Wednesday, February 23, 2011

What's What Wednesday: Traveling with Cloth

Many cloth diapering families switch to disposables when traveling. Using cloth diapers may not be feasible in all travel situations, but we've found that for weekend getaways by road, using cloth diapers is relatively easy to manage. Here are my tips for traveling with cloth diapers:

Either pack enough diapers to last the trip or make sure laundry facilities will be available. We have enough diapers to go 3-4 days without doing laundry, so for long weekends away, we make diaper laundry the last thing we do before we leave and bring every single clean diaper we own. We've packed our diapers a variety of ways. We've dedicated a large suitcase to them, packed them into clean wetbags, and brought them in laundry baskets. If feasible, I recommend the laundry basket route. It keeps them easily accessible in hotel rooms and leaves you with empty laundry baskets to bring home dirty clothes, souvenirs, or shopping bags.

We also bring both of our large and our XXL wetbags to make sure we have enough space to store dirty diapers in. Using high quality wetbags also ensures that riding home with dirty diapers won't be a stinky experience! Lastly, don't forget the wipes! If you use cloth wipes, make sure you have enough to last and pack your wipe solution if you use it.

While we have no complaints about travelling with cloth, there are some possible drawbacks to consider. The main one is that cloth diapers take up a lot more space than disposables. We have a minivan, so it isn't issue for us, but if you've got limited space in your vehicle (or are flying), the space required is a consideration. If you run out of diapers, you'll either have to find a way to wash them or buy disposables (or more cloth!). Finally, you'll come home with oodles of dirty diapers to wash; not everyone's idea of a relaxing end to a weekend away!

For us, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks...if we end up flying anywhere or taking a longer vacation while Delilah's still in diapers, I'll be sure to report back! If any of you have tips for flying or longer trips with cloth, I'd love to hear them!

--This is the last in a series of cloth diaper related 'What's What Wednesday' posts. Previous posts in this series covered the reasons why we cloth diaper, an overview of the different types of modern cloth diapers, the basic information necessary to get started with cloth diapering, and tackling diaper laundry.  


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1 comment:

  1. Great tips! We have not road-tripped it with cloth. Since we live on a small island, there's nowhere to go! I have, however, traveled 30 hours by plane one way and then stayed with family for a month and a half before doing the same thing on the way back - without a single 'sposie! I really think the space consideration is the only real inconvenience. I stuffed our stash into a rolling carry-on and had enough for each leg of our journey in the diaper bag. I put the dirties in our giant wet bag in the suitcase and restocked with clean ones between flights. No big deal!

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