Cloth Diapering 101

Cloth diapers? Yup. One of the things I am always being asked about as a parent is why we chose to cloth diaper. I suppose after being home during the pandemic by ourselves we got lost in the regularity of our everyday lives. What we see as normal, isn’t normal in your home, or everywhere.

When I became pregnant in 2017 I bounced around the idea of cloth diapering, and then it hit me. Social media. After days of scrolling Google, Amazon, Pinterest, Etsy, and Facebook for cloth diapers, I found myself ensnared in the cloth diaper community. While I won’t go into my experience on social media, I will say that I am incredibly thankful for this community, as I have made some of the most wonderful connections. Some of which I am even writing this blog for today. If you’re reading this – Thank You.

Benefits of Cloth Diapering

• Fewer blowouts, less diaper rash: Do I need to say that louder? FEWER BLOWOUTS, LESS DIAPER RASH! I almost never experience a blow out, and diaper rashes are very far and few between.
• Make Laundry, Not Landfill – Did you know the average disposable diaper takes 500 years to decompose in a landfill?
• Avoiding chemicals in disposable diapers: There’s some debate about whether the chemicals in disposable diapers cause in any harm, but a couple years ago when certain disposable diapers were blamed for causing chemical burns on some babies, but I’ll leave you to do that research.
• Have you seen how cute they are? Click Here to view my littles in various cloth diapers throughout their lives.

But Aren’t Cloth Diapers Hard?
Definitely not. They’ve come a long way since the days of folding flat pieces of cloth and securing with safety pins. There’s no need for plastic pants, either. Nowadays most of them secure with velcro (often refered to as hook & loop) or snaps and they’re just as easy to put on or take off as much as paper diapers. That’s what they’re made of, right? Essentially- paper.

Our custom Southern Fluff Love brand is a pocket style diaper with snaps that comes with your choice of Athletic Wicking Jersey (AWJ) or bamboo lining.

How many diapers do you need?
It depends on how often you want to wash! Newborn babies use a lot more dirty diapers per day than older babies. I had about 25 newborn diapers and had to wash every other day – at least. I was doing laundry everyday for a few weeks. Newborns.

Cloth diapering can be intimidating and the research across the internet daunting but the reality is that cloth can be as simple or as complicated as you let it get. Take a deep breath and remember that these are just diapers, and using cloth is not an all or nothing deal. At Southern Fluff Love, we offer a variety of styles and brands to offer something that can work for everyone! I recommend trying a few things based on your lifestyle and budget to see what works best for your family.