Stephen is going to Puerto Rico for work in January and Isis and I will be joining him after he's done with work for a week vacation. I'm super excited to go visit since I've never been to Puerto Rico and its likely to be cold in Iowa by that time.
As I was preparing to travel with a 9 month old of course I was thinking about whether I would be using cloth diapers or not. We use cloth diapers full time, including at daycare. I've even used cloth while vacationing in Oregon and the San Juan Islands, but all of those places had machine washing facilities. Our hotel in Puerto Rico doesn't have laundry facilities so any washing would have to be hand washing. People have been hand washing clothes and cloth diapers for generations so I know its possible but since I rarely hand wash anything I don't have much experience. I turned to the internet for a little help with tips on how to hand wash cloth diapers. There are plenty of great websites that provide how-to's and tips on hand washing cloth diapers so I won't cover all that. My one question remaining after all my searches was what would be the best diapering system to take with me. I have almost every type of cloth diaper available. Unfortunately the best type of diaper for travel is one that I don't have. I don't have any flat diapers. Flat diapers are a single layer of fabric that you fold to put on the baby. Because its a single layer its easy to wash and quick to air dry. They tend to be pretty cheap but I'd really like to use my current diapers. I also would like to take as few diapers as possible since I'll be traveling alone with a car seat, suitcase, couple carry-ons and 9 month old. At this point Isis uses about 6 diapers during the day and one night diaper. So I would like to bring 10 day diapers and a couple night diapers.
This afternoon I took one of nearly every type of diaper insert I have, hand washed them and now they're laying out to dry. I also washed a couple of diaper shells to see how long they take to dry as well.
As of now (9 hours later) the BumGenius 4.0 pocket is dry (dry after 4 hours), the itti bitti tutto shell is nearly dry and none of the inserts are dry. I realize that the weather in Iowa isn't the same as Puerto Rico but I'm hoping that 68 degree fairly dry weather will be close to 80+ degree pretty humid weather for dry time, especially if I can get a breeze. A girl can dream, right!
I'll update my results tomorrow! Hopefully one of the inserts will be good enough for me to take with us. If I have to buy the flats then it would cost me 10 cents more per diaper change than the amount I spend on disposables here.
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