Anyone who has decided to try cloth diapers can admit that the cloth world can be a bit overwhelming when you first step into it. There are pocket diapers, Snappis, covers, all in one diapers, all in two diapers, microfiber inserts, hemp inserts… the list goes on and on.
So where does one begin when deciding to try cloth?
This is question I found myself asking when I decided to try cloth diapers. I didn’t want to make a huge financial commitment to products that I didn’t like. I was ready to try cloth but not commit to it! Then I ran across Diaper Daisy’s store. I read about their Cloth Diaper Trial and was so relieved! Finally! A place where I can get different styles and brand of diapers to try on my baby without a huge commitment! I signed up right away for a customized trial.
Sara at Diaper Daisy helped me pick out some diapers and accessories to try and before I knew it my diapers were at my door and I was ready to begin the journey. I washed my diapers as my instruction booklet that came with the trial told me to do, and we were off with cloth!
As we went, I began to see what diaper systems worked for my lifestyle and then what brands gave my baby the best fit. At the end of the three weeks I had fallen in love with cloth diapers! They were no where near the hassle I thought they would be! I also learned what diapers worked for my baby without wasting money on other brands in the search.
At the end of the Diaper Trial you have three options. You can either a) admit defeat and send all of your diapers back and get a refund for the retail price, b) keep what you like and send the others back, or c) keep all of your diapers and get a $29.95 store credit! At the end of my trial I decided to keep all of my diapers and used my credit to help me stock up on the diapers I loved.
So if you are apprehensive like I was, thinking that cloth diapers may not be something you can handle, or if you are confused by all of the options out there, try a Cloth Diaper Trial! It lets you try without much risk and it might just be the best thing you can do your family! It was for me!
For more information and details about the Trial, visit the Diaper Daisy store!
I have long admired the work of Miracle Diapers. The organization uses monetary and diaper donations to help give cloth diapers to those who cannot afford them. It is an amazing service that truly helps people in need. According to the organization, “As Miracle Diapers has grown so has the number of families they assist. In 2009, they helped over 450 babies directly, more than 100 babies through sponsorship and local distribution, and assisted other charities with the same mission as well!”
Throughout this past year, Miracle Diapers has developed their organization in many ways, including:
Naming new leadership with Roxanna Jolly as CEO and Lisa Johnston as Operations Manager and Board Chair
Relocating their headquarters to Katy, Texas
Restructuring how they process and accept applications
Opening a retail store for fundraising
Founding a new membership program
Welcoming several new board members from the cloth diapering industry
Because of the growth of the organization and the need to have a name that more directly coincides with their mission, Miracle Diapers is changing their name to The Cloth Diaper Foundation. The mission of the group is the same, and they hope to do even more good work this year and beyond.
What You Can Do to Help
Due to the slump in the economy, monetary donations to Miracle Diapers fell last year, which means there are more families out there for The Cloth Diaper Foundation to help in 2010! Monetary donations are essential for the group to financially support the growth of the organization. You can help share your love of cloth diapers by visiting http://clothdiaperfoundation.org today to make a donation or find other ways you can help.
***
Want to keep up with everything happening at The Cloth Diaper Foundation? Check this page for information about how to become a fan of their new Facebook page and how to follow them on Twitter:
Kristin, one of our brand new blog contributors, wrote up a great review of one of my favorite nighttime solutions, the SuperDo insert! The SuperDo has helped Kristin and her son both get some sleep!
Next week, I hope to do a more formal introduction to Kristin and Erin, our two new contributors, but for now, I will leave you with Kristin’s review. Happy diapering!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Featured Fluff Friday: The SuperDo 2G Insert
When Sara brought up the plan to review our favorite fluff on Fridays, I immediately thought of the SuperDo insert. Honestly, the SuperDo is our nighttime lifesaver!
Details:
The SuperDo is a cloth diaper insert that works in any pocket diaper. It gets is super absorbency from its six layers of pre-washed hemp terry and two layers of microfiber. The SuperDo is sewen together in a loop fashion so that the microfiber layers run on the outer circle and the hemp layers run on the inner circle. This genius design allows you to customize your diapers for your individual child’s needs. By placing additional hemp doublers in the middle of the SuperDo, you can add even more absorbency. Because of its great absorbency, the SuperDo is a wonderful solution to your heavy wetter and nighttime diaper problems. The SuperDo comes in small, medium, and large sizes to correspond with the sizing on pocket diapers (or the rise setting on one size pockets).
Why I love it:
The SuperDo has been my personal lifesaver at nighttime! I tried doubling and then tripling - I used as many hemp liners and microfiber inserts I could stuff into my pocket diapers and I always ended up with a wet baby at 5am. I even thought that maybe I just had to give up my cloth at night and use disposables, but believe it or not, the disposables failed me, too! Then, I used the SuperDo with a hemp insert in the middle and something amazing happened - my baby didn’t wake up at 5am with a wet bed! Thanks to the SuperDo, we are all sleeping again.
Each of the diaper lines I carry for different reasons – they are all very well-performing, high-quality products that have proven themselves over time.
Thirsties is no exception. Their products are favorites for families across the country, and I personally recommend their original diaper covers as my favorites.
I also love Thirsties because of the way they run their business. Thirsties’ owner, Erin Kimmett, is just a fantastic person to work with. As she has built Thirsties over the past five years, she has done it with nothing but the best business ethics. Many Thirsties products are made by stay-at-home moms in the comfort of their own homes, allowing them to earn money while taking care of their children. Thirsties is also the first and only manufacturer to have their hemp products milled right here in the United States, making their products entirely USA made.
Now, Thirsties is working to become a completely carbon-neutral company. Solar panels are being installed today on their facility in Canon City, Colorado, which will cover 110% of their power needs. Thirsties will even be able to sell some energy back to the local coal facility!
Thirsties is a company that has proven again and again that they are a fantastic company to work with, for their business ethics, high-quality products, and excellent customer service. I congratulate them on this fantastic step!
Interested in more information? You can read Thirsties’ entire press release below. If you are interested in learning more about Thirsties products, check out Diaper Daisy.
*****
HARNESSING THE SUN: Cloth Diaper Manufacturing Company Redefines Going Green
By Dave Kimmett January 28, 2010
CAÑON CITY, Colorado—Among Colorado’s many natural blessings is an almost daily dose of high-intensity, high-altitude sunshine–over 300 days per year. The kind that can burn your skin nastily if you stay out more than just a few minutes without protection, but as well the kind that makes solar panel manufacturers slobber on themselves.
Enter Erin Kimmett, founder and owner of one of America’s largest cloth diaper manufacturing and wholesale companies, Thirsties, Inc. Long an advocate for less-impacting methods of modern living, Kimmett began Thirsties five years ago as a venture to supplement her husband’s teaching income, to find an outlet for her incessant entrepreneurial spirit, and in large part to spread the news of the wonders of cloth diapering, both as a less-expensive means of diapering and as a way to drastically cut down on the environmental consequences of the omnipresent–and in her mind dangerous–disposable diaper.
Fast-forward the five-odd years since its inception, boasting a retailer roster of over 300 stores worldwide, and through all the struggles and hardships that any small business owner witnesses, Erin is still hard at it–the all too common platitude of “being a good steward of the planet” living deeply and with resounding truth in both her life and business ethic:
100% domestic manufacturing – check
Utilizes American-made materials – check
Purchases carbon credits to offset 100% of manufacturing and transport utilities – check
Recycling of all used cardboard and paper – check
100% recycled cardboard and paper for new shipments – check
The next step is underway: to power the entire warehouse operations with solar electricity. And then some–enough to sell back to the local coal-burning utility! Thirsties is presently installing a behemoth of a solar panel array, with a configuration that at full-capacity will produce enough electricity to cover more than all of the business’ needs–11 clean, sustainable, photovoltaic Kilowatts. This equates to a total CO2 reduction of 200 tons, as if Kimmett herself is planting over 7700 trees.
Skimming past the obstacles that seemingly obstructed her path to the sun–local skepticism and regulatory hurdles, among others–Kimmett has never taken her eyes off of the prize, and is characteristically enthusiastic about steering her alternative-energy mantra to solar production. Especially relevant to Thirsties’ ability to finance the undertaking are the present federal tax credits available to anyone installing a solar energy system – coupled with a special business installation credit – in addition to the local utility’s own solar energy rebate program, bringing a $44,000 system down to a more small-business manageable level of roughly $7000.
The solar tour de force is only adding fuel to Kimmett’s clean energy fire, complementing an already long laundry list of green practices which dominate Thirsties’ business model. Who knows what’s next?
Once parents make the leap into cloth diapering, there are a few areas that can cause hangups. Throughout this year, the Real Diaper Association is working to help parents address these issues and use cloth 100% of the time. Their first order of business? Helping parents figure out nighttime cloth diapering solutions.
One of the biggest questions I get from customers is about how to cloth diaper at night. These questions usually come from parents of four- to six-month-olds, whose babies start sleeping through the night but are being woken up by wet diapers, pajamas, and beds because their regular diapers can’t hold up. As one of those previously sleep-deprived parents, I am here to tell you that a solution is out there!
Most importantly, the key to nighttime diapering is absorbency. You need enough material in the diaper to absorb everything your baby can dish out over eleven to twelve hours. One of the easiest ways to start is just by doubling or tripling up on whatever you use during the daytime. This may mean using two prefolds, adding two or three regular inserts to your pocket, or adding a doubler or two between a prefold or fitted diaper and cover.
My absolute favorite nighttime solution is the SuperDo insert. Manufactured by Knickernappies, this insert is virtually bulletproof, even for the heavy wetter set. The insert is made of 2 layers of microfiber and 6 layers of hemp terry. In spite of all of this material, the SuperDo is surprisingly trim, helping to eliminate the extreme size of many cloth diaper bottoms at night.
For me, the best part of the SuperDo is how convenient it is to use. I just put the SuperDo in any of my pocket diapers in place of the regular insert and – voila! – we are ready for bed. There are not any extra inserts to add or any covers to put over my son’s regular diaper.
How are you doing figuring out your nighttime situation? Do you have questions? Let us know! Do you think you have a great nighttime solution? Share your ideas in the comments here, and add them to the Real Diaper Industry’s nighttime solutions page to help parents across the country.
Let’s work together to find ways to help parents reach the goal of using reusable cloth diapers 100% of the time!
Life at Diaper Daisy has been super busy, which is great news, but not so great for the blog. Sorry about the lag time. I actually have some blog contributors lined up to help. (If you are interested, let me know. If you are one of these contributors, I will be in touch in the next 24 hours!)
To jump back in, I wanted to talk a little bit about Monday night Twitter parties. Every Monday night, people from across the country take part in a chat all about cloth diapers on Twitter. It is a great time to meet other cloth diapering parents, ask questions, learn about different products, etc. The Twitter party starts each week around 8pm EST, but you can come and leave at any point in the evening.
So, how do you take part in the cloth diapers Twitter chat. First and foremost, you need to have a Twitter account. If you aren’t signed up, you can do so at http://www.twitter.com.
All tweets (messages) sent during chats on Twitter are marked with a different # depending on the topic. All tweets in the cloth diapers chat include #clothdiapers somewhere in them. So, in order to see what is being said, you need to look for all messages that include #clothdiapers to see what is being said, and include #clothdiapers in any of your tweets.
Go to TweetGrid at http://www.tweetgrid.com. (This is a Twitter tool that will help you follow the conversation.)
Click the button for a “1×2″ grid. A new screen will load.
The new screen has three separate parts. The top is where you will write anything you want to say. You can put in your Twitter ID and password here before you get started. There is also a textbox to the right of this section that says “Hashtag:”. In that box, type “#clothdiapers” so that all of your tweets show up in the chat.
The other two sections of the page are for different searches. At the top of the left box, enter “#clothdiapers” into the text box and press the “Search” button. Now, all of the tweets in the cloth diapers chat will show up on that box so that you can follow along.
At the top of the right box, type @TwitterID. (For example, my TwitterID is DiaperDaisy, so I would type @DiaperDaisy in that box.) Then click the “Search” button. Now, any tweets that are sent directly to you will show up here. This is really useful so that, even if the conversation is moving quickly, you don’t miss anything that people have said.
Okay, you are all set up! Now for the fun part, chatting! Just follow along with what is said. If you have a question or a comment, type it into the text box at the very top of the page and click “Tweet!” If you want to tweet in reply to someone else, you can put your mouse arrow in that box and click on the arrow button pointing to the left.
Phew! Questions? Worries? Comment here or email sara (at) diaperdaisy (dot) com.
Have fun, and be sure to follow @DiaperDaisy, too! See you there!
We had such a great response to our Black Friday sales yesterday that we are extending them all the way through Monday! Enjoy all of our deals to get the best for your baby. Happy Fluff Christmas!
Now Through Monday
Planet Wise 10% off, including wet bags and pail liners
FuzziBunz up to 15% off, including the Perfect Fit diapers, One Size diapers, wipes, and wet bags – Plus Fuzzi Bunz One Size Rewards continue through 12/31
Diaper Sprayers 10% off
Training pants 10% off
Knickernappies One Size 10% off, both microfiber and LoopyDo options
Thirsties products 10% off, including AIOs, Fab Fitteds, covers, and accessories
SposoEasy 10% off of already reduced prices
Kissaluvs products 10% off, including their organic cotton fitteds and Marvels fitteds
Flip Stay Dry 20% off
Econobum 20% off
SleepyWrap 15% off
Play All Day 10% off, including their fitteds and wool covers
All gift items at least 20% off, including nursing covers and Lullaboards
$5 gift certificate for orders over $100
$10 gift certificate for orders over $200
(This includes gift certificates! Let us know what you want us to do with the bonus in the comments – can be added to original, sent separately to you, sent to someone else.)
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! As the holiday shopping season gets underway this weekend, Diaper Daisy has some fantastic Black Friday deals to help get you started.
Early Start Shopping – Sales Starting Today!
Kissluvs products up to 10% off (through Monday)
FuzziBunz products 10% off (through Monday, plus FuzziBunz One Size Rewards still on through 12/31)
Flip Stay Dry and Econobum 20% Off
Friday Only Specials
FREE SHIPPING!
PlanetWise products 10% off
All Diaper Sprayers 10% off
Training Pants 10% off
Knickernappies One Size 10% off
Thirsties Fitteds and Covers 10% off
SposoEasy All-in-Ones – Individual diapers 10% off already reduced prices
Friday Through Monday
Boba Carriers and Sleepy Wraps 15% off
Play All Day products 10% off
All gift items at least 10% off
Special gift certificate offer – Earn a $5 gift certificate with every $100 purchase, $10 with every $200 – Certificate code will be sent when the order is processed. This offer also applies on gift certificate purchases!
Twelve Days of Christmas
So what happens when the Black Friday craziness is over? We still have specials going on with our Twelve Days of Christmas promotion! Every day from December 1st through 12th, we will have a special deal just for our customers. Newsletter subscribers will get the inside scoop on Monday, November 30th, with a list of the specials for each day. Subscribers also receive special coupon codes for additional savings on top of our great sale prices this holiday season, so be sure to sign up!
I was so excited to find out earlier this week that Cotton Babies’ new cloth diapers, Flip and Econobum, are on their way to Diaper Daisy! They should be here by Friday, and start shipping out Friday or Saturday. Because of the high demand for these diapers, I don’t know when they will be available for reorder, so get them while they’re hot!
I was able to get ahold of a Flip with a stay dry insert, as well as some disposable inserts, and so I have a hands-on demo ready to go for those of you who want to get a better idea about the Flip. Check it out!
Do you have any questions about the Flip, Econobum, or any other cloth diapering products? Please contact us!
Inspired by my awesome roomie from ABC, Kim Rosas from Dirty Diaper Laundry, I am going to start making video demos of the diapers we carry. The first is a demo of the bumGenius Organic AIO. This is a fantastic diaper, but when getting started, it can sometimes be hard to figure out just what to do with all of that fabric inside.
I have long admired the work of Miracle Diapers. The organization uses monetary and diaper donations to help give cloth diapers to those who cannot afford them. It is an amazing service that truly helps people in need. According to the organization, “As Miracle Diapers has grown so has the number of families they assist. In 2009, they helped over 450 babies directly, more than 100 babies through sponsorship and local distribution, and assisted other charities with the same mission as well!”
Once parents make the leap into cloth diapering, there are a few areas that can cause hangups. Throughout this year, the 
How are you doing figuring out your nighttime situation? Do you have questions? Let us know! Do you think you have a great nighttime solution? Share your ideas in the comments here, and 
See you there!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! As the holiday shopping season gets underway this weekend, Diaper Daisy has some fantastic Black Friday deals to help get you started.
