Eco City Mama

When we found out I was preggers our first thoughts were “of course we’ll do cloth diapers exclusively”… then we found out we were having twins and things that seemed completely logical and doable started to become less so. There’s a lot to be said for the relative simplicity of disposable diapers at 2am with two babies crying I’m thinking. Clearly our original plan required some further thought.

There are a lot of pros associated with using cloth: less diaper rashes, quicker toilet training, better for the environment, space saving, etc. etc. and using a diaper service makes the whole experience relatively turn-key and painless. There are also plenty of cons, especially when thinking in terms of two: the extra effort (even minimal can add up) required to clean up, the more frequent changes, the multiple pieces to assemble, etc. etc.  And all of the pros & cons matter, so what to do, I have no interest in contributing to the landfills, and there should be no reason to, but realistically, could we handle cloth only with the two of them?

Ultimately we decided on a hybrid approach, not perfectly green by any means, but one we feel we can stick to (hopefully) over the long-haul - cloth the majority of the time, and as much as we can, with backups of disposables (eco ones from 7th Gen) for when we travel or just need that convenience. Luckily, in Toronto we have a few great options for diaper services and for finding more environmentally friendly disposables, so the difficulty factor of pulling this off is hugely reduced… at least we think… quite a few peeps think we won’t last with cloth :)

Fingers crossed, we’ll see how it goes!

[photo credit: Trinitas Imaging / Udit Kulshrestha via Flickr]

Related posts:

1. Cloth diapering with a service just works