Posted by: Amy Fong

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about cloth diapering while travelling this summer on a road trip and staying at a remote alpine cabin. We did another trip last November, consisting of a  4 night/5 day cruise from Vancouver to Los Angeles, followed by 4 full days in Disneyland. And as with our summer trip, we used cloth diapers exclusively throughout our trip. 

We decided to bring only as many diapers as would fit in our Skip Hop diaper bag. As it turned out, only 20 diaper changes fit in the bag --18 pocket and all-in-one diapers and 2 fitted diapers with 2 covers. This turned out to be more than enough.

Our trip started off with the cruise. At the end of day 2 I knew that we weren't going to have enough diapers to last us until we arrived in LA. I checked out our ship's guest laundry facilities, but at $3 US for a wash and $3 US for a dry, I decided​ not to spend the small fortune that it would cost to wash the 5 diapers that I needed to get us through to the end of the cruise. Thus, I washed the  diapers in our stateroom's bathroom sink, and hung them up to dry on the clothes line over our bathtub. I did the wash by rinsing the diapers in warm water, then soaking the diapers in hot water with detergent for 30 minutes, giving them an occasional swirl a few times during the soak. I then rinsed them thoroughly and wrung them out before hanging them up to dry.

It did take a while for our diapers to dry, since I was using bamboo inserts with our pocket diapers, and all-in-one diapers with bamboo soakers, and the bathroom was rather damp. Thus, while I washed the diapers on day 2, they weren't dry until 2 days later, on the second last day of our cruise. That was okay, since we didn't need to use the hand washed diapers until the last day of the cruise. (Note to self: bring flats or prefolds next time, as they dry a whole lot faster than multi-layered bamboo inserts.)

Our hotel in Anaheim had coin-operated guest laundry machines with very reasonable prices- $1.25 for a wash and $1.25 for a dry (in modern front-loading machines). The first night at the hotel, I did two loads of laundry in the hotel's washers and dryers - one for all of the cloth diapers that we had used up to that date, and another one for our regular clothes. I pre-rinsed the diapers in our bathtub prior to taking them to the guest laundry facilities. It was a treat to be able to use washing machines, after having had to handwash the cloth diapers earlier in our trip.

I carried a wetbag and a few diaper changes (typically 4-5) inside my tote bag  while we were in Disneyland. Whenever a diaper got wet, I simply tossed it into the wetbag. I didn't feel that the diapers inconvenienced me or were a burden to carry - I was already carrying water, snacks and an extra change of clothes and a sweater for the kids.

Our daughter was consistently pooping in the potty at the time, so we didn't have to deal with poopy diapers during our trip (although pee was still a different story, hence the need for diapers still!). However, had she not been so inclined to poop in the potty, I would have used disposable liners to make poop clean-up a breeze, just as I had done while cloth diapering on our summer trip.

We did find that we changed our daughter less often on our trip than we would have at home, since we were always out and about seeing and doing things, and didn't always have time to hit the bathroom every couple of hours. To handle the increased amount of liquid that she had in our diapers, I found that it was useful to double stuff the pocket diapers (i.e. using an additional insert or a booster).

​I must confess that we used disposable diapers on a similar trip a year earlier where we cruised to San Diego and spent some time in San Diego and Anaheim before flying back to Vancouver.  But honestly, having done the trip twice - once with disposable diapers, and once with cloth diapers - I can say that it really wasn't more troublesome to use cloth diapers while travelling. 

Here's what we missed out on when cloth diapering on my more recent trip (as compared to a year earlier when we used disposable diapers):
​1) We missed the leaky blowouts that we had - on 3 occasions - while using disposable diapers.
2) We missed the "fragrance" in our bathroom after we tossed a pooped-on disposable diaper into the bathroom garbage pail (although I did try to shake as much off as I could into the toilet).
3) Last but not least, we missed out on an excellent photo-op when I forgot to take a photo of my daughter wearing her custom Minnie Mouse cloth diaper (which I made for her) in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle. 

Unfortunately, I do not have too many photos to go with this post. Cloth diapering was so inconsequential that I forgot to take any photos of our cloth diapers soaking in the sink or line drying in our hotel closet. We were just too busy seeing the sights and planning our day's activities to really give cloth diapering any thought!  Cloth diapering, really, is no big deal. So, if you haven't done so already, when you're next on the go, why not consider giving cloth diapering a go?

Posted by: Amy Fong

One of the biggest deterrents to trying cloth diapering is laundry. Like many others, before I got into cloth diapering, the mere thought of putting a poopy diaper into my washing machine was horrifying. In addition, I did not believe that I could keep up with the extra loads of laundry that cloth diapering would entail. I worked a busy full time job, often with very long days, and figuring out what we were having for dinner each night was a challenge in itself. I had no time to deal with extra laundry, let alone poopy laundry.

As it turned out, once we transitioned to cloth diapers, the laundry was not as onerous as I had expected. We lived in a condo at the time, and the time that it took to haul our garbage bag of disposable diapers down the elevator to the common garbage room and come back up (approximately 5 minutes) was about equal to the time that it took to walk down the hallway to our washer and dryer, dump out the dirty cloth diapers from our wet bag into our top loader washer, scoop in some laundry detergent and push a few buttons. Our wash routine consisted of: 1. Cold rinse; 2. Hot wash with laundry detergent; 3: Cold rinse; and 4: Second cold rinse.  The only additional inconvenience is that prior to placing soiled diapers in the wet bag, we had to properly dispose of poop in the toilet (although for environmental contamination reasons, poop in a disposable diaper should also be dumped into the toilet before tossing the diaper into the garbage -- but seriously, who do you know actually does that?). However, there are many ways to deal with poop that will get the poop into the toilet, without requiring you to touch the poop. Our preferred poop-rinsing tool is the diaper sprayer. It's great for rinsing out potties too!

Four years ago, when we started cloth diapering with our oldest child, we coasted along for several months without any problems -- no stink, very rare leaks. Then one day, the stinkies arrived (i.e. the dreaded ammonia smell), and unfortunately, the smell didn't just magically disappear after the next wash. I was determined to tackle the problem early on before it got worse.  We were washing our stash (consisting mainly of all-in-ones and pocket diapers) in natural, clean-rinsing/residue-free laundry detergents, and I was following the guidelines recommended at the time by several cloth diaper manufacturers -- which was to use only 1/4 of the laundry detergent amount recommended on the package. I suspected that the stink we were experiencing was being caused by not using enough detergent. Once I increased the amount being used to the full amount recommended on the package, the stinkies disappeared. Problem solved.  (Note that in other cases, using too much detergent may be the source of problems as well.)

For our second child, the stinkies surfaced a little earlier, when she was about 3 months of age. There were some changes in our laundry circumstances. By then, we had moved to a new home and we were using a different washing machine (albeit still a top loader). In the past, we had randomly picked the diapers that we used at any given time, and therefore cycled through all of them pretty evenly. Now, we were letting our oldest pick out the diapers for her baby sister. Like many three-year-olds tasked with the responsibility of making important decisions, she was opinionated about which diaper we were to put on baby. At night, we were only permitted to use appropriately themed night time diapers, namely, the blue starry one or the black planets one. It turned out that those night time diapers were our most problematic to clean since they were saturated night after night with concentrated night time pee--our youngest was a much better sleeper than her older sister and so she wore her overnight diaper for 11 to 12 hours straight. Again I did some tweaking, and found that soaking the diapers for 1 hour in hot water and 3 tbsp non-chlorine oxygen bleach and laundry detergent prior to starting the wash cycle generally worked to eliminate the stink. Also, when our three-year-old wasn't looking, we'd swap out the baby's diaper with one that wasn't one of the pre-approved night-time options. This helped cycle through the diapers more evenly and gave the blue starry or black planet diapers a rest from potent night-time pee. Again, problem solved, without having to make any drastic changes or follow a 20-step, 8 hour long procedure.

Finally, let's talk laundry detergent. Detergent can be a touchy subject. Everyone has a different opinion on which detergent to use. We can't provide you with a chart of detergent recommendations. Because what works for one person is not necessarily going to work for another. Everyone has different chemical sensitivities, water composition and pH level, machine type, machine cycles, water temperature-- there are just so many variables. Just because your brand of detergent is not recommended by someone else does not mean you should stop using it. But if the detergent you are using isn't working out, and you want specific recommendations, the best thing to do is to ask people who are local to you, in similar circumstances (e.g. water, machine type, diaper type) and who have been cloth diapering successfully for some time. Take any recommendations you are given with a grain of salt. Including mine, of course. 

No matter which detergent you end up using, I think it's important to make an informed choice. While washing machines generally do a great job of rinsing out detergent, trace amounts can and often do remain on your clothing. Much of this residue comprises chemicals that aren't even necessary for cleaning -- such as fragrances and optical brighteners. They are formulated to stick to your clothes (and your washing machine, and everything else they may come into contact with) to make you think that your clothes are getting cleaned. Even detergents which are labelled as "fragrance-free" can contain synthetic musks, which mask smells and are suspected to be endocrine disruptors.  

Washing cloth diapers doesn't need loads of time or a hefty instructional manual to figure out. If you do run into a problem, tackle the issue early on, tweaking your routine by adjusting one thing at a time. And once you have a routine that works for you, stick with it! 

Posted by: Amy Fong

We just came back from a 9-day family vacation in the Okanagan where we used cloth diapers exclusively for our 17 month old. Even though we wouldn't have laundry access until day 5 of our trip, we didn't bring a single disposable diaper with us. This isn't as foolish as it initially sounds.

The first part of our trip involved a thoroughly enjoyable 4-night stay at Cathedral Lakes Lodge set by the shores of Quiniscoe Lake, at elevation 2070 meters or 6790 feet, in Cathedral Provincial Park.  For those of you who live in or travel to British Columbia and have never heard of Cathedral Provincial Park, you need to make a visit to this alpine park! It does take a bit of effort to get to, but it is a jewel of a park and gives you relatively easy access to a network of spectacular alpine trails without the large crowds -- on one of my husband's morning hikes while the kids were sleeping in, he saw more mountain goats than people.

Most people camp in the park, but we chose the deluxe option (as deluxe as it can get for a remote alpine setting), by staying at the lodge and eating delicious home-style meals served up by their friendly, attentive staff. The lodge itself is fairly rustic. It comprises a few small guest rooms and guest cabins heated by wood stoves. It does have power, provided mostly by solar panel electricity, and everything is shut down at night. There are no TVs, but in the cozy lounge there are a good assortment of puzzles and board games, and a Heintzman upright piano, which I enjoyed playing after dinner - I might have garnered a few groupies while I was there, who didn't seem to mind that my repertoire is pretty  much limited to "Let it Go". (If you want to hear an entertaining story, you can ask Don, the lodge driver and guitarist, how they managed to haul that beast of a piano up to the lodge.) With the exception of one guest cabin which has an en suite toilet and shower (which we were lucky enough to snag), all of the bathrooms are communal. There are no laundry facilities at the lodge, not even for the staff who live up at the lodge. Everything--including supplies, laundry and garbage--has to be trucked in or out of the lodge via a long, rugged, steep unpaved road that is accessible only during the frost-free, snow-free months of the year (i.e. June to October). All this did not deter us from bringing up a small duffel bag of cloth diapers.  We brought enough diapers to last the 4 nights at Cathedral Lakes Lodge, as we knew that doing the laundry would be impractical at the lodge. As it turned out, we had brought more than enough diapers, as after the 4 nights we had enough diapers to last us a couple more days! We brought about 40 changes of diapers with us--a mix of pockets, all-in-ones and flats with covers--and only used up 25 changes over the 4 nights that we were at Cathedral.

We took the kids hiking every day. In order to travel as lightly as possible on our day hikes, we brought the bare minimum for diaper changes: one small wetbag, one all-in-one or pocket diaper, a couple reusable flannel wet wipes, one cloth diaper cover, and one small flannel receiving blanket. We used the receiving blanket as a change mat; the receiving blanket could double as an absorbent insert for the diaper cover if we needed a second change (once the all-in-one diaper was used up). The plan was that if we needed to do more than 2 changes we could reuse the diaper cover in combination with other absorbent materials that we had with us (such as extra shirts and pants that we brought for the kids). although we never did go through more than a couple changes on each excursion.

I expected that poopy diapers would be a bit of a challenge to deal with, so when we were  resting in the cabin, we offered potty time in the hopes that our daughter would avail herself of the opportunity to relieve herself. Here is a picture of her on one such occasion:

Alas, not much happened in the potty this time around!

We lined the diapers with flushable liners in order to make it easier to dispose of any solid waste into the toilet. As it turned out, our daughter did not poop until day 3, and it happened while we were out on a hike, a long way away from our cabin and any toilet--I knew something was up when I saw her squatting on the trail with her diaper on, looking rather strained. I let her finish, then quickly laid her down and took off her diaper before she had a chance to sit down on the poop and convert it from what my husband calls a "one wet wipe job" into a "three wet wipe job". I took the soiled diaper well off the trail (and away from any water source) and tossed the poop into a crevice tucked under a rotting log. Then I rolled up the diaper with the flushable liner and wipe (which all had only trace amounts of poop) and tucked everything into a wetbag. Phew. No mess, no stink.

By our fourth day at Cathedral, our large wetbag was full of dirty diapers. In one of the photos below, you can see our youngest daughter standing next to the full wet bag and rocking a Tots Bots all-in-one v. 2  (a hand-me-down from her big sister).  We kept the wetbag sealed, and didn't really notice any smells emanating from the bag (the smell was not obvious until you opened the wetbag). We did not rinse any of the diapers prior to putting them in the wetbag.

After leaving Cathedral, on day 5 of our trip, we drove to Penticton. Our rented accommodation in a rural part of the town did not have laundry facilities, so around dinner time we took our wetbag of dirty diapers along with our regular laundry to the closest laundromat. As sitting in a laundromat waiting for a load to finish is not our idea of fun, we ate dinner at a Thai restaurant across the street from the laundromat while our loads were running. We dropped into the laundromat as needed to check on the laundry and transfer the loads between the washer and dryer.

The laundromat had two types of washers -- front loading machines and old-style top loading machines. Since front loading machines can sometimes be a bit stingy on the water, I used the top-loading machines to do the pre-wash rinse of the cloth diapers. I ran a regular warm water wash cycle first, in the top-loading machine, with a small amount of detergent. The cost to run a wash in the top-loading machine was $2.75. 

The agitation in the top-loading machines seemed weak, so I decided to transfer the cloth diapers into a front loader to do the hot wash cycle. The front loaders cost $4 for a wash - yikes! That's the price you pay for washing in a resort town. I put in 2 tbsp of our laundry detergent (Nellie's Laundry Soda) and 2 tbsp of Oxiclean, selected the hot wash option, and let it run.

Both the front-loading and top-loading machines in the laundromat did not have an extra rinse option, and I did not want to pay another $4 for an extra rinse, so I had to make do with the single rinse. After the hot wash was done, I took the diapers out and did a sniff test. All of the diapers smelled clean, with the exception of two diapers which smelled a wee bit of ammonia-- good enough for now, since I could give those two diapers a deep clean when I got home.

After the wash was done, we threw the diapers into one of the large industrial dryers, inserted $2 worth of quarters, and let the dryer run for 30 minutes on medium heat. The diapers were not completely dry after 30 minutes, but we took them back to our accommodation and hung them on the backs of chairs to finish drying. They were dry in no time given the sweltering heat.

We continued on our trip, spending two nights in Penticton and two nights in Kamloops, before heading home. Apart from the one laundry visit in Penticton in the middle of our trip, we didn't have to do laundry again until we were home.

So, was travelling with cloth diapers more inconvenient than disposable diapers? Probably not. We did not have a single diaper leak on our trip. Instead of hauling a 9-day supply of Pampers and wet wipes with us, we brought with us roughly the equivalent (volume-wise) in cloth diapers and reusable wipes. As it turned out we could have made do with even less cloth diapers than we had brought with us. Instead of dumping a soiled disposable diaper into a garbage can, we dumped a soiled cloth diaper into our reusable wetbag. We did have to visit a laundromat in the middle of our trip, but by that time we were running low on clean clothes , so the laundromat visit was probably necessary anyway.  And we minimized the inconvenience factor by visiting the laundromat over dinner time and having dinner at a restaurant across the street while the clothes and diapers were being washed.

We are planning to take our next family vacation a few months from now, and intend to also use cloth diapers exclusively on that trip (unless our daughter happens to be out of diapers by then). This time around, we will be sure to bring less diapers. Stay tuned...

Posted by: Amy Fong

We are often asked, "Is it possible to clean cloth diapers if I don't have a washer in my home?" To find out what that would be like, our family participated in the Real Diaper Association's Cloth Diaper Laundromat Challenge, wherein we took our cloth diapers to our local laundromat to clean for one week.

We planned to visit the laundromat two times during the one week challenge to launder our diapers. We accumulated three days worth of dirty diapers before heading to the laundromat for our first visit.

Since it had been a while since I last visited a laundromat, I wasn't sure what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised to find at least 16 modern heavy duty industrial front loading washing machines at our local laundromat. There were also about a dozen large industrial dryers.  Only a couple of each of the washers and dryers were in use at the time.

I selected one standard size stainless steel washing machine, and dumped out the contents of our two wetbags into the drum, and also placed the wetbags in the drum. None of the diapers had been rinsed, apart from the pooped-on diapers which had been rinsed with our diaper sprayer to get the poop off into the toilet. I was planning to run a first wash cycle on warm water without detergent to count as our pre-wash rinse, but I got distracted chatting with the friendly laundromat owner while I was loading the washing machine with diapers, and inadvertently poured in my laundry detergent along with 3 tbsp of Oxiclean into the washing machine, before realizing my mistake. I ran the warm wash cycle, with the intention of running a second hot wash cycle with more detergent once the warm wash cycle was complete. The cost for one wash cycle was $2.25. This included an extra rinse at the end (i.e. 2 rinses in total). The wash cycle was 24 minutes from start to finish, which seemed rather short. However, I noticed that the agitation in these machines was much more powerful than our own machine at home. There was a lot of vigorous washing going on in that drum! (If you want one of those babies for your own home, you're going to have to cough up some serious dough --the laundromat owner told us the standard sized machines cost $6,000, while the over-sized machines for comforters cost $10,000.) Once the warm wash cycle had finished, I pulled out a few diapers and gave them my usual sniff test. They smelled clean, so I decided to forgo the second hot wash cycle that I had planned to do, and pulled all of the diapers out and put them into our clean wet bags.  I took them home and hung them to dry on our drying rack inside.

Three days later, we had another three days worth of dirty diapers to wash. This time, prior to visiting the laundromat, I spent a few minutes rinsing the diapers in our bathtub before putting them back in the wetbag. My 4-year-old came with me to the laundromat as she was curious as to what I was up to and wanted to help me clean her baby sister's diapers. She put the coins into the slot and selected the hot wash cycle. I poured in the laundry detergent, along with 3 tbsp Oxiclean and 1/4 cup vinegar. Then we read some books while we waited for the 24-minute wash cycle to complete. Once the wash was done, our sniff test came back clean and we transferred the clean wet diapers to the industrial-sized dryers. They looked impressive, and we wanted to try them out. However, we were short on time, as the laundromat was about to close (although the laundromat owner said he didn't mind us staying late) so we put in 2 quarters for 8 minutes of drying time (i.e. it cost $0.25 for every 4 minutes of drying time). The laundromat owner told us that an average load would cost $2 to dry (32 minutes). We let the dryer go for the 8 minutes and pulled the diapers out. They had dried a little, but as expected, were still quite damp after only 8 minutes of drying time.  We stuffed the damp diapers into the wet bags and took them home to hang dry.

So is it feasible to use a laundromat to clean your cloth diapers? Based on our experiences, yes, it was completely doable! The laundromat's industrial strength machines were powerful and did a superb job at cleaning the diapers in just a 24 minute cycle.  However, if we were to use a laundromat full time, we would probably want to ensure that we had a large enough diaper stash that we could get away with doing diaper laundry only twice a week (which is what we did for our laundromat challenge) in order to limit the costs and inconvenience. In addition, to save on costs and time, but still ensure that our diapers are well-cleaned, we would probably want to spend a few minutes rinsing the diapers at home before taking them to the laundromat, which is what we did in preparation for our second visit to the laundromat. A quick rinse at home in the bathtub would avoid having to use an extra 24-minute wash cycle (at $2.25 a pop) to do the pre-wash rinse. (While we did inadvertently skip the pre-wash rinse for our first visit to the laundromat, we probably wouldn't want to do that every time, since the diapers could start to build up some funky residue over time.) Also, if we wanted to save more money, we would forgo the dryer most times, and take the diapers home to hang dry on a rack or a line. If we were intending to hang dry most of the time, we would probably want to choose to use relatively quick-drying diapers such as covers with prefolds or flats.  In total, we spent $5 at the laundromat cleaning our diapers over a one week period, which was for 2 washes and 8 minutes of drying time. Compare that to the cost of disposable diapers (Superstore was having a sale on Pampers diapers this week -- $34 for approximately a two-week supply of diapers, although the price goes up to the regular price of $45 after the 2 box limit is reached):

As for the convenience factor, if you are going to have to visit a laundromat anyway to wash your regular clothes, then there should not be too much additional inconvenience in taking your diaper load with you to wash at the same time, since there are generally enough machines in a laundromat that you could run your diaper wash in parallel with your other loads. However, if you were to wash in a smaller shared laundry facility where there were fewer machines, then it might become more inconvenient to wash the diapers since there may not be enough machines to wash all your loads in parallel. If you feel that laundering the diapers yourself is going to be overly difficult, then you may want to look into a diaper service. The weekly cost for a diaper service is about the same cost as a one-week supply of disposables.

So - mission accomplished. We laundered our diapers in a laundromat for a week, and we learned that it wasn't that inconvenient, and our diapers came out clean. And we still saved money over the cost of using disposable diapers and kept a week's worth of single-use diapers out of the landfill.

I set aside a separate wet bag for poopy diapers, and stored that wet bag in a second clean wet bag.  Once we returned home, I used the diaper sprayer to spray out any remaining solid waste from the diapers into the toilet, and then gave everything a pre-wash rinse in cold water, followed by a 1 hour pre-wash soak in  hot water in 1/4 cup Oxiclean, 1/4 cup baking soda and 1/4 cup vinegar along with our usual detergent (2 tbsp of Nellie's Laundry Soda). After running a regular hot wash cycle  and rinsing twice, the diapers came out smelling fresh and good as new.