Why We Use Cloth

I don't want this to be a run of the mill "cloth diapers are so awesome! Disposable diapers are terrible!" post. I don't hate disposables, and I don't begrudge anyone who decides to use them on their kids. When Arthur was brand new, we used disposables in the hospital because he came early and our cloth diapers weren't ready. Then in the beginning, my husband wasn't 100% confident with using cloth, so he went through a pack or two of disposables in the first month or so until he got used to it. Last night, he wore a disposable diaper to bed. Nobody died, and the world didn't end. That being said, even though I don't mind using a disposable diaper every once in a while, I definitely prefer using cloth.

1. There is no smell.
Disposable diapers just smell terrible. First, you have the overwhelmingly gag inducing chemical perfume smell that floods into your face as soon as you open up the package. Then, once the baby soils the diaper, you get to smell that weird smell AND human waste combined together. The smell seeps into the actual fabric of your kid's pants. Then you put the dirty diaper in the trash can, and there it sits along with all of the other smelly ones until someone takes the trash out. With cloth, on the other hand, the diaper will only have an odor to it if it's poopy. If your baby is on solid foods, the poop gets flushed down in the toilet- it's GONE. The dirty diaper goes into your wetbag which contains the odor and they all get washed within the next 2 days.

Money Savings.
I don't have any actual mathematical figures to base this off of. You can find a ton of different articles online that go into those specifics, and because I really don't keep track of how many diapers my baby uses in a day I can't do the math. But I do know this: We never have to choose between buying gas for the car or buying diapers. We never have to let him wear the same diaper for hours at a time because we have to try to make each pack of diapers last for as long as possible. A fully functional stash of cloth diapers can be bought for $100 or less, and then either sold after you're done or reused on other children. Go ahead and try to sell a previously worn disposable diaper and let me know how that works out for you.

Cuuuuuuuute!!
Cloth diapers are just cute. They come in every color you can imagine, beautiful prints, and different fabrics. Changing diapers really isn't the highlight of my day, but seeing a nice colorful diaper with stars on it makes it just a little bit more fun.

I'm Lazy.
I would much rather just dump a bag of cloth diapers into the washing machine than drag my butt (and my baby's butt) to the store for disposables. Cloth also eliminates the "we have 2 diapers left and every store is closed... and I think that I smell poop..." scenario. Diapers in the trashcan means that the trash needs to be emptied more often, which means we need to go to the dump more often. Honestly, anything that involves leaving the house more often than I absolutely have to is just way too much work for me. Believe me, if cloth diapers were difficult or inconvenient in any way shape or form, I wouldn't be using them.

Those are just a few of the reasons that we love using cloth diapers. What are your reasons?