Monday, December 19, 2011

Cloth Diapering on Vacation

So, have you done it?  Or are you afraid to do it?  I'll admit, I haven't been on a long trip where there wasn't immediate access to a washer/dryer so I cannot attest to cloth diapering on a long vacation but, I've done the long weekends, short weeks, etc. and I have to say---I love it.  It's so easy.

This past weekend we went to Chicago.  I brought the appropriate amount of diapers and stuck them into a large Planet Wise Wet Bag.  The handy-loop on the bag attached nicely to our overnight bag.  Once in the hotel, we stacked the diapers on the dresser of the hotel for easy access and then again, that loop on the Planet Wise bag came in handy as we hung it on the door of the closet.  Amazingly, even after a couple of days, the wet bag did not stink at all.  When I unzipped the bag to put a dirty diaper in it, of course it stunk to high-heaven but the zippered closure kept all smells at bay.

For a day out on the town when I didn't want to mess with any leaks, I stuffed a layer of Blueberry One-Size Bamboo Insert into my daughter's BumGenius 4.0 Pocket Diaper.  This is the same bamboo so many of my clients use at night.  Because the bamboo is so trim, it didn't make the bulky look or feel bulky.  My daughter drinks a lot of water in the morning and she pees a lot throughout the day.  We went nearly 5 hours and had no leaks.

Obviously for the diaper bag I had a Planet Wise medium wet bag, a small wet bag for cloth wipes and a cloth changing pad.  Next time, I'll probably grab my Planet Wise wet/dry hanging bag just so that I can keep all of her diapers, clean and dirty, together in one place.

So, comment below if you've used cloth on vacations and how it's gone for you!

10 comments:

  1. I used cloth on a trip to AZ this summer and I didn't really think it was any harder than using cloth at home. I was at my aunt's house so that probably made it easier, plus the diapers dried super fast in the AZ sun!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We've used cloth on vacations a few times, some short vacations, one week long vacation. It's always gone well. Flushable liners helped tremendously since I depend on my diaper sprayer at home! And wet bags are a must! They're great swim bags too, they keep in that wet towel smell :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. i will be going on a trip (il-az) in april. not sure if ill bring cloth..kinda scared lol. cant wait to see tips on traveling with cloth

    ReplyDelete
  4. The longest we've been away with cloth is a weekend. But I always love showing my family what cloth diapers have become! It's never been a hassle to bring them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. We just got back from a 16 day trip with cloth to Disneyworld.)It went great! I have to admit we way overpacked diapers! We used liners half the time and "toilet dunked" the poopy part of the diaper the other half to get as much off as we could when there was poop we needed to get off as the diaper would be sitting in a wet bag all day. I am not a huge fan of liners or we would have used them all the time. We had two wet bags plus the laundry pail bag that we emptied the smaller wet bags into. We did bring vinegar and wiped out the dryer in the hotel before using. It was so much easier and less of a hassle than I thought it would be. I think it would have been a pain to use disposables as the wipes don't work as well as cloth and are messy, there would have been poop on clothes and probably leaks because of how disposables fit and are made, and my ds' clothes would not have fit well as they fit over cloth so if he had a disposable on his pants would have kept falling down! Also, we would have to guess the size and make sure he didn't have a reaction to the disposables before we left. That all sounded like way more work to me than just doing cloth on vacation!

    ReplyDelete
  6. My husband and I used cloth diapers on a couple weekend trips this summer. The crazy part is the first trip was RIGHT after we got cloth diapers. I barely got them washed in time to take them, but I was too impatient to use them to wait until we got back. We did use some disposables on the trip because I was only doing a trial at that point and hadn't yet invested enough to diaper full time. We didn't really have any problems related to the diapers, other than we really didn't have our system down yet and he kept peeing everywhere, while we got organized. Also we had not traveled with him before so I took way way way too many diapers my entire stash plus about twice as many disposables as we would have needed if we were using them exclusively.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Whether or not we cloth diaper on vacation largely depends on if the people we are staying with are cool with us using their washer and dryer for the task of diaper laundry. Most people are pretty understanding about it. A few times we have been pressed for space when riding with other people on trips and had to break down and buy Seventh Generation chemical-free diapers. However, we rarely go on vacations that last more than three days, so cloth diapering is truly just as easy as disposables.

    ReplyDelete
  8. We CDed on vacation, but just to Door county. It went great! I didn't clean out the dryer or anything (didn't think to) but all ended well. The only thing that went awry was the snotty couple that commented that I was using BOTH washers on the floor for (gasp!) DIAPERS!. Luckily, my mama put them in their place :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Going to start CDing when little one gets here in a couple days. But honestly, vacationing with cloth (without having easy access to a washer) is intimidating!

    ReplyDelete
  10. this past summer I went to Baltamore for 5days with my son (and hubby) we took cloth. It was amazing. When booking my hotel I did make sure they had in house laundry cuz I was not gonna sit at a laundramat. I way overpacked diapers. I have enough for 3days. I ended up washing every other on vaccay. http://pinstripesandpolkadots.com/RecentlyAskedQuestions.html
    So I didn't pack that many cloths for us (3days worth) and all his diapers. There was only 1washer/dryer and everyone used it...everytime we went past people were using it. I still was able to get my 2 loads in every other night. It did kinda suck to stay up a bit late to check the wash and switch it before someone else needed to wash, but I had no problems. THen when we got home I did a calgon strip just to make sure there was no residue left behind. I did put the diapers in our carryon b/c i did not want to have to go buy disposables (son has reactions to all namebrands) for lost luggage!

    ReplyDelete