Tots bots cloth dipers

In Sweden it seems hardly any one uses cloth dipers. As one of my big ongoing freakouts currently is that humans are destroying the planet I have been scrambling to figure out what one can do. Most are big projects I will need to think, research and work on. This was one of my first. Throwing out dipers constantly is not good for the environment. They get burned and the materials in them are destroyed and greenhouse gases are released. Solution: Cloth dipers.

I figured this was really good. Good for the economy, good for the planet, supposedly makes getting babies used to toiletts easier and I read somewhere it even leads to less diperrash (not that baby J has any). Also I had it as a kid so I figured it was in keeping with the traditional old style of raising kids. And as there is a increase of mental health issues for children (and adults) going traditional feels good. Yay 50's house wife.  So how was it really?

Now lets start with the obvious. I cheated. I did not get the complicated, cheap, difficult to tie ones I had used as a kid. I got the expensive, velcro, all in one (I also tried some with a base unit and wrapper), fancy patteren Tots Bots dipers. How do they work? Well on the plus side there have been no leaks (which actually happened with the disposable ones even though we bough the good kind there too). They are easy to put on and the material does look nice. Baby J does not seem to mind them at all (nor did he mind disposables). No diper rash or similar has appeared.

All in one type

wrapper for baseunit. Here demonstrating how you can adjust size.

Baby J in base unit

Baby J in base unit and wrapper

The downsides? Firstly they are bigger. This means clothing has changed. Babies clothes need to accomodate more in the behind region. As baby J tends to run towards the warm side he is happy only wearing diper though. I often just put little t-shirts on when we are indoors.

The big anoyance with them though is the cleaning. This requires more thought and effort then I had thought. Right now I am redesigning my future laundryroom to plan for the dipers which in itself is an indicator on how complicated this is. First you need somewhere to rinse them off. Then you need someplace to dry the dirty rinsed ones while waiting to be put into the laundry, then you need somewhere to dry the clean ones after they have been in the laundry (preferably in the presence of sunlight as this made them better somehow.

Oldschool cleaning style I got explained to me was: You rinse them in the toilet by holding them in there and flushing. Then you store them in something similar to a trashcan until they go into the laundry. Also they apparantly still don't look 100% clean after having been in the laundry.

On the instructions it says you can't use stainremover, sodium bicarbonate or really anything stronger than sensitive laundry detergent. They can not be washed warmer than 60 degrees celsius. So right now I use 60. sensitive laundry detergent, prewash and long cycle. I can not bring myself to use the toilettflushing in the oldschool way and as instead rinsing them off with the showerhead. Nor do I feel it is good to store them wet in a bucket. I feel like it would be a growing ground for mould. So they hang above the bathtub while awaiting wash. It feels very complicated and I do miss the disposable diper period. On the other hand fewer visits to the trash can.

Now for the main problem. The drying. I assumed they would be like quickdry. At least they would dry over night. So far it seems to take roughly 24 hours for then to dry after having been in the machine. I bought 11 dipers. He easily used this amount during 1 day so right now he uses disposable dipers every other day due to the drying time.

my favorite pattern