to give up on cloth nappies....

[cerealqueen]

DD2 (16months) is in cloth, but am sorely tempted to give up on them. She does a lot of poos, and am sick of scraping poo into the toilet up to 5x a day and washing them and hanging them to dry (indoors still, grrrrr). Some of the poos are just scapings and dont always smell through the various layers of fabic and wraps them so she can be sitting in them for a while before I get round to check, eg after school run. (I seem to be forever checking for poo), so often gets some kind of rash, not bad but often red.

On the other hand, we have a lovely stash of nappies and we have come so far having used them on two children and we don't have over flowing bins with fortnightly collections and we are saving money..or are we with all the washing .

Please somebody inspire me to carry on (or not)

Def flushable liners, Amazon do the Tots Bots ones with free delivery. It makes such a difference!

I wouldn't use other brands as they can be really hard and stiff, like cheap toilet roll. The Tots Bots ones are really soft.

Tbh for me it's less about the cost saving, and more about saving on landfill. I'm due dc4 in July and shudder to think of how many disposables I would have got through, given that ds1&2 didn't potty train till 3.
I've had 2 in nappies a lot over the years and it's really not a big deal in terms of extra work. I really hate the smell of disposables too (we use them if on holiday etc). I rather deal with a nappy bucket.

Hope you get on better with flushable liners OP

Glad it's not just me about the smell. Usually everyone claims they don't smell while I'm gagging!

I always used one of those octopus peg dryers from Ikea to dry the nappies

Oh my god sposies REEK. I can't cope with it at all. Once DD was in a sposie and there was this horrific reek and I spent the next half an hour looking for the enormous pool of diarrhoea I was convinced one of our cats had done, until I realised it was DD's nappy. With a teeny little plop in it.

It's the landfill for me too, although I suspect we have saved a bit at least, given DS has used DD's nappies, and we have plenty for a theoretical third DC.

MrsKeithRichards Sorry that you think mentioning "hourly rate" as a factor is "a load of shite". Yes, of course you need to factor it in to both reusables and disposables, (and work out the time it takes for you ), or it's not a valid comparison. I never suggested otherwise, are you used to hearing people only considering time taken for reusable? Your post sounded rather cross to me.

My preference is strongly for time saving, but would prefer also not to be occupying landfill with everlasting plastic. (DP worries about those, but also dislikes thought of nasty stuff leaching out of nappy onto his son's tiny bollocks - that tends to come down on side of reusable or expensive biodegradable chlorine-free disposables). So if there was a nappy laundry locally, I'd be interested in that. (I've been told this is also the lowest energy consumption so that would also be an important factor).

Some of those things you can put a cost on, some you can't. Some of the things you can't easily price up might well be dealbreakers. I can put a cost on my time (though it might vary according to time of day - time around DS's bedtime routine massively more expensive, as I keep having to repeatedly explain to childless mate who keeps asking for favours that'll "only be a few minutes!" around that time).

I also find that people (not just childless friend) tend to radically undervalue my time (actually womens' time in general), which makes me . So it's one of the first questions I think of. Especially at this point in time, where DP and I are trying to organise PT hours when mat leave ends, and I know I will resent any time sinks that are not either work or spending time with DS.

I agree with MrsRichards. We don't talk about the hourly rate or cost to wash for clothes. Nobody wears disposable clothes, of course we wash them and don't think anything of it.

Slightly, in the time it took you to think about all that and write that post I'd have chucked my nappies in the machine and turned it on. Add one the 2 minutes to hang to dry and we're done.

and nappy washes were much easier than regular clothes, no pre-sorting, no folding or putting on hangers. I had two empty paint pails, one for dirty, one for clean. After drying they just went back in a clean pail.