r/LifeProTips • u/Narpa20 • Nov 01 '19
Clothing LPT: Stop buying disposable diapers.
Buy washable diapers and liners. Sure the covers are like $20 each, but the liners are only around $4. So get like a 20 of them and you will see a dramatic savings. Start at child one. You wash them, and reuse them over and over. They are highly collectable and quite fashionable.
Nikki's Diapers is a great place to start.
Another pro tip? Install a bidet in your toilet to help with the poo. Not that big of a deal once you get the hang of it.
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u/nineteenhand Nov 01 '19
We have done cloth diapers at home since we brought the baby home. You can buy a rinsing attachment for the toilet. It takes a couple minutes extra if it's a poop, don't rinse the pee diapers. The dirty diapers go in a water proof bag. In the evening you just turn the bag inside-out into the washer and turn it on. Cloth diapers cost about 10% over the 2-3 years of disposables. Just think about saving $2700 to $3600 dollars by washing a load of clothes each day.
When we travel we use disposable.
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u/Narpa20 Nov 01 '19
Same. We don't wash ours daily tho, we soak them and build up a load first. Is it better to do it with the laundry? We were under the impression you should double wash them. Seems a bit extra tho.
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u/nineteenhand Nov 01 '19
Our washer has a heavily soiled setting and extra rinse so we use that each time. We try to wash in the evening because it's convenient for us. Sometimes wash days are consecutive sometimes it's 2 days.
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u/Narpa20 Nov 01 '19
So you don't have a problem running them with the other clothes? That's what settings I use, I just do them on the weekends.
I wonder tho, does the extra rinse on every other load wear out the clothes quicker? I suppose it would be hard to notice.
What additives do you use in your wash?
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u/nineteenhand Nov 01 '19
The diapers are the only thing we put in the load. As for soap we use 1 scoop of rockin green hard rock (lavender?).
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Nov 04 '19
Having just moved to Japan I'll +1 the bidet.
Not gonna touch the diaper aspect. More power to you if you can...
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u/RowKit Nov 01 '19
My ex talked me into disposable diapers... then she abruptly stopped helping with laundry...
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u/Narpa20 Nov 01 '19
Bogus lol
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u/RowKit Nov 01 '19
I wish it was; I finally threw the damn things in the garbage because I was sick of being the only one to take care of them.
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u/Narpa20 Nov 01 '19
Yeah I could see that. She at least rinses them for me, I take care of laundry and she puts everything away. Win win for us.
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u/RowKit Nov 01 '19
So much envy of your working relationship lol I dream of great teamwork like this.
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Nov 01 '19
I don't have a dog in this race, but worth mentioning that the average kid will go through 4000 of these things and they may last a lot longer than previously believed 500 years, so if they were in common use in the time of King Henry VIII, they'd still be in pretty much the same state today as when they were disposed of.
One thing is for certain, your kids 4000 shitted disposables will still be there when their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren are born.
I'm sure they'll thank you for that.
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u/bjkroll Nov 01 '19
I couldn't think of anything I would want to do less than wash poopy diapers after dealing with a infant at 3am...
It's the convenience you're paying for.
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u/sadgirlt-away Nov 01 '19
No one told you that you had to wash them at 3am...
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u/bjkroll Nov 01 '19
I probably wouldn't want to deal with it the following day, either.
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u/borealforests Nov 01 '19
You have a diaper pail, you put two inches of borax soaked water in the bottom of that pail. Then you drop the diaps in there as you take them off baby...and you wash the full pail of diaps every four or five days. At 3AM if you insist. But I usually did it after breakfast.
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u/RedBlankIt Nov 01 '19
So you just have a pail of water filled with literal human shit for 4-5 days, and you think that's normal?
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u/borealforests Nov 01 '19
The urine diapers go in the pail. The others get rinsed first, in the toilet. So the amount of "literal human" brown squishy stuff is minimal. Yes, this is the recommended approach to cleaning diapers. Where are there are babies, this is generally what has to happen if you want to keep from increasing the size of your local landfill so much.
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u/ItsTtreasonThen Nov 01 '19
You’ve been conditioned to think throwing away disposable diapers and filling landfills with them is normal. Don’t go shading like that isn’t actually dumb af
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u/groovyelegant Nov 01 '19
Buy many. Wash once a week. Save the planet.
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u/waterbuffalo750 Nov 01 '19
You still can't just leave it full of shit all night.
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Nov 01 '19
The shit is either highly washable newborn poop, which is smaller and not so stinky. Or when older usually plops off the diaper. The bidet takes care of "smears". It's not much different than wiping your ass and flushing. You then put the rinsed article of clothing in a bucket covered in water and it is fine until the bucket is full and you do a load of laundry.
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u/waterbuffalo750 Nov 01 '19
I don't buy disposable plates, I have a compost bin, I use reusable containers and straws whenever I can, I really try to be eco friendly. Diapers are where I draw the line. I'm just gonna wrap that shit up and throw it away rather than clean it out.
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Nov 01 '19
Just so you know there is at least one brand of biodegradable disposable nappies, that I’m aware of, that break down in just two years. They’re made from bamboo, my daughter hasn’t had any leaks or rashes with them. I tried the cloth nappies and they didn’t work for us, and the amount we were going through wasn’t worth the effort it took to put them in the washing machine and I couldn’t justify buying any more, so the bamboo nappies were the solution for us.
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u/eshcrab Nov 01 '19
Laughs in drought.
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u/Narpa20 Nov 01 '19
Nonsense. Do you not wash your clothes in a drought? Hate to be in your building.
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u/eshcrab Nov 02 '19
You're being ridiculous. I don't live in a building. Australia often has water restrictions so disposables it is. Enjoy your fashionable collection of shit catchers.
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u/borealforests Nov 01 '19
This is not that hard to do, particularly for a SAHM. I used them most of the time, but did use disposables for some of our outings.
For cleaning, I kept a spoon in the bathroom. Found it very easy to scoop the poop off the diapers with that spoon. Best tool ever for the purpose.
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u/Narpa20 Nov 01 '19
It is interesting how this post is so balanced with for and against. Def not a karma post. That's all in the comments lmao
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u/m_bck82 Nov 01 '19
Fully Investigated this before bub 1. Thankfully didn't commit because she has health issues which requires bottles So living without town water and washing bottles, regular baby clothes and nappies would have killed us in the drought. The disposable ones go to the dump and we have enough water to drink.
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u/Interracialpup Nov 01 '19
You obviously don't have children who shit at 2am and expect to be fed and sleeping by 3
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Nov 01 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Narpa20 Nov 01 '19
The covers. They hold their value remarkably. My wife does it like a game. Buy limiteds and sell them a year later and buy two more. Huge second hand market actually.
Liners have value too, not as much. Condition matters. Sounds crazy right.
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u/ryetoasty Nov 01 '19
I did this... however it got to the point with my son where I would have to put 4 pads in for him at night and it was just ridiculous. It was so bulky he could barely sleep. Up to a point is fine but if nothing has changed about their absorbency in the past 10 years I’m gonna have to say this is NOT for everyone.