12 Tips To Cloth Diaper While Working Full-Time

Cloth diapering while working full-time outside of the home held some challenges for me. I found I had to make a more concentrated effort to continue to use reusable diapers than when I was home for maternity leave. Overall, the experience was a pleasure.

See for me, cloth diapering helped me feel that I was caring for my baby even when I am not physically present. It made me happy to leave him clean and organized diapers. Call me Type-A, but I got the warm fuzzies knowing I have chosen which cloth diapers would be covering his adorable little bottom. Through trial and error, I learned that these twelve things helped set up my in-home child care provider for cloth diapering success:

12 Tips To Organize Your Cloth Diapers

1. Leave a note for your child care provider about how to wash the diapers. Pin it directly beside or on your washer.
2. Wash the diapers yourself as soon as baby goes to bed (so the diapers are ready for the dryer)!
3. Use the dryer-it’s okay.
4. Dry your diapers at night on your eco-setting to reduce your electricity bill and impact.
5. Use liners for your cloth diapers. It’s easy and helps to ensure your child care provider properly disposes of messes, not leaving poop sitting on your diapers for hours.
6. Put the liners in each diaper. Maybe that’s micromanaging but it helps!
7. Consider having a few eco-disposables available as an emergency option.
8. Leave everything out that would be needed (e.g., cloth diaper safe creams, pail liners etc.).
9. Remove anything from the changing area that you don’t want on your diapers (e.g., creams, lotions etc.).
10. Be sure to have plenty of diapers ready to wear.
11. Keep baby’s nap time diaper(s) with his or her pyjama’s.
12. And finally, number twelve…. laugh at yourself and let it go. Cloth diapering while working full-time meant I stripped my diapers more than I did in the entire nine months of my maternity leave.

Dirty diapers didn’t always get washed on schedule due to busy work schedules. I realized that a child care provider doesn’t always wash them or clean the diapers like I did do, and sometimes diapers can even go missing! We still have a MIA Charlie Banana pocket diaper!