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January 24, 2011

Do you dare...

...to travel with cloth?

This past weekend I traveled with my hubby, sons and about 14 other people up north to go snowmobiling up to Mackinac Bridge. We were gone three full days. Before leaving for out mini-vacation I was asked a few different times by my mom as well as my sisters if I was going to buy disposables for the weekend. My two sisters were planning on staying at the cabin to watch the boys and their kids while the rest of us were out on the trails. I do remember me telling them I wasn't going to waste money on disposable diapers when I already had diapers! Besides, they were used to changing cloth anyways.

So to prepare for the weekend I had to do a couple of things.
-figure out how many diapers I would need.
-Wash my diapers at the last minute possible allowing me to have time to wash AND dry everything I was going to need.


Friday morning I collected and gathered all my dirty cloth diapers as well as wet bags. Everything went into the washing machine and I did my normal wash routine.

rinse in cold
wash in hot with detergent
do an extra rinse
put in dryer

Typically I always hang my covers and shells to help keep them in a nice condition. But I knew we would be traveling for 3-4 hours in the car depending on the roads and new they wouldn't ever dry while piled into a laundry basket so they went into the dryer as well on low heat.

After they were dry I found an empty laundry basket and started folding and stuffing and putting everything back together. Once I was done with that I had to figure out what to bring. I have quite the assortment of diapers and wanted to bring the diapers that work the best and were the easiest to use. I also made sure I brought night time diapers that I KNEW would work so I wouldn't have wet bedding to bring home.

Here is my basket of diapers that I was going to need for the weekend. Everything was all ready and set to go except for a few items that needed an extra 20 minutes in the dryer.

I also brought all of my wet bags with me. I have the Planet Wise wet/dry hanging bag which we used as the main dirty diaper bag. That was kept up stairs in our room along with the basket of diapers. For Saturday when I was gone snowmobiling I packed my diaper bag like normal with diapers, small wet bag, plastic baggies for dirty wipes and butt cream. I brought that downstairs for my sisters to use. This worked out great. When I got home they had just used the last two diapers from the bag and didn't need to go upstairs to get extras.

I used my large planet wise wet bag for the boys dirty clothes. This worked out great. I was able to put all the remaining diapers in to my diaper bag when packing up to leave and used the laundry basket for my husbands and mine's dirty clothes.

By the time we left I had about 5 diapers left which was perfect. Two of those diapers were prefolds. We ended up stopping halfway home for diaper changes because E-man was complaining his butt hurt. When we got home I had one Bummis Easy fit and the two prefolds left over. I was lucky to have brought the right amount of diapers with me but its really hard to figure out how many you are going to need.

If you are worried about how many diapers you are going to need when traveling, consider the following:
-How long will you be gone?
-Will you have access to a washing machine/dryer?
-How many times a day do you typically change diapers?

If you typically change your babies diaper 6 times a day and you are going to be gone for 4 days you will want to bring around 24 -30 diapers. You never know when your little one will get active BM's! If you have access to a washing machine you could easily do away with just bringing 12-15 diapers and washing every other day.

We did have a small washing machine an dryer at the cabin where we stayed in case I did happen to run out of diapers but luckily I didn't have to use it.


Here are a few pictures of our weekend getaway:

The beautiful cabin we stayed at for two night, 3 days

This was on the way home from Mackinac City. The trail came to this clearing in the woods and you could see so far away. My husband and I shared my parents 2up snowmobile and took turns driving.
This is our group that went for the ride. We all decided to stop for a potty break (the outhouse had ICE on the seat)! YIKES! There were 8 snowmobiles and 9 adults. I'm the first one on the red sled (my dads).
Have you traveled with cloth? How did you plan for it? How did it go?

Are you nervous about traveling with Cloth? What questions do you have about it that we can help you with?


10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed reading your story about traveling with cloth!! We often go to Arkansas from Kansas and we stay for at least 3 days to a week and half. We stay with family so we have acces to washer and dryer- I havent traveled with cloth yet because I just started 2 months ago but I enjoyed reading your story; it gave me helpfull hints on what to do!!!!

Lilac said...

I have traveled with cloth. We visited my husband's aunt in NC for a week when my son was just 3 months old. She was kind enough to let us use her washer/dryer. We've also done a couple 3-5 day long weekend trips to visit family. I've been lucky enough to have access to a washer/dryer every time, but I've always tried to pack in case I didn't since I never know how family will respond to the idea of poopy diapers in their washing machines.

I usually pack all the diapers that I use most so I know I have back-up cloth to last as long as possible. And, since our main diapers are GroBabys, I bring hybrid disposable inserts as back up just in case! (Though, we've never had to use them.)

I also tend to bring our detergent with in case I do get a chance to wash. We've only got two pail liners and I bring both of them. One generally holds to clean diapers and the other holds the dirty. I bring 2-3 wetbags to carry in the diaper bag and empty them out into the pail liner and reuse when I can't wash, just to save space in the diaper bag. I figure that's no worse than carrying a dirty diaper sealed in the wetbag. :-)

Anonymous said...

We went to Kansas and stayed with my cousins during the week of thanksgiving. I had just started using cd when my son was three weeks old and my cousins were staying with us for the weekend when I started it. I asked if it would be okay to use their washer and they didnt mind at all. They even have a clothes line. I washed two times and we were there for the week, it was great. After that my cousin started using cd on her little one :)

Melissa said...

Thank you for sharing your trip with us. I traveled with cloth this past Thanksgiving. We went to my husband's parent house for 4 days and I had access to a washer and dryer. I took all 12 of my diapers and we didn't use any disposables at all! I was so proud of myself because we had only been doing cloth for a couple of months at that point.

Island Girl said...

Fun weekend! I have done cloth diapering on vacations and travel as well, sometimes up to 10 days. What works for me is that I bring my good ol' trusty night diapers and during the day (especially when we're out) of the room, and while on the road I use AI2's, Grovia with the bio inserts. Works great for us, as I do not need to haul dirty diapers while out. Also this works great if you do not have access to a washer/dryer, plus cuts down the amount of diapers that you will need to bring/pack.

crispymama said...

Last year we visited my brother in CA for 8 days, including a 2 day trip to Disneyland. I did cloth the whole time with LO! I used my brother's washer/dryer while there. I used Flips/stay dry inserts on the plane. Also last year, we visited family at a lake house for 5 days. That's when I realized I had enough to CD LO for 5+ days without washing:O After a 6 hour drive at night, I immediately put the diapers in the wash to soak in vinegar (since they'd been sitting so long), then did normal wash. Both those trips taught me I CAN travel with LO in cloth:)

Amy Molander said...

I use cloth every time we travel. Usually it is either in our RV or to my parent's lakehouse. I just make sure to wash just before we leave and bring enough to get us through the whole trip. I don't trust other people's washing machines with my fluff becauase i have no idea what kind of detergenet they've used. I've also used the gdiaper flushable inserts on a few longer trips, and those worked out great as well.

Holly Wilson said...

Thanks for this post. I have made many sort 2-3 day trips with cloth and had zero problems, but I was nervous about going to church camp with the youth this summer where I will not have a washer/dryer. But I think we'll be just fine- I can go into town to the laundry mat once in the middle of the week.

BabyBrowman said...

We have traveled with both. I prefer cloth, but DH is adamant about using disposables if we're flying. Basically, he doesn't want to deal with TSA and dirty diapers. It hasn't happened yet, but he will be the one doing the clean up if she ever has a blowout! The rest of the time he is all for using our cloth. We've been luck in that we've either had laundry access, or had a short enough trip to just bring along the stash.

Next month we'll be moving from Alaska to Ohio, and taking the "scenic route" to get there. A month on the road and sporadic laundry access made him want to say disposables. I've been able to convince him that hybrid is a much better option, thank goodness! They should be arriving any day now, and I'm looking forward to a worry free(in this department!) trip.

Unknown said...

we have used cloth on every trip (from staying at grandparents to the beach) for 3 years now. For us it didn't make sense buying sposies just to travel.

Over Christmas, we used leftover sposies for our toddler (from our hospital stay w/ #3) while traveling, but our infant was in cloth since he's EBF - his diapers are bit easier to take care of while on the road ;-)

I normally do all cloth on that trip but our timing only allotted us to be near a washing machine for one wash load - my infant won, lol ;-)