home mom with daddy dearest.
I started with two Blueberry pocket diapers. I then added a bumGenius 4.0 to my rotation, followed by one bumGenius Elemental and one bumGenius Freetime. I was washing a ton, but getting a feel for the diapers. I heard that I could save a lot by using prefolds and covers, so I got a few. I went overboard with my Flip covers because there was a great sale going on at the time. I ended up hating that particular system but my mother-in-law loves them, so I didn't get rid of them. I love my thirsties covers, but rarely use them because I don't like prefolds and my fitteds don't last long. They did come in handy when I thought he was starting to get a rash. I used them to air out his tush a bit. The appearing rash was gone by the next day.
My young stash worked well, but I didn't have a good feel for cloth diapering (CD) because I was always washing them and using disposables while these were drying. I slowly bumped up my stash. I now have over 20 cloth diapers and I love them. They're cute and in addition to "saving for the future!" (which i'm not sure I've bought into)... they keep PJ sleeping at night.
When we were using disposable diapers, PJ would pee, and wake up screaming. I got bags. My husband got cranky. As a non-functional family--- cloth diapers were exactly what we needed. They very well may have saved our life. They hold so much more pee. No more explosive poop diapers.
I eventually switched to cloth wipes. I was annoyed pulling pieces of disposable wipes (that mysteriously made their way into the wash and shredded all over everything in the dryer) off of my sons clothes. Now we wipe, maybe spray, and put everything in the laundry to be washed together. Life is good. Thank you, cloth!
