We use the flushable liners and just drop the poop in the toilet. Sometimes the liner gets scrunched up and the poop goes off the edge, but we still don’t have to hand-wash, just wipe it off w/TP and the rest comes out in the wash.

We use natural soap and vinegar, no bleach, and the diapers get nice and clean. It’s just 2 extra loads of laundry a week, as easy as going out to the store–maybe easier since I can do it when baby’s sleeping. I don’t like the part when I put the dirty diapers into the machine, but that lasts just seconds, and handling the clean diapers is kind of fun. The water and energy used to wash diapers at home is far less than a diaper service; it’s less water per diaper than is used to flush a toilet or to manufacture a disposable diaper.

You cannot smell our diaper pail unless you’re standing right next to it and it’s been opened in the past 15 minutes. I remember the stench of the diaper pail when my brother was a baby, and I think it was caused by soaking the diapers in water, which is unnecessary as well as messy and a drowning hazard. We just toss them in the pail.

He wore disposables for a few days once when he had a rash and I was sick and thought it would be easier. The gigantic mound of garbage was disgusting, and I felt bad for my kid having to wear those crispy plasticky things. They may be more “cloth-like” than they used to, but compare them to nice cotton flannel and it’s just no contest! I use cloth menstrual pads too. I even used them postpartum before I left the hospital, even though I had no place to hang them after rinsing and had to put them wet into a bag to take home, because I could not stand the disgusting plastic pads any longer!!! The cloth pads are just like wearing extra layers of underwear. I don’t mind taking care of my son’s “underwear” and don’t want him to feel as uncomfortable as I do with a disposable pad.

You think it’s nobody’s business what you do, but in fact we all have to live with the landfills and the destruction of trees and petroleum (plastic) to make disposable diapers.

Not using cloth diapers doesn’t make you a terrible parent. My point is that it’s not all that difficult or yucky, and it has many benefits.

In the time it took you to write this out and read all the replies, you could have done 4 loads of diapers by now – much more than you would need to do per week, let alone per day.

So much for wasting all your time washing diapers instead of spending time with your baby.

You put yourself out on the internet, like it or not, you’re going to get responses you don’t like. If you don’t want to hear anything contrary to your own thoughts, don’t put all your thoughts on a public website.

That’s cool about the composting, tho! I would love to do that with the sposies I do use, but it’s not available here and won’t work in our home compost. But I do think it’s safe to assume that the vast majority sposies go in the garbage/landfill vs. commercial composting…

i was especially amused by the pro-cloth person upthread who ended her post with “if i ever have children…” uh, yeah. if you ever have children, you’ll have a more informed opinion about diapers. come back then.

the fact is that in some places cloth diapers are more environmentally friendly, in some places they are not. it depends on which resources your area has more of: water or landfill space. my area has plenty of water and no landfill areas for garbage, so cloth would make more sense if we didn’t have composting. but in areas like parts of california which often have water shortages, cloth is a very very bad idea.

We do not use bleach, a tiny bit of natural detergent, and a front-loading low-water washing machine. I do understand the sanity part, though…when I had PPD really bad the little bit of extra work of cloth was too much, so I used disposables; we also use them for trips. But overall I have enjoyed using cloth with my dds. Somehow I’ve managed to get over the poop/pee thing.

But really, the size of house you live in and car you drive have a bigger environmental impact…I’ll still choose reusable products, though…
http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp