Cloth Cloth Cloth!!

Really. What else did you expect my first post to be about? ;)

My favorite cloth being cloth diapers. You could spend as little as $200 up front, for an entire package of prefolds and covers that could last your child all the way through their diapering career. Or spend that much in four months of buying the paper stuff. If you sew you could spend even less. (That might go up if you're kiddo gets up to extra large sizes before potty learning, most kids don't though. If you've taken good care of the covers for the lower sizes you could easily resale them to pay for the larger sizes.) Fern and Faerie has complete instructions for making prefolds from tshirts, and making wool covers from thrift store wool sweaters. If you knit or crochet wool covers are easy peasy to make.

After diapering my first two kids with nearly all prefolds, pins and those pull up vinyl pants, we've chosen to go with the more pricier fitted diapers for my younger two. Though I'm as frugal as I can there too. I hunt around to find the type that I know I'll like, then watch for those used on ebay or other parenting boards. And I knit their woolies. And I'm working on converting my toddler's old prefolds into fitteds for the baby.

My love of fluff on my babes is just the beginning. We have no disposable paper products in our house at all. Well, unless you count printer paper and art stuff for the kids (more printer paper, coloring books, notebook paper, etc). I haven't counted up the savings by doing this, as our motivation is primarily to tread as lightly as we can on this earth, but we don't buy paper towels, tissues, baby wipes, etc. at all. I could ramble endlessly about the different types of household cloths we use, so I'll hit publish now! :)