But truly, real food weight loss shouldn’t be a diet plan.

It should be a lifestyle, a change (series of many small changes, actually) that an individual or family can make over time, integrating them into regular daily living.

I always want to say that when you eat real foods, whole and in their natural form, there aren’t taboo foods like when you go on a “low fat” or “low carb” sort of diet. However. In the world in which we live, that doesn’t really work out, because there are so many things sold as “food” that just aren’t food.

In a real food diet, your taboo foods end up being things like trans fat, corn and soybean oil, white sugar, refined grains, and other junk that is just not food, at least not in its whole form.

Unlike other diets, you won’t have to avoid eggs, salad dressing, or cheese or buy low-fat everything. You probably will have to make homemade dressings, so there’s certainly a trade-off.

If you’re currently eating a Standard American Diet of processed foods, white flour bread (or even whole grain bread at every meal), and sugary goodies, just switching to eating whole foods – things that grow in the ground or animals that eat things that grow in the ground – in their whole form – will do loads of good for your health.

Which brings me to the first key to weight loss with real food:

1. Eat Real Food

This alone, especially when it’s a change in dietary habits (notice I didn’t say “diet,” because it’s not), often causes extra pounds to peel away.

Real food doesn’t have MSGs to make you want more food all the time or addictive and harmful artificial sweeteners or artificial colors. It takes longer to prepare, so hopefully you aren’t mindlessly eating. And your body can recognize and knows what to do with all the parts, unlike trans fats, which ravage your arteries like a bull in a china shop.

Many people find that skipping the “diets” and simply changing their diets results in weight loss automatically.

Here’s Marianne’s story:

I have lost 73 lbs in the last year and real food has played a huge part, especially in the last two months after hitting a 2 month plateau. I am slowly but surely converting my family to more and more clean/real foods and spending a lot of time on menu planning and food budgets to try to control spending.

As far as real food goes, I have cut out almost all processed foods and switched to whole grains such as Ezekiel bread. Starches include sweet potatoes occasionally, and quinoa.  As far as fats go, I use organic coconut oil, all natural nut butters, olive oil.  I do count calories but I eat a lot more food now than I used to because I have learned that all calories are not created equal.  I keep my total sugars for the day under 36 grams including fruit.

I make some of our yogurt and make all of our granola and bars, starting with your recipe and making a few changes to suit our needs. I buy eggs from the farm whenever I can and feel like I have hit a gold mine every time they have some for me.  I have always cooked meals and really we probably ate better than 80% of other families out there even before.  Now, though, I meal plan and work hard to get as much organic produce as possible.  I am learning to bring my own food when I am not sure what will be available outside of the house or at events.

We limit school lunches to once per week are noticing that the kids don’t even ask for that some weeks.  Here is a copy of my Facebook status yesterday afternoon if you need a good laugh.  Z is my 10 year old son:

Z says, “Mom, this girl at school today, guess what she had for a snack?” Me, “what?” He says, “you won’t believe this. She had a chocolate milkshake, 2 chocolate pop tarts and a co-co puff cereal bar. I showed her that the milkshake alone had 51 grams of sugar. Isn’t it true that she shouldn’t have more than 30 grams in a whole day?” Me, (trying not to crack up), “Yes, that is true…” Z says, “I told her so and then my other friend added up the calories and it was over 1000, Mom.” So, I feel very badly for this little girl’s body however, very proud that not everything that I say to my kids is ignored!

With what I have learned I was able to take my boys’ school to get them to change how they were doing pre-state testing snacks.  They wanted the kids to have a juice box and cereal bar.  I was able to get that switched to water, oranges and cheese sticks. I don’t know if it will last but it feels good to know that I tried.  One parent even acknowledged that it was a wake up call to her to remind her of how poorly her family had been handling nutrition.

Isn’t that awesome? I’m particularly inspired by the changes Marianne has been able to make outside her home, even as she is making so many, many changes for her own family.

The importance of meal planning mustn’t go unmentioned with real food, since from-scratch cooking is kind of prerequisite to not using processed foods. If you don’t plan, it’s very difficult not to get tempted to fall back on an unhealthy convenience food when it’s suddenly 4 or 5:00 and you don’t have anything started. If you are planning, you likely have something thawed or soaked or partly prepared even by lunchtime, so you practically can’t give in and go out to eat on a whim, because you’d sacrifice work already done and have to re-adjust things too much.

For those of you who need a little help meal planning, especially if many of your recipes (or new whole foods recipes you’re finding, like the ones here at KS), you may find that a system like Plan to Eat can be a lifesaver. The software is very simple to use, and you can import recipes from websites without even opening a new tab in your browser using the bookmarklet tool (it’s really fast, promise!).

Drag and drop your recipes into the week’s meal plan, and you’ll get a shopping list to print to make sure nothing gets in the way of you succeeding at making meals from scratch. (It can’t actually keep children out of the kitchen or the phone from ringing though, sorry…) Watch later this month for a cool new announcement from PTE and KS (if you follow on Facebook, you may have caught wind of it already) along with a giveaway, although there’s a free 30-day trial you can try right now.

Chapin’s story:

I started with organic, traditional foods four well almost five years ago at 235 pounds with many health problems. I dove into traditional whole foods. Now 4 plus years later I am 135 pounds, running every day and teach traditional whole foods on a budget classes and love it. Whole traditional foods changed my life.

Nicole’s story:

I switched to whole foods almost 3 years ago, and have lost about 30 lbs. From a size 14 down to a size 4/6. I don’t own a scale, so I can’t give my exact weight loss, I just go by whether my clothes fit me or not!!

3 years ago, I realized I had a problem when none of my clothes fit me anymore. I had stopped breast feeding my youngest about 6 months prior to that, and I was hungry ALL of the time (something that started when pregnant with my last baby).. I was probably eating something every 30 minutes, and would still feel hungry after a full meal – even the big holiday meals. Realizing I needed to change something, I checked out the book “Master Your Metabolism” by Jillian Michaels. I found out why I had the constant hunger, and I followed her advice – cutting out processed foods, eating 4 times per day, eating a lot of veggies and fruit – eating certain veggies together – oh and getting 7.5 hours of sleep at night! For the first 3 months I did not incorporate any new exercise routines. I wanted to see how much this diet / lifestyle change affected my weight (I was skeptical). After the first month, the weight just started to melt away. I was able to fit into my goal shorts after 2.5 months. The following summer, those shorts were too big for me. (By that time I had started playing volleyball again and exercising more.)

I feel like I’ve been on a food journey. We’ve made changes gradually, and now eat mostly organic, full fat dairy, and grass fed meats/eggs as much as possible. I feel better than I can remember. I have just started really cutting back on sugar as well. There is some irony to my story as I have a BS in Food Science, hence where some of my original skepticism came from.

Real food alone is a powerful force for overall health and well-being, but it doesn’t quite do the trick for everyone who wants to actually lose a few pounds.

2. Eat Proper Fats

Technically, eating real fats is part of eating real food, but because our culture gets so down on all fats, especially saturated ones, it’s important to point out that real food includes real fat, and plenty of it.

Milk comes out whole from the cow.

There’s no such thing as “low fat butter” without a chemistry lab.

Fat is necessary for good digestion, energy, healthy fertility, and a host of other bodily functions.

Eating the right fats is the key here. Check out the Fat Full Fall series for everything you want to know about healthy and unhealthy fats, or skim the baseline fats chart for a quick primer on how to use healthy fats in your kitchen.

My husband decided to count calories for Lent this year (more on that full story later in the week), and by keeping track of all his food intake with the Livestrong app on his phone, he was able to see not only calories, but the percentages of fat, protein, and carbs he ate on average for each week.

Over 7 weeks, his average fat intake varied between 35-46% of his diet. (It was probably more, because when I made green beans and asparagus in pastured bacon grease, he unknowingly inputted “green beans” alone. When he heard about the bacon grease later on, he said, with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face: “Ohhhh, that’s probably why they tasted so good.”) I believe the government’s food pyramid/plate/whatever guide says to eat no more than 30% of total calories from fat. Boo yah!

His protein never went above 20%, and carbs were never over 50% but of course varied from about 35-45% as well. And for the first half of Lent, we were totally grain-free, so any carbs were from either fruit, corn or potatoes.

Common fitness guru recommendations always include bulking up on the protein to help your muscles bulk up and shed the pounds.

My husband lost 10 pounds in 7 weeks – he looks awesome! – and he clearly was on neither a low-fat nor a low-carb diet. He likes to point out that when he would have 3 eggs for breakfast, his app would tell him he was already over double the recommended cholesterol intake for a day. But wait until you hear about his lipids numbers at the end of the seven weeks!

Not worrying about less fat, but only the right fat, are a goal of this reader on Facebook, too:

Awesome. We are trying do to this. My sister in law looked at me like I was crazy and said, “You’re trying to lose weight and are buying full fat cottage cheese and milk?” Yes, yes I am.

3. Cut Sugar Down and Out

I don’t think anyone tries to claim that sugar is good for you.

If it’s not good for you, get rid of it.

Particularly if you want to lose weight, the addictive quality of sugar can really be a hindrance to your goals.

Mandi at Life…Your Way is launching a “no sugar” challenge in the next few weeks here, and there are some great resources at Naturally Knocked Up for cutting down on sugar, as well. In our house, we use honey and maple syrup instead of white sugar, and we try to keep those at a minimum, especially if trying to shed pounds.

Making homemade treats can make a huge difference here for two reasons:

• You’re in charge of the sweetener and can use less and still have a “treat”
• Homemade treats take time to make, so you won’t be able to have as many on hand as if you purchased cookies on sale at the grocery store

My desserts eBook, Smart Sweets, has lots of ideas for incorporating healthiER (not healthy, but better than most) sweets into your repertoire, and Healthy Snacks to Go has lots of awesome ideas for snacks without any sweeteners at all.

Cutting sugar is not easy…but it’s well worth it, and many people discover a bonus of feeling better and even being able to concentrate or sleep better without sugar.

Here’s Stephanie’s shout out:

I went sugar-free one month and lost 10lbs without thinking about it (except all the label reading; that took some thought)

4. Eat Fewer Grains or No Grains

If you’ve been grumbling your way through the post so far, thinking to yourself, “I eat healthy – whole foods, very little sweeteners, no refined sugar – and I’m still hanging onto 5-10 pounds extra. This is not going to work for me,” now is the time to make a grains change.

Many, many people find they can only lose especially those last few pounds if they eat fewer grains. Going grain-free and sugar-free for Lent finally knocked my last five pounds of baby weight off for me, and believe me, I was NOT counting calories. I eat massive quantities of food, often late at night, and I add fat to everything.

Cutting grains makes a huge difference in digestion and weight loss. I highly recommend trying it for at least 6 weeks to see what happens.

Some resources:

• Start small – one meal per day to raise awareness
• Simple grain-free menu ideas
• Grain-free FAQs
• Grain-free banana pancakes
• Grain-free pumpkin pancakes
• Grain-free apple flax muffins
• The muffins in the photo above are from Healthy Snacks to Go

A success story from Diana:

Here’s our story: my husband has rheumatoid arthritis and was on Prednisone for a few months several years ago. Between the medicine and not being able to exercise due to pain, he put on a good bit of extra weight super-fast. He also has a relatively slow metabolism, so he hasn’t just bounced back to normal, and he’s tried lots of different things over the years.

About a year ago, he also developed eczema, and he hasn’t been able to get that under control either, until recently.

Then he decided to start an absolutely no-sugar, no-carb diet. That was hard. Talk about being tired of meat and vegetables! (I know you Paleo people do it all the time… ) After a few weeks, his eczema improved dramatically! And, like most low-carb diets, he started losing weight automatically.

What does this have to do with real food, you ask? Well, when we stay on a real-food, not-too-many-carbs diet, he feels great, loses weight without hardly trying, and his eczema stays away. Add in processed foods (sugar, refined flour, etc.), and most of those symptoms come back.

“Let thy food be thy medicine” definitely works in some cases! This method won’t necessarily work for you, but don’t discount the power of a simple, healthy diet when you’re trying to lose weight. Now we just need to add in habitual exercise–we’re working on that one!

Eat Less Food

Once you’re eating the right foods, sometimes the key to losing weight is just simple common sense: Eat less of it.

Don’t go back for seconds.

Don’t have a late-night snack.

Pack small portioned healthy snacks (nuts are great!) and don’t go back for more.

I’ll share more about my husband’s journey later, but let me just give the encouragement that although he loves eating and loves food, he said that keeping himself to 2000-2500 calories wasn’t actually that much of a crazy sacrifice like he thought it might be. Entering everything into the doggone app, however, got old! He was glad to be done with that part, and even though he’s not counting anymore, he’s maintained his new weight for over a month.

Here’s another interesting story reminding us that even eating perfect foods and no grains can be a problem if you overeat: How I Gained 5 Pounds While Eating Paleo/Primal

Is Real Food Weight Loss Possible?

I’m no expert, not a nutritionist or medical professional, and I don’t have a degree in anything other than talking (i.e. English and Education), but I hope I’ve demonstrated that real food weight loss is not only possible, but very doable and a goal worth shooting for!

You can see all the Real Food Weight Loss and Exercise posts by checking out the “weight loss” tag here at KS.

Do you have a weight loss success story? What was the key for you?

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: Plan to Eat is a current sponsor receiving their complementary mention in a post. See my full disclosure statement here.

If the answer is “not” then you get a “part B” mission, OK?

This mini-series on real food weight loss and exercise was inspired by a few events in my house in the last few months.

First, my husband counted calories for Lent, remaining under 2000-2500/day. We learned a lot about the food we eat.

Second, during the same time span, a friend of mine who is doing some running training brought up a real food protein question. She had been told by other ladies at her gym that within 15 minutes of finishing a workout, one should have X amount of protein. Since she would barely be out of the shower and certainly nowhere near her kitchen, the common recommendation is of course a protein bar or shake, but she knew she didn’t want to mess with all that soy. We started brainstorming high protein sources found in traditional foods (and which ones are packable).

Finally, success in shedding my own last few pounds of baby weight (sort of) pushed me to open up a conversation about real food weight loss on the KS Facebook page, and now I’m excited to be able to share some real food weight loss success stories from KS readers who stepped up to the plate and told me their tale. They are awesome.

(photo source)

Your Ideal Weight

I’m sure there are myriad weight calculators and formulas out there to help you determine your ideal weight, BMI, muscle tone and width of your pinky finger.

Frankly, I’m not going to look them up. (Feel free to speak with Dr. Google if you need numbers.)

I quite like the measuring stick mentioned by one reader in a comment on Facebook: Do your pants fit?

Obviously that doesn’t count if you bought new pants, but I think ideal weight is something you can peg within a few pounds just by guessing, if you’re honest with yourself.

Are you at your pre-baby weight? Do you feel comfortable in jeans? Can you go for a walk without getting totally out of breath? Has the number on the scale (if you have a scale) been generally holding steady or moving in an upward direction the past five years? Ten years?

If you’ve got a few pounds or more that you’d like to see hitting the pavement instead of your middle, let’s make a goal today.

(This is “part B,” by the way.)

Your mission, if you’re in this group, is to set a weight loss goal for yourself, something you think you can reach by a deadline you choose – a month, the end of summer, the end of the  year.

Don’t shoot for more than a pound a week, since slow weight loss is healthier anyway, and you want to set reasonable goals. Better to blow your numbers out of the water than to get discouraged because you’re not making it.

Write it down. Type it out. Use permanent marker. Put it in your phone. Stick it to your fridge. Stick it to your kid’s forehead.

Whatever you need to do to remember your goal, do it now.

(No, not when you finish reading. Now. Unless you’re nursing a baby. Then you should just read and enjoy and set a lazy, hazy goal for when said baby is 9 months old or older – nine months to put the weight on, nine months to take it off.)

We’ll wait.

Just get used to the idea that you’re making weight loss goals when it’s not even trendy and the store ads aren’t chock full of exercise equipment and quick fix weight loss chemicals…it’s May, not January, for Heaven’s sake! But any time is a good time for getting a little healthier, and I’m guessing most of us have either a little something to lose or some improvement that could be made in our fitness or dietary habits.

Starting tomorrow, look for these posts in the series:

• What Does Real Food Weight Loss Look Like?
• Review of Weightless: Making Peace with your Body by Kate Wicker
• High Protein Snacks for Post Workout
• 2 NEW Quinoa Bar Recipes (with oats and grain-free)
• The Complementarity of Men and Women as Applied to Exercise and Nutrition

See all of the series on real food weight loss HERE.

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate and will receive commission. See my full disclosure statement here.

Many thanks to puuikibeach for the photo for the real food weight loss image there.

(waits for sky to fall on head)

…

…

Since I’m still here, I guess I get to tell you more.

For me, cloth diapering has been “one more thing” to add to a very busy household and scattered, out of balance schedule. I don’t love the extra laundry. I don’t love that every time I get caught up and stuff/pair up all my diapers, it’s back on the to-do list 24 hours later.

I miss being able to say, “He’s just medium squishy,” which, with disposables, meant the diaper had something in it but wasn’t full and could probably wait an hour for a change. Finally, I don’t love the thought investment.

By “thought investment,” I mean that, like so many things in the natural living/real food lifestyle, cloth diapering is not something you can do by rote without any conscious thought. You need to troubleshoot leaks, figure out washing details, get diapers into the sun to get stains out, and, as you saw in the cloth diaper rookie post from yesterday, there’s a pretty steep learning curve.

I am a person who appreciates knowledge and seeks to be a lifelong learner, but sometimes my brain gets tired. It must be said that disposables are much simpler than cloth: put on, take off, throw away, order/buy more.

It is also true that I applaud our tiny garbage bags each week, and I used to be uncomfortable knowing how much I was throwing away with ‘sposies. Disposable diapers are absolutely horrible for the earth, with the non-biodegradable waste and the toxic human waste combined. They don’t belong in landfills, and it was truly silly that I’d go to great pains to reuse plastic bags, recycle every 2×2″ piece of paper I wrote notes on, and avoid disposable tissues, while still throwing away a half dozen diapers every day.

I know cloth diapers are the better way to go.

I know this is an important practice for the earth and for my children’s and grandchildren’s generations.

That’s why I’m still doing it, and I’ll keep it up – I’m too darn stubborn to let the fact that I hate it get in my way.

Don’t let me scare you off now…there are many, many women who absolutely love cloth diapering, who find a sort of calm solace in hanging their diapers to dry, who love seeing those cute fluffy buns on their babies.

A little part of me loves the “fluff” too. That part is going to take over the post now and put the cranky part in time out so we can talk about what diapers you should really buy and why!

Reviewing 25 different diapers from about 20 brands is totally crazy. I’m going to do my best to distill the options into a few best choices for certain situations/budgets today, and I’m also going through the cloth diaper review post thoroughly to make sure I was fair and consistent on my scoring.

KS Cloth Diaper Resources

Here’s what we’ve covered so far:

• Cloth diaper review:  25 styles/brands evaluated with videos for each one!
• 7 Tips for the Cloth Diapering Newbie
• A Cloth Diapering Rookie’s First Steps: The Routine, The Vocabulary, The Laundry
• Wet Bags and how much I love them
• How to Make Cloth Diaper Wipes
• Cloth diaper absorbency tests: how much do all those materials hold?

KS Recommends

In about two weeks, I’ll come back to this post, as I’ve been keeping even MORE detailed notes on how well they perform leak-wise, now that they’re certainly all prepped fully. (I realized when typing the original review that I hadn’t kept track of how many times a diaper stayed DRY, only wet, so that wasn’t really fair since we used certain ones more than others.)

These are the diapers I would be willing to spend money on and would want in our stash; they are rated the highest on the scale I used to review (clicking on any of these links will take you to the sponsor’s store; if you want to see my reviews of each diaper, including individual videos, click here.):

Softbums, Omni (29)
Wooldins (28)
Sprout Change (26)
Kawaii Green Baby bamboo diaper (pictured above) (25)
Tuck and Go (25)
Kissaluvs fitted diaper (organic) (25)
Motherease (25)
Go Green! (24)
Kissaluvs (cotton fleece) (24)
Econobum (23)

Since I get to add my own commentary and not just go by the numbers, I will. These are definitely all my favorites, but the two that I’m a bit more skeptical about are the Omni and Go Green. I’m surprised the Omni ranked quite so highly; it is a very good diaper, but I don’t have quite as much emotional attachment to it as the others. The Go Green seems to leak more than I’d like, but perhaps I need to double stuff like I do most pockets. So there. My very subjective opinion.

Making Your Stash

Ten kinds of diapers is way too many, so let me explain how to narrow those recommendations down for your purposes:

Nighttime

We’ve always had “night-night” diapers at our house – when we used ‘sposies, it was Target brand during the day and Pampers at night. We cosleep, so nighttime leaks means big sheets to wash and change and a huge pain in the tushie. I put a bassinet-sized waterproof pad under John’s lower half, but I breathe easier if I know he’s wearing one of the diapers I save for nighttime:

• Any fitted: either Kissaluvs or Wooldins are about equal, always with an extra hemp/cotton doubler and sometimes a small liner as well, with the Marvel cover from Kissaluvs or the Econobum cover
• Motherease is not easy to get on at all, but it’s been such a great nighttime solution – only with the Sugar Peas hemp doubler though!
• Good backups include Kawaii with 2 bamboo inserts and an extra Sprout Change or hemp doubler and the Sprout Change cover with triple stuffing of some sort

On the Go

If John had certain diapers on when we left the house, I wasn’t happy until he was changed into something more reliable. Some diapers are just easier to pack, too:

• Tuck and Go
• Kawaii
• Softbums Omni
• Motherease

At Home, to Reuse the Cover

I do appreciate how I can hang these covers to air out and then reuse them on another diaper change:

• Tuck and Go (pictured above)
• Econobum
• Sprout Change

For the Budget

If you’re looking for the best deals, I recommend:

• A few Econobum covers with prefolds – many recommend Green Mountain prefolds as the best and warn against buying at a regular box store (although when I only had 5 cloth diapers, I used some of my old burp rags with the Sprout Change cover and they worked!).
• The only really bum thing about Econobum is that big poos come through the leg seams, so you’ll deal with a little bit more laundry because of that (about like disposables used to do minus the full blowouts). You may find having a few more expensive shells like Marvel or Sprout Change is worth it, especially since you can reuse for multiple changes.
• Prefolds are most certainly the most economical, and many people say that they tried all the fancy brands and just ended up loving the versatility of prefolds in the end. I can see how that happens, so don’t be afraid of them, but they are slightly more work with wiggly babies.
• A few Kawaii pocket diapers with bamboo inserts for babysitters and when out of the house; pockets are just easier to pack, and this definitely is the most bang for your buck + effective.
• For any pocket diaper you choose, you can use thin microfiber cloths, folded into thirds, as stuffers. They dry super fast, allow you to be in charge of the absorbency, and are an economical option. (Thanks, Lenetta!)
• If you have nighttime leaks, grab one or two fitteds.

For Bigger Kids

Almost all of our diapers fit my 3.5-year-old, but some just seemed more comfortable and roomy:

• Go Green
• Kawaii

For Others to Put On

When I think about how people not used to cloth diapers end up faring with various styles, this list became quickly clear:

• Tuck and Go – couldn’t be simpler to put on AND take off
• Softbums Omni – the option of stuffing the pocket is handy, and these snaps are among the easiest to figure out
• Sprout Change, Kawaii, Go Green, and Motherease are close seconds on this list, but each of them has a little wiggle room for folks to put them on wrong, plus Kawaii needs to be unstuffed after a change.

On the Bubble

A few more diapers are worth mentioning, in my opinion, since they performed rather well. There are a lot of pockets in this category, so if the convenience of a pocket diaper is important to you, take note. A few of these diapers also might move up in the ranks pending a few more weeks of leak testing.

Tiny Tush (pictured above) (21)
Grovia (21)
Bumkins (21)
Softbums, Echo (20)
Fuzzibunz One Size (19)
Flip (18)
Thirsties Duo diaper (21) – recently demoted because the Velcro is failing miserably! It has completely come off my daughter at night twice…

Not on My List

Some diapers just left a bad taste in my mouth, usually for being too complicated or simply for leaking. A lot. I’m sure some will disagree, but these guys just weren’t for me:

Hiney Liney (17)
Oh Katy! (15)
Babykicks Basic (13)
Ones and twos (13)
Bum Genius (9)
Babykicks Premium (3G pocket) (7)
Itti bitti tutto (6)

Random Things You’ll Find Different with Cloth

Starting a new routine is always difficult for people like me. I’m the girl who went through Calc II in college without learning to use a graphing calculator, simply because I was too stubborn my senior year of high school to learn one darn more piece of technology. I knew I’d encounter some changes and have to learn new skills when switching from disposable diapers to cloth, but there were some surprises nonetheless:

• I was told I’d do less blowout laundry even while doing more laundry for the actual diapers. Encouragingly, that was true, but I was suddenly washing nearly every pair of pants and onesie that John owned! So that the boy would still have clothing to wear, we had to get a new tolerance for “wet” or “damp” and redefine when the clothing actually needed to be changed. “Just damp” meant “leave it on.” Don’t judge me until you’ve changed entire outfits three times before lunch, and your baby is not a newborn. I run out of pants all the time!
• Once John was wearing a ‘sposie because I hadn’t stuffed diapers (as usual), and he had a huge blowout up the back. I didn’t even hear it happen. This has NOT happened with cloth, not once. Case in point.
• Cloth diapers, ironically, almost keep too much smell in – you can sniff a baby’s bum and not know he’s poopy!
• Cloth takes up so much room! I always thought folks didn’t take cloth on trips because they might not be able to wash them properly, but my goodness, it’s probably because they don’t have room for all that fluffiness! I need a new diaper bag…

Reader Recommendations

So many recommend Bum Genius, Fuzzibunz, and Green Mountain Diapers (prefolds). One important point I’ve learned in this whole cloth diaper process is that you can’t really just go by the brand – if you get a recommendation from someone, be sure to write down what kind of diaper they loved from a certain brand. Here are some quick notes from helpful KSers:

• Little Lions is another good site for prefolds. They have seconds that are really cheap.
• Motherease has new bedwetter pants.
• A few people always recommend elimination communication – a great idea, but not one I’ve instituted. It’s never too late!
• “Diaper free book by Ingrid Bauer that is worth its weight in gold just for its down to earth, lovely parenting advice and the diaper free method is like icing on the cake. I highly recommend it to everyone even if they are using Pampers ” (from a reader)
• For newborns: “My recommendation is to get a dozen newborn prefolds and about 4 newborn covers (probably about $70). Try them out for a bit once your baby is at least 7-8lbs. If cloth diapering seems like something you are ready to jump into whole hog, I would try a starter set from Mother-Ease. Their one size diapers seem like a good, economical option. The diapers themselves use snaps to adjust as your child grows and you just buy bigger covers as they grow out of them.” (from a reader)
• Want more? Check these out:
• 52 comments with cloth diaper suggestions here and even more here. (These discussions helped me figure out which retailers/brands to request samples from!)

Other Resources

When you jump into cloth diapering, you do commit to a certain amount of reading and research (you’ve gotten this far in the post, haven’t you?). Here are some other places to peruse:

• Diaper Swappers (second hand diapers for sale, information, forums and more)
• All About Cloth Diapers
• Calley at The Eco Chic
• Interesting read on cloth diapering myths, costs, etc. at Sweet Cheeks
• Dispelling the Myths: Why Cloth Diapering is Easier Than it Seems
• More Reasons Cloth Diapering is Easier Than You Think
• The Cloth Diaper Foundation: Affording Cloth Diapers on a Low Income
• Keeper of the Home’s Pocket Cloth Diaper Review

If you’re a wee bit overwhelmed, or if perhaps you want to commiserate with the cranky Katie from the beginning of the post, let me leave you with some sage and comforting words from a dear friend:

Just assume that you’re diapering your baby with disposables. That’s the status quo. Every time you manage to use one cloth diaper, you save one from being thrown into the trash.

The glass is half full…and you’re overachieving when you incorporate some cloth, not failing when your baby’s in disposables because you’re behind on the laundry.

It’s all about attitude and perspective…and the perspective from here of that fluffy little rump is pretty inspiring!

Coming Up…

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming about real food and natural living.

This week we’re starting a real food weight loss and exercise mini-series, during which time I’ll share ideas for on-the-go real food protein sources for after a workout with some nifty ideas from Radiant Life (where they also offer kits for homemade baby formula), my new quinoa-oat protein bars (also a grain-free version), and a new simpler tutorial for my famous homemade yogurt method. I’ll also be reviewing sippy cups from Mighty Nest, so be sure to stick around as there’s plenty to do with your baby beyond his or her cute buns!

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Amazon and receive commission for purchases. Radiant Life and Mighty Nest are May sponsors at KS receiving their complementary mention. All the diapers mentioned here were free product samples, but my opinion is strictly my own. See my full disclosure statement here.

I’m over at Green Your Way this week with Will the Safe Chemicals Act be Enough?

I don’t usually get political, but more and more, there are issues worth exploring (at least) and writing legislators about (sometimes). Are toxic chemicals one of them? Can the government regulate them properly? Will they do it correctly? An excerpt:

Did you know that of the 84,000 or so chemicals floating around the American marketplace, the EPA only has “sufficient health and safety information” on 200 of them?

In classic backwards logic, the 35-year-old law governing chemicals gives them the same amount of credit and leeway as human beings: innocent until proven guilty. Only they forget to take any of them to court to make sure they didn’t commit any crimes or harm any citizens. If a certain chemical is proven to be harmful, the law makes it very difficult for government agencies to restrict its use.

It’s time for a change.

The Safe Chemicals Act, introduced in May of last year and due soon for a vote in the Senate, offers much-needed reform to our toxic world.

Find out what’s being offered in the act by clicking HERE to read the rest of the article…also includes links to write your legislators and sign the petition.

Two of KS’s May sponsors for whom I’m very grateful are GREAT places to shop if you want to avoid chemicals, because you can trust these guys to do the hard research for you. You won’t find anything with a sliver of toxins in them at Radiant Life or Mighty Nest – give them a "hello" and "thank you!" for being a safe haven for crunchy folks who want to do the best for their families!

(photo source)

I couldn’t quite visualize what cloth diapering would be like, and that was a major psychological roadblock for me.

I’m a planner, the type of person who spends two days in the new house with post-its in the kitchen, mentally putting away all the dishes, then testing out what cooking would be like to make sure it’s efficient. I feel much more comfortable in a situation when I know what to expect.

With cloth, even though I had had a few conversations with cloth diapering mamas about what they did, I just couldn’t quite wrap my brain around wet vs. dry pails, how to do the laundry, how messy it would be, if the toilet was involved, and so forth. And the number of different kinds of diapers absolutely blew me away.

I’m hoping I’m still green behind the ears enough to be able to speak through the eyes of a total rookie, explaining things from the most basic level (since that’s where I am after only 4 months!), yet covering all the bases so that someone who knows nothing about cloth diapers could leave this post feeling empowered to jump into cloth with confidence.

Different Types of Cloth Diapers

Whether you’re just getting into cloth diapers or have done it for years, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of options on the market today. Obviously, I’m going to tell you to check out my big old cloth diaper review to really understand the difference between various styles of cloth diapers. There you can see photos, descriptions, video tutorials, and honest reviews of 25 different diapers, about 20 brands, in 5 different categories, including:

• All-in-one cloth diapers (AIOs): These have the absorbent layer and the waterproof layer in one piece. They go on and off like a disposable and can be a great cloth diaper solution or a mess, depending on the brand.
• Pocket diapers: The waterproof cover has a pocket, usually made of a fleece material to wick away the moisture, into which you stuff one or two inserts. They are easy to put on but usually need to be taken apart to wash on the way off.
• All-in-two diapers (AI2): Typically the absorbent insert snaps into the waterproof cover, meaning they can stay together in the wash if you’d like, and no pocket stuffing.
• Fitted cloth diapers: A diaper shaped like a disposable, but 100% absorbent, usually snapping together around the baby. You need a waterproof cover separately for fitteds.
• Prefolds: Those things that many of us used as burp cloths for our babies. Prefolds are the old-fashioned “cloth diaper” that you can buy in a 12-pack at Babies ‘R’ Us, but I understand that you don’t really want to get them there as those aren’t very high quality. With a prefold, you need some sort of waterproof outer cover. Some people pin the diaper on the baby under the cover, some use “Snappis” which are neat little apparatuses that close the diaper up without pins, and some people (like me) just cram the cover on over the cloth diaper prefold and hope for the best.
• Flats: There’s a reason prefolds are prefolded; flats are what they used to look like before machines folded them up. I’ve never used a flat, but I think you can imagine either 3x or 9x the size of the burp cloth prefold – one large, thin piece of absorbent material that you then fold into thirds and thirds again before putting on baby. The advantage over prefolds is that they’ll dry really, really fast and you can customize the fit to baby. You do need a cover for flats.
• Specialty diaper styles: Some cloth diapers on the market have two pieces, a cover and insert, but they aren’t fitteds, prefolds, flats, or pockets. Some examples include the Flip, Tuck and Go, and Sprout Change. You can usually reuse the cover if the insert is only wet.

What did I miss?

Some Cloth Diaper Vocabulary

• Cover – waterproof layer, usually separate from the absorbent part, made of either PUL or TPU, both plastics. I don’t know the difference.
• Insert – the absorbent layer, usually microfiber, bamboo, cotton/hemp or cotton fleece. These come in all shapes and sizes.
• Doubler or Soaker pad – describing an extra insert usually added to the diaper for nights or naps, very absorbent
• Double gusset – an extra layer of fabric around the legs designed to hold in waste; see them on the Thirsties brand video at the cloth diaper review and in the photo above; also on Go Green and the Marvel cover from Kissaluvs.
• One-size – a diaper that uses snaps to alter its size to grow with the baby; often from about 12-35 pounds. Very cool for frugality because you don’t have to replace your diaper stash as baby grows. Most peolpe say that newborns just need a separate diaper until about 12 pounds, but some brands boast “newborn to potty trained.” I don’t know how well and of these one-size diapers work for newborns.
• Blowout – when poo goes everywhere outside the diaper. Common with breastmilk poop, but amazingly, hardly ever happens with cloth. I promise – this is a huge benefit of cloth diapering that really does come true!

Don’t forget to check out this awesome guest post from Calley of the Eco Chic, 7 Tips for the Cloth Diapering Newbie. She shared these cloth diaper vocab resources: Cloth Diaper Terminology, Cloth Diaper Terms and Definitions, and Cloth Diaper Slang.

How to Choose the Right One

Every family is going to have different needs, and looking back, I’m really quite thankful I didn’t have to choose a style based on someone else’s reviews. I’m not a good decision maker (that’s why I get 3 flavors of ice cream when I’m allowed and why I am a glutton for punishment, testing 25 different diapers and 43 natural sunscreen brands just so I can figure out what’s best!).

When you’re trying to choose a cloth diaper style/brand, you’ll want to take into account:

• Needs of the diaper-er: Who will change the baby? Are they willing to learn a new skill or do you need to have simple diapers available that act like disposables?
• Baby’s body type, if known: Very skinny babies and very pudgy babies report drastically different results from the same diaper.
• Time: How much time do you have to do laundry and sort diapers? Some styles (AIOs) take hardly any time; others (pockets) need a few extra moments. Not a ton, but if you’re really pressed for time, there is a difference.
• Time/Baby’s temperament: How much time do you want a diaper change to take? You don’t have to stuff fitteds, but it takes twice as long to put them on. You can quickly pair up something like the Flip or Tuck and Go, or a prefold and cover, but you’re still going to spend a few moments longer while baby is trying to crawl away and/or crying and piercing your brain. Just something to think about.
• Your drying situation: If you can hang the waterproof parts of the diaper on the line, they’ll last longer.
• Cost: You can cloth diaper a baby for $100 start to finish, claim some brands. That’s about 3 months worth of disposables the way I used to shop, which is incredible savings (of course you’ll pay for water, detergent, and energy for washing, but still).
• The least expensive, and also effective, style is prefolds (or probably flats). Since you can reuse covers when it’s only a wet diaper change, you don’t have to buy as many. They dry quickly and are simply less expensive than other styles.
• How important are natural fibers? If you want only organic material touching your baby, microfiber inserts are out, for example. The natural fibers like hemp, cotton, and bamboo do an excellent job at absorbency, anyway.
• And lastly…

Velcro or Snaps?

Apparently this a never-ending debate in the cloth diapering world, and after a few days of CDing my baby with a mix of both, I get it. There are definite advantages and disadvantages to both snap and hook-and-loop style closures.

Velcro’s claim to fame is that it is so quick and easy. It’s simple to adjust the diaper if you need it a bit tighter or looser after the first fasten, and there’s no figuring out which snaps to do first, etc.

Velcro’s problem that I learned about at first is that they all stick together in the wash/dryer. I decided that wasn’t a big deal, and for the speed and ease, I was a Velcro (hook-and-loop, Aplix, etc.) lover.

Snaps were just too clunky, and especially when there were three snaps, people would mess them up and I’d have wet clothes because the side of the diaper was hanging funny.

However.

I’ve been converted, for three strong arguments against hook-and-loop:

1. They come open too easily. When baby is scooting around on his belly, the last thing you want to see is bare buns moving across the floor. (Grovia is probably the exception, in my experience. I’ve never met stronger hook-and-loop.)
2. They can BE opened too easily. Like by a curious 9-month-old (see above for problem). Snaps usually are too tough for kids to open until about age two.
3. Longevity. This type of closure may only last about 6 months, which puts your cloth diaper investment in jeopardy far too quickly for my liking.

When it comes to snap closure, you’ll find either two or three snaps.

There’s a reason for three: stability. Sometimes that extra snap can prevent the diaper from gapping at the upper leg.

Perhaps on thinner babies, that’s an issue, but with my guy, user error is a much greater concern. Three snaps has proven too confusing for dads and grandmas, so I rest firmly in the camp of “two snaps is best.”

Prepping Your Cloth Diapers

When you get your cloth diaper stash, you can’t start using them right away. In order to obtain proper absorbency, most diaper materials have to be washed and dried between one and ten times before wearing. The average is three times; bamboo is ten.

I found that the best way to do this is to wash diapers a few times along with normal laundry (if and only if you use natural, gentle laundry detergent for the whole family!), then do one load of just diapers and include an extra rinse cycle to make sure all the detergent is out for sensitive baby skin.

Some diapers take many, many times to be fully prepped, often even more than the directions will say. Plan to use new cloth diapers only at home and be honest about changing them every hour and a half to two hours, or be ready to do lots of extra laundry with wet pants and onesies.

What do Do, Step by Step, to Cloth Diaper a Baby

The pails full of water and bleach from a generation or two ago are kind of a thing of the past (thank goodness). That part made me very nervous. Although soaking in water (just plain water) does tend to help stain removal, according to some readers, most people nowadays use a wet bag – which is dry. You could just use a garbage can, with or without a plastic bag liner. You just need somewhere to collect the diapers.

The wet bag is nice, in my opinion, because it can go right into the wash, so there’s no cleaning of pails, etc. When you take a diaper off an infant who is exclusively breastfed, the whole thing goes into the wet bag – dry – and into the washing machine. Taking the diaper off baby is no harder than tossing a disposable, except for pocket diapers which need their inserts pulled out. (One exception: if you have pocket diapers with openings on both sides, I’ve been very successful at not un-stuffing, and the inserts work their way out in the washing machine.) See one of the pocket diaper videos at the cloth diaper review for a demo on how to stuff and unstuff pocket diapers.

It turns out this step, which I thought was most important when I outlined the post, isn’t much beyond “Put diaper on” and “Take diaper off” except for a few points that really belong under “doing the wash.” I hope this is encouraging to you as a cloth diapering rookie – it’s not as hard as you might think (except for the hard parts). Here are just a few tips for diaper changes:

• If you have the kind of diaper that has a cover separate from the inserts, you can reuse it up to 3 times for wet-only changes. Just drape the cover over your wipes box or the edge of the changing table or the side of your diaper pail to air out until the next change, when you put it back on the baby with a new absorbent layer. (If it’s poopy, toss it in the wet bag – which is dry.)
• One friend of mine hangs the pocket inserts over the edge of the diaper pail to let them air out/dry out a bit, reducing the smell of the diapers in the pail. (The smell really isn’t bad, by the way, nothing different than disposables in a pail in the room.)
• If you have Velcro diapers, fold the tab down for washing.
• Microfiber liners shouldn’t touch baby’s skin directly – they are almost too absorbent and can dry baby’s buns out, and that sort of scratchy feeling that many don’t like on their hands with microfiber cleaning cloths also probably doesn’t feel all that great on the bum.
• Wondering about wipes? Here’s my monologue on cloth diaper wipes.

Doing the Wash

This is perhaps the most daunting part of cloth diapering, at least in my humble shaking-in-my-boots opinion. It turned out to be not nearly as bad as I thought, after all.

The rules:

• Wash diapers approximately every two days. Most cloth diapers stashes don’t last much longer than that anyway, and the smell/stains will build up too much.
• This means you’ll have a small load, every time – use a bit more water than you think. Mine are usually a medium load, if not large. Enough water is needed to get the good agitation to get all the stuff out.
• Prerinse first – some say on cold, some say on warm because stains get out best at the temperature they were created, which is body temp in this case.
• Add detergent, following instructions on the bag. (More on detergents below)
• Set the cycle to hot wash, cold rinse, 2nd rinse, and use a nice long wash cycle.
• Either hang diapers to dry, throw them all in the dryer (although you’ll shorten the life of the waterproof covers), or dry the inserts and hang the covers. I do a bit of a hodgepodge, and my favorite solution is to hang the covers, then do another load of laundry and dry the inserts with that load. Many of the natural fiber inserts take a long time to dry, and when it’s such a small dryer load, you’ll end up hanging them damp anyway.

My laundry room is a main bathroom as well (yuck), so this is all the hang-to-dry space I have.

This morning when I chose to hang all my covers, now I’m out of space to air dry anything else from the next load.

• Some folks say to dry the covers for about 10 minutes to speed things up, then hang to dry.
• Dryer balls are a great idea to speed things up; I have some wool balls from Willow Store.
• If you hang covers that are just covers, they’re usually totally dry by the time your dryer is finished tumbling the inserts. I love that.
• When you’re finished, you’ll want some way to organize your diapers. A basket, a bag to carry them from the dryer/line to changing table, or multiple baskets for inserts and covers. I use a reusable shopping bag to carry them around, at least ideally. Here’s what usually happens in reality:

So clearly, don’t take all my advice. I knew if I didn’t figure out a good system right away, I’d end up doing this, but I didn’t…so I did. Oops. Someday I’ll get baskets and everything will look nice, but for now, I’m just trying to keep up on the laundry and sorting every two days!

Dealing with Poo for the Baby on Solids

Actually, poop is the most daunting and boot-shaking part of cloth diapers for most people. Breastmilk poop is easy; I highly recommend starting cloth early on just to take advantage of that fact.

Once baby is really eating solids, you need to deal with poop differently, or you’ll have little pieces of carrot that have been through your baby’s digestive system, well washed, on your clean diapers. Ask me how I know that.

I am just barely entering this phase (see carrots, above), so I don’t know much, but from what I gather, you’ve got about four options for dealing with this poop.

1. Tip the solids into the toilet and swish the diaper in the water, then drop it immediately into a wet bag (which is of course, now, actually wet). This one scares me and I think it sound gross and fraught with poop splashing problems. I have tried it once. There were problems I’m trying to block out from my memory, so we won’t be describing them here.
2. Install a sprayer, like the ones at a kitchen sink, onto your toilet hose and use that to spray the solids off the diaper. I’ve heard more than one story of people who say that if it weren’t for this little gadget, they would not have lasted cloth diapering. I like the idea of no dunking, but I’m still a bit worried about my propensity to splash things and make messes…I can’t decide if I want a sprayer or not.
3. Use flushable liners, available from multiple brands. Some readers tell me that you can wash and reuse the Imse Vimse brand if you just have a wet diaper change, so you don’t go through that many, and it’s worth it. My next Amazon order, I’m getting some, no joke.
4. Use a dedicated spatula to scrape solids into the toilet. Put dry, scraped diaper into wet bag…which is still dry. This is what I’m doing so far:

Classy, right? I just shared a photo of the stuff next to my toilet with the entire world. There is no shame in cloth diapering… 

I grabbed a 50-cent spatula at Goodwill that will never do anything but diaper duty. I scrape and swish the spatula in the potty. It’s not all that pleasant nor simple, but so far, I don’t have too much staining on the diapers, and no more “clean” carrots coming out of the washing machine.

It’s vital to remember here that this task, technically, isn’t exclusive to cloth. Read any disposable diaper box and you’ll see the note about putting solid waste in the sewer system, not the landfills. Poop doesn’t belong in landfills, but every disposable diaper-er I know (including my former self) just wraps it up and throws it away. They’re supposed to dump it out anyway.

My husband watched me scrape poop once and said, “This. This is what would be the last straw for me and we’d be back to disposables.” Bummer, I thought, I guess the poop duty is up to me for the next two years… I’m hoping he’ll be more amenable to the flushable liners…

Any suggestions for me about this new phase?

What About Diaper Cream?

Don’t use your diaper cream on cloth diapers before checking out the ingredients. Many creams can begin to coat the diapers, making the absorbent parts repel liquid instead. That causes big leaks and big problems. I know the cream from Earth Mama Angel Baby is approved for cloth diapers, as are some other natural brands.

I can’t quite pin down whether MadeOn‘s zinc-based cream is okay. Some sources say zinc itself is a repelling problem, but many, many cloth diapering moms have used the cream and report no problems. Renee of MadeOn and I are theorizing that perhaps the zinc in many mainstream creams is pegged as the bad part, when really, it’s some other ingredient in the tube. ??? Hopefully, cloth diapered babies have less diaper rash than others, so they won’t need as much cream, period. For basic protection and minor redness that isn’t too bad, straight coconut oil, kept in a special jar on the changing table, is a wonderful option. Zinc oxide is really a good help for those tougher rashes – you can even make your own with a DIY kit.

I do use Redmond Clay‘s baby powder, which is in a handy shaker bottle and totally safe for baby and cloth diapers. It’s just bentonite clay, which helps keep baby’s bottom dry. I don’t use it with every change, just occasionally if he seems really wet (like in the morning) or is getting a little irritated.

Troubleshooting Cloth Diapers

Problems with cloth often include stinky diapers, poo staying on through the wash, and the worst: leaking on the clothes. Here are a few ideas, but mostly, I’d refer you to people who have been cloth diapering much longer than me, such as The Eco Chic (a blog about cloth diapers!)

• For leaks, give it time. For real, many diaper inserts take 10 times to get up to snuff. Be forgiving the first few weeks…
• Try snapping up one side or the other on one-size diapers – sometimes you can get a better fit around the legs by snapping one snap or the other, and it doesn’t feel lopsided to baby.
• Use a different material insert – hemp/cotton and bamboo absorb much differently than microfiber. I like these for extra stuffing.
• Experiment with different detergent and different amounts – an ammonia smell usually means you need more detergent.
• Use more water in the laundry.
• Add a 15-30 minute soak in the washing machine.
• Use the sunshine to “bleach” out the diapers.
• A very helpful post: Simple Effective Ways to Disinfect Cloth Diapers
• Another very helpful post, all about diaper laundry: The 5 Variables of Washing
• Soak inserts (not covers) in oxygen bleach and hot water, for maybe 24 hours or so.
• You may need to “strip” your diapers if they’re super stinky after washing OR are repelling liquids because of diaper cream, for example. Sometimes stripping means soaking in oxygen bleach or detergent water, sometimes it means adding baking soda or vinegar to a wash cycle (not both) without detergent, sometimes it means boiling your diapers. I haven’t had to do this (yet), so I must refer you elsewhere! I am getting a bit of a smell lately after John tinkles once, so I’m thinking I’ll have to strip eventually.

Break it Down for Me: What Exactly do I Need to Get Started?

Technically, one diaper and some natural laundry detergent. I got started with 5 in my stash and used extra liners and some old burp rags and got through about a day before doing laundry, just filling in with disposables. You just balance with disposables as you’re transitioning, and it works! Every cloth diaper you use is one less ‘sposie in the trash, you know?

It’s nice to start easy and give yourself permission to go half-and-half, but I’m sure it’s also great to jump right in. To CD a newborn (or older breastfed baby) full time, you should probably have:

• about 2 dozen diapers, or equivalent with covers that can be reused (8-10 covers plus 2 dozen liners? I’m guessing here…)
• somewhere to put them – if that’s a wet bag, great, if it’s a dry garbage can that you’ll wash out if necessary, cool, if it’s a plastic grocery bag, make it work for you.
• something to wash them with – I’m currently using Rockin’ Green, soap nuts have done fine, 7th Generation is on the ropes, and Selestial Soap is a maybe. Lots of people use homemade laundry detergent with borax, Country Save, and many small brands sold with cloth diapers. I really haven’t done much research here, but know that once you get the water amount and system correct, many detergents should work fine with your water (but not necessarily all of them…).
• something to wipe the bum with – mine are T-shirts cut up. You do not need anything fancy!
• when baby starts more solid poops, you might need something to help out – see details above. Again, I spent 50 cents. Keep it simple if you want to save money.

Will cloth diapering save me money? As far as the bottom line goes (pun intended), I used to spend $30/mo. on Target diapers. I’m sure it would be more nowadays, plus double that for newborns. So if you go with Econobum’s $100 claim and no fancy accessories, you are ahead with cloth after 4-5 months (guessing at cost of washing).

I am far from an expert, but I hope the perspective of a rookie is helpful and fresh. (Now…what did I miss?)

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: I received products for my review, and I am an Amazon affiliate. See my full disclosure statement here.

No, I’m not putting plastic on my baby’s bottom, but the question for grocery shoppers might as well be the question for young moms: Cloth or disposables?

Just as we used to be asked again and again at the grocery store, “Paper or plastic?” we now encounter the “disposable or reusable” question multiple times a day: when blowing our noses, wiping dirty fingers, cleaning up a spill, loading up those groceries, and of course, diapering a baby.

Even if you’ve already decided between cloth or ‘sposies for the diaper itself, there are still other parts to the elimination routine that need to be addressed.

When I diapered two babies with disposables, I used homemade baby wipes almost exclusively. Spending about $12/year on wipes instead of $12 every few months was a no-brainer for me, even at first when I wasn’t doing anything particularly “natural” with my wipes solution.

Now that we’ve been using cloth diapers for about 3 months, I’m still in this weird limbo between reusables and disposables as I settle into a routine. I usually have both on hand, which means I have a pretty good idea of which is easier.

Here’s my official opinion to help you make your decision: Use wipes that match your diapers.

Not to be fashionable, but to be practical.

If you have disposable diapers, it’s much easier just to make homemade baby wipes from paper towel. You’re not doing diaper laundry, so cloth wipes are a major burden on the cleaning end, even though they’re equally as little work on the prepping end.

Similarly, if you’re using cloth diapers, it’s easier to use cloth wipes. They just go in the wet bag along with the dirty diapers and through the wash without even thinking about it.

What Kind of Cloth Wipes are Best?

As usual, I have plenty of opinions to share.

A few companies who participated in the massive cloth diaper review also sent some wipes, so I’ve tried cloth wipes from Babykicks, Kissaluvs, and Wooldins (all pictured above). They’re mostly made from nice organic materials, some of which are more absorbent and some of which are more cute. I also had a set from a small Etsy seller than I won years ago in a blog giveaway – they’ve been happily tending to stuffy noses after trying them once or twice on a baby’s bum and learning the “use wipes that match your diapers” lesson for the first time.

Wipes available for purchase have been one of two styles: made much like a baby washcloth, soft and supple, or nice and thick with two layers of fabric.

I don’t like any of them.

Cranky sounding, I know.

But let’s keep it simple.

My favorite cloth wipes are an old T-shirt, cut into squares with pinking shears. Here’s why:

• They don’t take up as much space in the wipes box as the rather bulky purchased wipes I have. Far, far less, which means we run out less often.
• I can make them the size I’m comfortable with.
• No sewing, no fraying.
• I like thin – I’ve always opted for the thinnest baby washcloths for highchair cleanup, too, and I think it’s the same philosophy. Just as I want to be able to feel the peas jammed along the side of baby’s nose, I want to be sure I’m getting all the crevices where poo might hide, and I have trouble with bulky cloths that just seem to get in my way. When I first jumped into cloth diapering, I asked on Twitter and Facebook if people thought I could use an old T-shirt, and some thought I should sew them in 2 layers because they’re so thin. I left the sleeve doubled, and I don’t like it. Too bulky for someone who’s used to thin homemade wipes (and who would cut purchased wipes in half when she used to buy those, way back at the beginning of parenthood!).
• No fuzzies. I don’t like when the soft velour or flannel wipes leave fuzzies on the rump that I then need to make another pass (or two or three) to clean up. Keep it simple; cotton T-shirts are soft enough (better than adult toilet paper, probably!).
• FREE. Free! I can’t emphasize that enough. I know you have an old T-shirt around (or, for more softness, flannel shirt). I used ones that were personalized such that no one I might donate it to would really want to wear it anyway – so if you attended the Christian Leadership Institute in 1995 with me, thank you very much, your kind words written on my back are now gracing my baby’s bottom doing very important work.
• If it stains…or smells badly…I don’t feel terribly about just pitching it in the trash. But actually, they go through the diaper laundry remarkably well.

If I were to buy wipes instead of DIY, I’d probably just grab some cheap baby washcloths. If organic material is really important to you (I prioritize stuff that touches skin for more than 30 seconds and still have a long way to go in that area), then you’ll love the sustainable options from all 3 companies mentioned above.

How Do you Make Cloth Wipes?

I make cloth wipes the same way I make homemade baby wipe s with paper towel.

1. Boil water. (I haven’t thought to use my Berkey water, but I wonder if that too would help resist mildew?)
2. Add some natural soap like castille soap or Shaklee Basic H.
3. Add some white vinegar or tea tree oil for antibacterial properties and to help resist mold/mildew.
4. Pour over wipes in a box.

Simple! Because cloth wipes take up so much more space than my disposable ones, they do run out faster, so I’ve taken to making extra solution and storing it in a bottle or jar near the changing table. Then I can just cram a few clean cloth wipes in there and pour the solution over top when I need a refill.

What About When You’re on the Go?

One part about cloth diapers that I’ve struggled with is that it’s harder to have a bunch of diapers in the diaper bag because of the bulk. Similarly, cloth wipes take up a lot of space, and I prefer to have a small wipes container so I don’t need a huge diaper bag.

Thus, I’m still in hybrid mode, like this:

Homemade paper towel wipes in the middle, cloth wipes on the sides. That way, I can still have some for on the go (and we defer to them when the cloth ones run out, which reminds me of that rule that it’s easier just to match up diaper and wipes!).

Another option for on the go might be these Water Wipes, made with only 99.9% water and 0.1% fruit extract, and no preservatives. With no preservatives, I’m not quite sure how long they’ll last, but mine have been open a few weeks and are still doing okay. My only problem is with the packaging, at least the travel size – the opening is so small, it’s nearly impossible to extract just one wipe, and then another feat to get the extras back in the bag. I’m not exactly sure if the material is bleached or what (they are white), but the website says they’re at least biodegradable.

Just promise me you won’t buy Huggies or other mainstream brands – they’re heavy-laden with chemicals, including even parabens in some! Yuck.

For more on cloth diapering and all my strong opinions, be sure to check out:

• Cloth diaper review:  25 styles/brands evaluated with videos for each one!
• Cloth diaper absorbency tests: how much do all those materials hold?
• Wet Bags and how much I love them
• 7 Tips for the Cloth Diapering Newbie
• And sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed to check back  tomorrow for my basic routine and final thoughts and recommendations on cloth diapering overall.

If you cloth diaper, what’s your wipes routine?

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I’d love to see more of you!  You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: I received samples at no charge for my review, but clearly, that doesn’t change my opinion! See my full disclosure statement here.

Mine had a blast.

Dear Leah helped me pour a Tablespoon of water on two dozen different cloth diapers, all reviewed individually for performance in the cloth diaper review. I taped the results close up for you to view. I think it’s fascinating:

Note: I recommend starting at about 1:50, since the focus is  horrid the first 2 minutes – I’m no professional videographer – and I typed below the important parts of the introduction anyway. I’m trying to edit it, but I’m no You Tube professional, either…

If you can’t see the embedded video, click cloth diaper absorbency tests to see it on You Tube.

In the first video, you’ll see 8 pocket diapers + 2 AIOs, a microfiber cleaning cloth as a control (to see how fast microfiber that is not a diaper insert and has never been through the dryer absorbs), plus a 7^th Generation size 3 disposable diaper.

For a moment, I wondered if perhaps my diaper inserts were messed up, since the microfiber inserts and fleece pockets were not absorbing anything. At all.

To answer the questions on the tips of your tongues:

1. Yes, they were all fully prepped properly, washed and dried well over the requisite 3 times.
2. No, I hadn’t used any naughty diaper cream to cause repelling.
3. One possible problem: I read after fact not to wash bamboo/hemp with microfiber inserts until the natural fibers are prepped 3 times to get the oils out, as the oils will coat the microfibers. I worried that I had messed up all my MF inserts – but I tested boiling 4 or so inserts and compared to those I didn’t boil, and they all acted the same as far as speed of absorbency…so I’m thinking I didn’t wreck my microfiber inserts. Plus, they are all faring acceptably on the baby.
4. Which leads me to a reader comment – apparently fleece pockets and microfibers aren’t designed to absorb poured liquid, and I should have used a syringe to squirt the water into the diaper with a bit of force. So take these results with a grain of salt!

This second video shows 13 more diapers: fitteds, two pieces, and all-in-twos:

If you can’t see the embedded video, click cloth diaper absorbency tests to see it on You Tube.

One interesting thing I’ve noticed since these videos is that some of the diapers really do have a "stay-dry" feel. It’s what the fleece is supposed to do on the pockets, and the Itti Bitti Tutto is another one that feels dry on the baby side yet wet on the bottom.

The Sugar Peas insert with the Motherease diaper wouldn’t absorb well in the first video, but when I did the other cloth diaper absorbency tests to see the total quantity each diaper would hold, I realized that one side repels and the other side sucks the moisture right up. Be sure to check out those videos, which are probably more helpful in the long run than these guys.

But we had a lot of fun doing them for you.

Keep watching this week for the denouement of the cloth diaper series here at KS, and next week I’ll get back in the kitchen where I belong! Of course, this was all shot in the kitchen…but next week I’ll be working with food again, not diapers!

Big Winner

I’m excited to share the name of someone who’s about to jump out of her computer chair and frighten her family, hopefully avoiding waking any sleeping babies or children:

Lois Martin

has $380 worth of cloth diaper and baby supplies coming her way! Congratulations!

Don’t forget to check out the cloth diaper giveaway post for a bunch of coupons, including:

• Jack be Natural: KITCHEN10 for 10% off. (excludes bumGenius, Flip, HempBabies, Boba, GroVia, ImseVimse)
• Mom4Life: 10% off with the code kitchen
• Sprout Change from The Willow Store: ks2712 for 10% off anything in the store
• Monkey Doodlez: stew15, valid for 15% off our Tuck and Go Covers and Inserts (regular price) (exp May 10)
• Wooldins: KITCHENSTEW for 10% off
• Abby’s Lane: sunshine for 5% off most products
• Go Green!: NEWYEARNEWDIPES for 10% off your entire order
• My lil Market: 10%  coupon code KITCHENSTEWARDSHIP
• Organic Mamas Shop: free earrings with every order

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

See my full disclosure statement here.

Eight of the ten pocket cloth diaper reviews are now available over at the massive cloth diaper review post…you’ll find 4 diapers you do NOT want to buy plus a few of my favorites, with two more to come as the day wears on…

Click HERE to skip right to the individual pocket cloth diaper reviews, including:

• Oh Katy!
• Kawaii Green Baby
• Bum Genius
• Babykicks Premium (above) and Basic
• Tiny Tush
• Fuzzibunz
• Thirsties Duo

Coming soon:

• Bumkins
• Go Green!

We made a grand old mess!

To satiate my curiosity about how much these cloth diapers really do hold, I laid out all 25 of those cloth diapers from the cloth diaper review, and I did two tests (on different days):

1. Leah helped me do some closeup videos of how quickly each diaper and/or insert would absorb a Tablespoon of water. You’ll be surprised about some that wouldn’t absorb for minutes! (coming later this week)
2. I poured water until saturation on everything I had and kept track of how much total liquid each insert would hold. The results are fascinating! (below)

Check out the video to see what I did firsthand on just a small sample of diapers. Keep in mind that I’m not a scientist, I just play one on the Internet. My scientific method may not be perfectly sound, but I figure it’s all pretty interesting nonetheless.

If you can’t see the embedded video, click cloth diaper absorbency video reviews to see it on You Tube.

The Chart: How Much Liquid do Cloth Diapers Hold?

My disclaimer: I only did this one time, so certainly I am off a bit here and there. I poured to saturation and/or sopped up water off the surface if inserts didn’t absorb as quickly, as you see in the video, which is unrealistic of real life diapering. Many inserts are partly dry even as the diaper is leaking in another area, but this gives an interesting comparison.

If you’re interested in more information on any of these diapers, check out the lovely sponsors who sent them to me by clicking the diaper name, or pop over to the comprehensive cloth diaper review for my thoughts plus a how-to video for each and every one of them…I’m also keeping close track of leaks this week and will come back to that post to report and change scores if needed.

I have some theories about why there may be a discrepancy between the measured absorbency and the actual leak-proof performance:

1. Microfiber – it’s great for keeping babies feeling dry, and it dries quickly, but it doesn’t always soak up the liquid on contact either (a) quickly enough to keep it in the diaper or (b) far enough back on the insert. Microfibers are often dry on back as the diaper is leaking out the front (for a boy).
2. On the contrary, materials like bamboo and fitted fleece absorb so well that they’re going to nab any liquid that comes at them and spread it evenly on the surface of the diaper/insert.
3. A few diapers just acted funny – the Flip seemed super repellent on the side that’s supposed to face the baby, the Grovia for some reason had zero absorbency in its bottom layer, and the Itti Bitti was incredibly slow to soak up liquid. The Sugar Peas insert was very absorbent on one side but not the other.

Actual Total Absorbency

For a lot of the pocket diapers especially, I double stuff them as a general rule since the company sent two inserts. This results in absorbency like so:

• Kawaii Green Baby and Thirsties Duo = 1.5 c. total absorbency for normal wear
• Fuzzibunz, Bumkins = about 1.25 c. total for normal wear
• Softbums Echo with DryTouch pod = almost 2 c. total absorbency

Nighttime Bulletproof Solutions!

At night, I might do something like this:

• Kissaluvs fleece + its insert with snaps + Thirsties hemp doubler = 3 1/4-3 1/2 cups of liquid!
• Motherease AIO + Sugar Peas hemp doubler = about 3 c. liquid!
• Econobum prefold with Thirsties hemp = almost 3 c.

Here’s a rundown of the big winners (and biggest losers):

Poor Absorbency

• Grovia held slightly less than a cup and can’t really have extra stuffing
• Itti Bitti Tutto held less than a cup with all 3 inserts
• Ones and Twos barely absorbed 3/4 cup
• Babykicks extra insert is worthless – less than a Tablespoon!

Almost all the microfibers hold around 3/4 c. with no real standouts.

Great Soakers!

• Sprout Change held 1.25 cups, impressive because it’s sooo thin!
• All 3 fitted diapers held 1.5-2 cups and easily add extras
• Econobum prefold held an impressive nearly 2 cups.
• Motherease (below) was the winner, holding a whopping 2+ cups (but not quite 2 1/4 c.)

How Much Does a Disposable Diaper Hold?

Here’s your answer, and my incredulity:

If you can’t see the embedded video, click disposable diaper absorbency to see it on You Tube.

When my son threw the disposable away for me, he said, “Whoa, this is SUPER heavy!” It was just like when a child wears a diaper into a lake and it comes out all hanging down to their knees. Pretty crazy stuff.

Now, don’t you all just want to go pour some water on your diapers?

Check out part two, the speed tests, right HERE.

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

See my full disclosure statement here.

There are a lot of bells and whistles nowadays in the cloth diapering world.

No longer do you choose between signing up for a diaper service or washing your own, and then your decision-making is over.

You have to juggle cloth diaper styles and brands, insert materials, washing styles and detergents, line dry or machine, and even how you hang onto the diapers between baby’s bottom and the washing machine. It’s no wonder I was am intimidated!

When I began looking into the world of cloth diapers, one of my first and most intimidating questions in my mind was: “What do I do with the the nasty diapers?”

I wasn’t sure if they went into a bucket of water, if I had to buy a special pail, if they’d go into a dry bag, if I had to rinse them and put them somewhere in the bathroom…

I couldn’t visualize in my head what the routine would be, and for my (quirky, pseudo-organized) personality, that was a deal breaker for me.

Eventually, I just asked enough questions and listened to enough people tell me “it’s easy!” (I now disagree) that I figured out the gist and simply had to jump in and see if I would sink or swim.

Can’t Cloth Diapering be Simple?

Some folks have been asking why it’s all so complicated, why 25 different kinds of cloth diapers and all this rigmarole. (Believe me, I’m asking that, too, every two days when I do laundry.) These folks are saying, “Why not just prefolds and covers?” “Why these fancy bags? Just use a diaper pail and wash it out when you do laundry!”

I know, it would take 5-10 minutes every two days to wash out a diaper pail, but you know what?

I don’t have those minutes.

I don’t have the minutes it would take to line dry my diapers, and I barely have the 4 minutes it takes to look at each diaper quickly before tossing it in the dryer to make sure there’s no poo stain on it.

Am I petty because I wish I could just toss everything in the dryer in one armload?

Is it uncharitable that I’m excited to have these wet bags so that I don’t have to find another 5-10 minutes to wipe down a diaper pail, then let it dry (where?) and get it back to the diaper station?

Too darn bad. One more step, and my husband will send us back to disposables!

I Like My Wet Bags

I’ll talk more next week about the routine I’ve found and whether or not I even like cloth diapering, but for today, let’s just be thankful for wet bags.

I’m very thankful for them.

I can put my diapers right from baby to bag and never have to wipe anything out. The wet bags go into the laundry with the diapers, and I’m very happy with that.

I reviewed four of them, three smaller ones made more for travel and one main diaper changing table station sort of thing, to go in the pail (or not, as you’ll see).

Here’s my video review so you can see the bags and hear my thoughts:

(sorry it’s a bit blurry; I will never claim to be a professional – or even very competent – videographer!)

If you can’t see the embedded video, click cloth diaper wet bag video reviews to see it on You Tube.

For those who hate videos, here’s the bottom line:

• I do feel that I need wet bags.
• The main bag from Fuzzibunz (right) has a zippered bottom to get the diapers into the washing machine – overrated. I had a terrible incident early on where I forgot to rezip after washing, had an incredibly poopy diaper in my hand, and shot it into the bag I had just retrieved from the dryer. Thanks goodness I was still in the bathroom/laundry room with a tile floor. I’ve never unzipped the bag since.
• However, the hanging feature of the bag is super cool – you can just put it over a doorknob and skip the pail.
• Of the three smaller wet bags I reviewed, by Bumkins, Planetwise from Jack be Natural, and Fuzzibunz, the Bumkins wins hands down simply because it has a strap and can hang outside my (too small) diaper bag. That’s probably a really personal reason, but hey – what are opinions for, anyway?

When we’re finished cloth diapering, these bags can be a pretty stylish way to bag up wet bathing suits at the pool or wet clothes from wherever. I’m sure there are 100 other uses, too, but for now, I’m just glad I can toss a diaper in them and not worry if poo gets on the side.

It’s the simple things, really.

Be sure to check out my comprehensive cloth diaper review – I’ll add the 10 pocket diapers next week! 

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I’d love to see more of you!  Sign up for a free email subscription or grab my reader feed. You can also follow me on Twitter, get KS for Kindle, or see my Facebook Fan Page.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: I received these bags free for my review, but a team of wild horses pulling bags full of dirty diapers couldn’t change my opinion, so don’t worry about that. I am an Amazon affiliate. See my full disclosure statement here.