Ok, so here's a confession: I've never brought my cloth diapers on a trip. By a trip, I mean a trip involving a plane. Do I have a good
excuse? I like to think that the fees for bags that airlines now charge is a good one, or the fact that I usually have to pack for three children in addition to myself. But the truth is, I always feel pretty guilty about not bringing them and I cringe with every disposable I toss in trash cans on our trips. Now in my own defense, I do use cloth whenever we leave the house on local trips and when we go to outdoor music festivals. I bring them to the gym daycare--basically anywhere it won't be a problem to have a wet bag with a couple dirty diapers waiting in it. But I know that there probably many of you who are better persons than me--so dedicated to cloth diapering and being green that you've packed an extra suitcase for them or managed to stuff enough of them into any remaining crevices in an already full suitcase. In fact, I don't doubt there are a few of you who have even brought your cloth diapers on multiple-leg flights, on boats, or on trains! So go ahead and shame me and tell me how you do it. Here is what I want to know:
- How many cloth diapers would you pack for a long weekend trip--like from Friday to Monday?
- How many cloth diapers would you pack for a full week trip?
- Do you pack cloth wipes?
- Do you pack your own detergent? How do you pack detergent?? Or do you buy whatever detergent is available where you are going?
- Do you bring your diapers on the plane?
- If you do bring your diapers on the plane, how on the world do you fit them into the small and precious space in your diaper bag that also needs to be reserved for snacks, books and toys--especially if you have older siblings to entertain.
I’m impressed, y’all. I don’t even go across town with cloth in our bag – though we do have a few packs of disposables that were gifted to use up. After that, I plan to bring our prefolds.
I wouldn’t mind traveling with cloth, especially since it would be interesting to wash with non-well water! we have well water and it has proven to be my worst enemy with cloth diapers. so I don’t think it would be much trouble!
Yes! The last time with traveled with disposables (before we switched), DS had a blowout in our hotel bed at 5am. NOT FUN. We’ve now taken cloth for four trips of varying length, both car and plane.
We use our Grovia AI2s for travel. We take all of our shells (12) and inserts (17) plus some random other inserts that will fit well, and all of our Grovia boosters. I also take a gallon bag with biosoakers just in case. All of this gets me to three days, which is my typical wash interval. We took one trip recently that was four days in a hotel and I chose to use biosoakers for the first day then start using cloth on the second day. The night we got home I just threw everything in the wash.
We just started using cloth wipes at home, but still use disposables for the diaper bag. We used a mix on our recent 10-day trip. I just emptied the peri bottle and squeezed the air out before packing, refilled with water when we arrived at our destination.
I would not plan to use cloth inserts if we didn’t have laundry access. However, now with a baby we prefer a “vacation rental” with more space and laundry facilities to a hotel anyway. I generally just use whatever detergent is available where we are staying — happy Tide user at home, but a few washes in another detergent won’t kill anything. I just make sure to wash hot and do an extra hot wash or rinse.
For a road trip, everything is packed in the dry part of a large Planetwise wet/dry bag. For a flight we have to get more creative :-) When taking a stroller that goes in the huge stroller gate check bag, I just threw the entire wet/dry bag in there (still room to spare). No one asks what’s in your stroller bag!!! When taking our umbrella stroller that has a smaller travel bag this strategy is less feasible (the extra space is taken up by my carrier). On two flights we had to check a garment bag since my DH needed his suit, so we just stuffed all of the covers and inserts (separated) into the outer compartments of the garment bag.
I might end up flying to see family with DS for a long weekend on my own soon, so I was just pondering how I’d handle that situation. I think I would opt to pack our clothes and diapers in my travel pack, which has a large padded hip belt and a zip-off daypack. That should be enough room for our clothes and diapers, the daypack can be used as a diaper bag, my hands would be free to push the stroller and the car seat (still using a bucket) could hang from my forearm. Alternatively the travel pack can ride in the stroller and DS can ride on me.
Wow, that was a long comment!
I only take cloth if I know that we are staying with family. I don’t want to spend time on washing if we are at a hotel.
I have only traveled with cloth once – I took a few for overnights. It wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t great either, since I had so few diapers it wasn’t as easy to wash, had to worry about laundry detergent/washers/etc. It’s usually easier to just buy some disposables when we get to where we’re going (so we don’t have to use up precious luggage space for cloth)
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