Traveling with cloth.

As mentioned in a previous blog, we spent almost a week in Michigan at Christmas.  Much of Daniel's extended family lives there and we hadn't seen them in quite a while.  The deal when we got married was that we would spend every other year with Daniel's family, however I was pretty pregnant last year and was not about to ride in a car 13 hours.  When I told some of my family and friends that we were traveling over Christmas, I was shocked to realize how many asked about me taking my cloth diapers.  Until I was questioned, I had never really thought about it-- why wouldn't I take my cloth diapers with me???  I guess I never realized that many people who use cloth diapers, use disposables when they travel.  There's nothing wrong with that.  I understand that often there is circumstances beyond control where you need to take disposables such as being gone for an extended time with no washer or dryer, weight limits on suitcases when you travel by air.... Again, there is nothing wrong with using disposables when you travel, I just don't want people to get the wrong idea and think that it's difficult.  It is no more difficult to me than the traveling I did with disposables before we started cloth.  No matter what, you have to pack diapers, the key is being organized!

I use pre-fold diapers so it was pretty easy to pack them up.  I folded them all and placed them in a 10 gallon Rubbermaid tote.  My covers and my detergent also fit in the tote and though 10 gallons, sounds like a lot, it is a pretty small tote so it fit perfectly in the trunk with our luggage.

For the ride up as the diapers got dirty, we placed them in our wet bag in the trunk. We ended up being in the car for a total of 12 hours including stops.  My only wish is that we would have had a larger wet bag.  I use a small bummis wet bag which I think is only supposed to hold 3-4 diapers, so by the end of the ride we were really shoving them in.

Once we got to Daniel's grandmother's house (where we were staying), I unpacked all of the clean diapers from the tote, lined the tote with a laundry bag and placed the dirty diapers from the wet bag in there.  The tote was going to be used as my diaper pail for the week-- it's actually what we use for our diaper pail at home as well.  Nothing beats a tight lid for the stinkies! Some people invest in pail liners but I just picked up 2 laundry bags at Target for $4.00 a piece, they are NOT waterproof though so it wouldn't be conducive without the tote.  When I do laundry, there is occasionally some wetness at the bottom of the tote that I just wipe up with soap and a towel-- no biggie to me.

We traveled on a Tuesday and traveled back the following Monday, so we definitely needed to do some diaper laundry.  Daniel's grandmother had no trouble with us using her washing machine for our diapers, in fact she was very interested in our cloth and how far cloth has come since she diapered her children.  I wouldn't go anywhere with my diaper stash without my Rockin Green laundry soap, I had packed a few sample packs for the trip.  They sell them on their website ( Rockin Green )

Cloth diapering has become a HUGE passion for me.  A mommy friend of mine shared her knowledge of cloth with me and I look forward to sharing it with others.  I also know that if you ask 10 different people about their cloth diapers, you will get 10 different answers.... it's all about what works best for you and your family, but please let me know if you have any questions, I would love to chat!

**Also, if you wanna know how our trip went and how to travel with a baby for 12 hours, this is what worked for us.....

We had a GREAT trip! Leeland travelled SO well! Our schedule went as follows:

- 7:30am  Packed up and left home

-10:30am Stopped for gas, used the restroom, change the baby's diaper

-11:30am-12:30pm  Stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch, fed the baby lunch, changed the baby's diaper and got gas

-4:00pm Stopped for gas, coffee, used the restroom and change the baby

-6:45pm Stopped for dinner (took it to go), used the restroom, changed the baby
-7:15pm Arrived at Grandma's