Go Green-Cloth Diaper! {Happy Earth Day}

Today is Earth Day and in celebration of that, I am doing my first ever post on cloth diapering! I've mentioned it a time or two in a post, but I've never outright devoted a whole post to cloth diapers.

As I mentioned in my blog party post, I never dreamed I would cloth diaper my girls. During my pregnancy with Zoelle, my sister talked about cloth diapering quite a bit and asked if I had ever considered using them on my unborn baby. I think at that point I really thought she was a hippie and had gone all out! Cloth diapers? Umm..no way! There was a reason someone brilliant created disposables and I intended to use them! She even gave me an article on how disposables could possibly harm reproductivity for the child in the future, but I ignored her. Fast forward seven months and my precious little baby girl Zoelle was having blowout diapers on every diaper!! I was absolutely sick of changing not only a diaper, but her clothes as well. I had several friends online who cloth diapered and really encouraged me to give them a try. At this point, I was becoming more open to the idea so I hesitantly approached Chris. I'm not going to lie, he was not thrilled but gave me the ok as long as I didn't spend a ton of money.

Zoelle at 8 months in a Goodmama

If I remember correctly, I started out with a few sample packs of several different types of cloth diapers. I have tried pockets, AIO's, prefolds, fitteds, and one hybrid diaper. I quickly learned that cloth diapering can be addictive. Yes you read that correctly. Until you've ever tried it I don't think you'll believe me, but it is so much fun to try all these different types of diapers and the most beautiful designs as well. Don't even get me started on wool! I've always said that if I could, I would cloth diaper exclusively with fitteds and wool.

My cloth diaper stash then (and I actually don't think this was all of it)!

For us, we chose to stick with mainly AIO's. We have a dozen Bum Genius Organic Diapers. I bought those for Zoelle and almost 3 years later, they are still holding up quite well. For Xiomara, I have a dozen Bum Genius All-in-Ones. I don't use the organics on Xiomara because she is so tiny and I like the fit of the regular all-in-one better on her. When I first started out cloth diapering, Goodmama Fitteds were the rage and I got pretty sucked in. At one point I had probably at least 2 dozen Goodmamas. Now I have paired my stash of Goodmamas down to about a dozen. We mainly use those in the summer, coverless under dresses. I do have a few random pocket diapers, and a Bum Genius Flip.

While I originally started out cloth diapering because I was sick of disposables, it quickly changed for me to a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons was I was disgusted with how much of our trash was diapers. I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of trash we would make now with two in diapers had I not been cloth diapering today. I really feel as a Christian that part of my job is to honor the beauty of what God has given us here on Earth. With cloth diapering, I feel like I am taking a small step to do that.

How do you "go green"? Do you celebrate Earth Day in a special way?

*Tips on cloth diapering to come in a future post!*