So your partner has told you she wants to use cloth nappies, and you’re not sure. You have questions that need answers before you can accept the idea. Rest assured, all your concerns do have answers or solutions, and it’s definitely not the craziest thing in the world.

Eww, you’re going to put poopy nappies in the same washing machine as my work clothes?! Won’t that make everything stink? If you’re worried about poo staying in the washing machine, then you need a new machine. A decent modern machine won’t leave residue behind. Besides, what do you do when you have gastro going through your household? Do you throw away everything that came into contact with bodily fluids, or do you wash and reuse? You wash them, don’t you? So how is a bucket of cloth nappies any different?

It sounds too complicated. I’m concerned my partner will find it too hard looking after them. Modern cloth nappies go on just like disposables. You don’t need to fold anything – and if you’re using an all-in-one nappy, it’s just three steps: remove soiled nappy, wipe, put on clean nappy. Washing them is easy too – just dump them in with some detergent and wash. You don’t even need to soak them – in fact, most of the time it’s better not to soak. And if your partner is finding it too much work – we all have days when it’s all just too hard – that’s when you can pitch in with the washing.

That sounds like a lot of extra water. What’s that going to do to the water bill? Not as much as you’d think! In fact, it’s likely to be only one extra wash load every day or two, depending on the size of your stash. Disposables cost between $1000-1500 every year. Even using a top loading machine, your water bill won’t go up that much. If it does, there’s something seriously wrong with your plumbing!

I don’t want a stinky bucket in the laundry room. As compared to a stinky bin full of soiled disposables? If your bucket gets smelly, there are ways to deal with that. Keep a lid on the bucket and the smell will be contained. Or sprinkle some bicarbonate soda in the bottom to absorb the odor. My personal favourite is to use a wet bag big enough to hold an entire wash load of nappies and throw the bag in with everything else. Get two and swap between them.

Isn’t it unhygienic? Not at all. Compare a bucket full of soiled cloth nappies in the laundry, which gets washed every day or two, with a pile of soiled disposable nappies in your bin, which takes hundreds of years to break down in landfill. Which one looks more hygienic now?

I don’t want to scrape the poo off every time. You’re actually supposed to do that with disposables too, did you know that? If the idea still makes you uncomfortable, you can get flushable liners to put in a cloth nappy, so all you have to do is find two clean corners, pick it off the nappy, and flush. Too easy!

Don’t cloth nappies cost a lot of money? Sure, a single cloth nappy costs a lot more than a single disposable, but look at it this way: a single disposable gets used once and thrown away. You never see that money again. A single cloth nappy gets used, washed, and used again. When your child is out of nappies, provided the nappy is still in good condition (and many are), you can sell it secondhand and get some of that expense back. Disposable nappies in Australia cost a minimum of 25 cents each. If you buy an average priced cloth nappy for $30 and use it every second day, over the course of a year, that cloth nappy only costs you 16 cents per use. Use it for two years and it goes down to 8 cents per use.

Still not convinced? Just try them for a few weeks. See for yourself how easy they are to use, how good they look, how much money you save over disposables. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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Cloth nappying on holidays doesn’t have to be a disaster. As long as you have a washing machine and somewhere to hang clean, wet nappies, you’re set. I’ll just share some of my experiences first, and then at the end, I’ll offer some tips of things that would have worked better.

Queen’s Birthday weekend, June 2008: The three of us took a trip to the Flinders ranges for an orienteering weekend. Darrin loves it up there because the terrain makes it tricky. You can’t just rely on being quick; you have to be good at map reading and navigation as well.

To put it as politely as I can, we stayed in the caravan from hell. The gas for the stove wasn’t turned on, and neither was the water, when we got there. We didn’t realise we had to turn them on ourselves till we were into our second day there. The roof leaked straight onto the bed where Caleb & I were sleeping. The windows didn’t close properly. It rained most of the time we were there. And yes, we used cloth the whole time. I tried to do a load of washing on the second day, and succeeded in washing it, but of the two dryers in the laundry room, one was out of order, and the other didn’t work properly. So I dragged everything back to the caravan to hang it in our ensuite bathroom (the only shining light that whole weekend) and hope it dried by morning. But it didn’t. So we had to drive back with a lot of clean, wet nappies and clothes in our car and dry them when we got home.

October long weekend, 2008: We drove to south east South Australia for another orienteering weekend. No dramas with cloth, except the few times we forgot to use a flushable liner were the times Caleb chose to do a poo. Murphy’s law.

April 2009: A friend was visiting from overseas, and she wanted to see Kangaroo Island, so we went. We stayed in a shack with no laundry facilities and still used cloth the whole time, or most of it. Caleb was using the potty a little at that time, so we had some training pants along as well as nappies. The only washing I did during that trip was to rinse the wet training pants out in the sink and let them dry on the line outside. We were away for four days and had enough for the whole trip.

September 2009: Our week long trip to Canberra and back by way of the Riverland, the Hay Plains, then through Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road. I have to confess, I wasn’t game to use cloth on this trip. We used disposables for most of it, until the last day when we were heading home. I had packed enough nappies for that last day and everything went just fine.

October 2010: We took the Overland to Melbourne. On the way down, and while there – no dramas. We went down on Friday and came back on Tuesday. On the Sunday morning, while Darrin & Caleb were taking the hire car back, I did a load of washing. No soap, but no big deal. The washing machine dealt with it pretty well. At this point Caleb was usually pretty good at using the potty as well, so we had fewer nappies anyway. I put them in the dryer for a while, until we were ready to go out, and then we brought them up to the room and hung them wherever they’d fit. Most of them were dry by the time we left. And then on the train trip home, we used up ALL of them. We’d been using a mix of cloth & disposables, and we’d run out of disposables the day before, and we were on our last cloth nappy that was in our hand luggage. We ended up boosting that last nappy after it had gotten wet, with some wipes that were in the nappy bag. Luckily that lasted us till we got home!

So, my best tips?

1. Pack pockets with extra boosters. This would have saved us using spare wipes on our trip back from Melbourne. It also means that if the boosters you’re washing aren’t dry by the time the pocket shells are (and face it, they never will be), you can use the second set of boosters while the first set are drying.
2. Pack wet bags. A bucket is too bulky to take on a trip when you’ve got limited space. Bags will fold up and squish into places where nothing else will.
3. Call ahead and make sure the laundry facilities are adequate. I honestly wish I hadn’t bothered trying to do a wash on that first trip to the Flinders ranges. We had plenty of nappies to last the entire trip without a wash anyway.
4. Take your own detergent. Many times you’ll be staying in places where the detergent machines have run out, or the detergent provided is harmful to nappies. You can put a couple loads worth of detergent into a small plastic container or plastic bag. In a pinch, however, a load with no detergent and hot water will probably be sufficient.
5. Pack flushable liners or other supplies for dealing with poo. Flushable liners can be really useful on holidays if you have the right ones. They’re all different (shapes, sizes, materials) so try a couple brands before your trip. If you use a spatula or some other implement for dealing with the poo, bring it along.
6. Pack some flat terry squares. These can be used as nappies, boosters, or spill rags. And they dry quicker than any other nappy!

When you’re just starting out in the cloth nappy world, it can be a bit confusing seeing all these different fabrics talked about that you may never have heard of before. “Hemp?!” you may say. “Isn’t that a drug? And I thought bamboo was what pandas eat. How can that be comfortable as a nappy?”

Relax. I’ll spell it all out for you.

Absorbent fabrics – bamboo, hemp, cotton, wool

Bamboo is a grass native to China; and yes, pandas eat it. Bamboo fabric is made from the fibres inside the canes. It is very soft – possibly the softest nappy fabric available – and can absorb about three times its own weight. Bamboo fabric does have a downside, however, and that is the fact that the process of making bamboo into fabric is patented by a single company in China. It is a bit more expensive than other fabrics. It’s usually blended with another fibre, such as cotton, to make it more durable. Bamboo shoots grow up to three metres a day, and because it’s a grass, they keep growing after they’re cut, so it’s a very sustainable crop.

Hemp is another popular fabric. It is made from the cannabis plant, but a different variety than the one used as a drug. Hemp is durable, versatile, absorbent, and can be grown in any climate. It has natural antibacterial properties, making it a good choice for babies with nappy rash. Hemp has been made into rope, paper, fabric, plastic, plywood, and many other things. For nappies, it’s a great middle-of-the-road fabric when you want something absorbent yet affordable.

Cotton is ubiquitous. It is durable, widely available and inexpensive. However, it requires a lot of water to grow, and for this reason, many environmentally conscious parents choose to use it sparingly. It is not as absorbent as hemp or bamboo but is often used in combination with both.

Wool is a bit different to these other fabrics. You’ll see wool most often as a nappy cover. In addition to being absorbent, wool is water resistant. Many parents find that a bamboo fitted nappy plus a wool cover is their best overnight nappy combination. The wool will help to absorb more liquid while still keeping clothes and bedding dry.

Stay-dry fabrics – Suedecloth, microfleece, polar fleece

Stay-dry fabrics are synthetic. Because of this, some babies develop rashes from them.

Suedecloth is a synthetic fabric which is soft on the ‘right’ side and smooth on the ‘wrong’ side. It is often used in pocket and all-in-one nappies to keep moisture away from baby’s skin. It’s comfortable and doesn’t tend to stiffen up after washing the way many fabrics do. It costs a bit more than the other synthetics I discuss later on, and is generally only available to purchase online. One of the nice things about suedecloth is that solid matter doesn’t stick to it – it just slides off into the toilet easily!

Polar fleece is inexpensive, thick, and can even be made from things like recycled plastic bottles. Again, this does present a possibility for synthetic reactions. Polar fleece is often used for covers or liners. It isn’t waterproof, so if you’re using it as a cover, you may get compression leaks if your child is a particularly heavy wetter.

Microfleece is similar to polar fleece, but thinner and softer. It’s generally used in pockets and as nappy liners. Like suedecloth, microfleece repels solid matter, so it’s easy to clean up. It costs less than suedecloth but is a bit less breatheable.

Waterproof fabrics – PUL

PUL stands for polyurethane laminate. This is a synthetic coating laminated onto the back of fabrics to make them waterproof. This makes it perfect for things like cloth nappies, cloth menstrual pads, wet bags, and breast pads, where you need to keep moisture contained. Most waterproof fabrics do not breathe easily, but for some reason that I don’t pretend to understand, PUL actually does breathe. And breatheability is something you definitely want in a nappy. You want air to circulate around your child’s genitals to keep them from becoming too hot.

PUL is available in all colours of the rainbow and many different prints. You can get it in 1 mil or 2 mil thicknesses. It is most commonly laminated onto polyester fabrics but you can also get cotton and minky/minkee fabrics as PUL.