While checking Twitter today, I happened over a snip of conversation, presumably about either or not a one should give cloth diapers a try. The tweet read something to the corollary of, "I'd buy cloth, but I'm a working mom and too busy to consider them." Well, as a working mum it nothing else but made for enchanting water cooler conversation today! All the same, I can understand the working mom's frustration: you put in 8-9 hours at a job, pick your baby up from daycare or the sitter, and the rest of the evening spent taking care of the diminutive one and the rest of the family. Dinner, chores, maybe homework with the older children...and by the time you look up it's time for bed so you can wake up the next morning and do it all over again. Who wants to squeeze in "clean up dirty cloth diapers" into an already bursting schedule, when it seems so much more convenient to throw a disposable or two into the Diaper Genie and forget about it.
Yes, the green mum will argue that filling up a diaper pail with used Huggies day after day for the sake of convenience isn't doing mum Nature any favors, and if one can handle heavy loads of laundry during the week, how would cloth diapers conduce to an avalanche? On the sustain side of the coin, there is the concern about soiled cloth diapers lingering in a pail before they reach the washer. The experienced cloth user will know the precise policy for prepping soiled cloth diapers before they are laundered, but we can nothing else but understand how that is the last thing a harried working mom wants to think about in the costly minutes she has to herself.
Baby Diapers
So, how to solve the dilemma of daily dirty diapers? For us, it was just a matter of ensuring our diaper pails were sufficiently lined and enhanced with diaper pail deodorizers to keep the changing area fresh. For the investment made, it's worth the money to look into the special liners when you switch to cloth. The time it takes to convert baby is no separate than with a disposable - the only concern would be if a diaper is especially dirty, and even then it's maybe a few minutes in the bathroom shaking the excess over the toilet or pouring a cup of water over the pad for extra rinsing. Once properly stored, they should keep until your quarterly wash day.
So, if you're a working mother, don't think of cloth diapers as a hindrance. While disposables may seem convenient, it's possible to work cloth diapers into your busy schedule.
Cloth Diapers and the Working Mom