Well, this perhaps breaks down better into two parts. 1) Using cloth diapers isn’t really that hard. 2) Using cloth diapers isn’t an all or nothing deal.
And perhaps 3) no one actually cares how you diaper your kid.
If you’re curious about using cloth diapers, you can just… try it out. Cloth diapers can be a pretty expensive initial investment, and so I think people feel forced to either cloth diaper or not cloth diaper. But, you are allowed to buy just one. See whether it throws you into fits of apoplexy when you cycle it into the diaper rotation. It doesn’t have to be a defining choice in rearing your children.
We stumbled into cloth diapering, having no intention of doing it at all until we realized we were already doing it. Like most people, we used newborn Pampers. After a few weeks and once he felt in control of the diaper changing situation, Dave decided to look into eco-friendly options. He realized the eco-friendliest was the gDiaper with disposable insert (literally compostable and flushable). So, we got on the gDiaper train.
Once we were on the gDiaper train, we were both used to changing out wet diaper inserts (pee ain’t no thing 4 months in) and we flirted with the idea of getting cloth inserts. It’d be the same thing basically, instead of taking out some damp spongy corn-product whatever, we’d be taking out a damp spongy fleece whatever. Instead of throwing it in the trash can, we’d throw it into a dedicated pouch.
We used both the disposable inserts (for outings) and cloth inserts (bumming around at home), and then I realized that each time I used the cloth insert, I’d save us $.40. And I am cheap, so I started using the cloth inserts more.
And that was our round about way of becoming parents that use cloth diapers. I’m not sure which of my parent-friends use cloth diapers and which use disposables. We don’t have discussions about which cloth diapers are best and how to strip them. And I swear this is the first and only time I will ever take a photo of them.
Really, it’s only as big of a deal as you let it be.
