To cloth or not to cloth?

Thanks to my regular reading of Bonnie & Katie's blogs, we have decided to try cloth diapering. Now, this is dependent on the fact that trying them out goes as good as we're hoping. I am waiting to set an appointment with a woman who has a showroom to show all the different kinds of diapers and what works best for each family.

Thanks to being excited and staying up way too late last night, I've decided that we're definitely going to do an All in One Diaper, which seems to be the most convinient next to disposable diapers. Out of the AIO's, I think the ones I am most interested in are the Mommy's touch AIO's, and the Swaddlebee's AIO's.

For now at least, we are just going to use them on Lucy, for a few reasons. One, I don't really know if we're ready to do cloth diapering on Bridget's newborn poop. And two, when Bridget was born, our families were so generous with buying us diapers, that we literally have enough for her for the next 4-5 months I think, and I don't want to waste those. And, three, Lucy goes through a lot less diapers a day then Bridget does, therefore we wouldn't have to buy as many diapers.

I have finally been convinced to try cloth diapering because I don't like that there's always nasty gel from the disposable diapers on the girls' bottoms. Also, having two children in diapers has made us realize how much garbage we're creating. We need to be better about recycling and such anyways, but this is one way that we can help. So, even having just one in cloth will drastically cut down on our diaper waste. Having two in diapers (and just plain having two children in general) has made us look at our finances more as well. We are planning on buying a home in 2008, so saving even more money for the down payment, and for all the purchases that come with buying a new home (like FINALLY getting some nice, new couches and a kitchen and dining room table! :-D YAY! I cant wait!), has made us find ways to cut down in other areas. And even though there is a big investment at first with cloth diapers, even Ryan agreed that it would pay off soon enough with Bridget growing up so quick, and for all our future children as well. The biggest challenge for me I think will be to make sure that there are clean diapers avaliable for use, and hopefully this will help me keep up on other laundry as well.

Anyways, we are just really excited to try this out for our family and to see if the AIO cloth diapers actually are as convenient and easy as they seem!