Looking for a Local Diaper Service

There used to be a local diaper service in Milton but it has closed several years ago. The closest one is now in Deerfield. I CD our daughter and now our son. My washing machine is still doing fine.
There is no more diaper service in our area:(

E.

I used cloth diapers through 3 kids, including one horrible year when they were all in diapers at the same time. We never used a service, partially for monetary reasons but mostly environmental ones (why use cloth diapers to save the environment and then add bleach and all that gas into the equation?) It is a lot of extra laundry, of course, which does wear on a machine, but is not particularly hard laundry.

Here's what we did: we got the covers from Baby Bunz online (those were the cheapest we found, and after many years of using the vaunted "Nikki" covers decided they weren't superior). I had about 8-10 covers per kid--you can use them a bunch of times before they need to be washed, and three dozen of the preshaped unbleached diapers from natural baby company (I don't know if they still exist). The preshaped ones were great because there was no folding, but folding isn't hard... you put the diaper in the cover, velcro it on, and it's not much different from a disposable. Once the kids were on solid food, we'd shake the poop into the toilet, but before that, or with wet diapers, they just went into a diaper pail with a nylon laundry bag liner, which got washed along with the diapers every four or five days (and more frequently in that horrible year). The covers must be washed separately on delicate and with delicate soap--we used Ecover's Delicate wash.

Here's the disadvantage to cloth diapers: if you don't change them, they leak. They take up a lot of room in the diaper bag. But though diapers aren't the biggest environmental deal--not driving and not eating meat will go a lot further in protecting the world our kids are going to live in--it does feel good to make a small stand that saves a whole fistful of dollars. Plus, if you hang the diapers out to dry in your yard, you really get moral superiority points for something that isn't all that hard.

Good luck with the baby!

Hi! I use cloth diapers and wash them myself at home. I've been using them for 5 months now and have not had any problems with my washing machine. It does require special laundry detergent, though. As for diaper services, I've heard there's one in JP, though I don't know any more than that. Good luck!

you should also consider the amount of extra water it takes to wash all the diapers. I have heard that in the end cloth diapers are really not that greener than disposables. So if in the end it's more work than you want to do you can keep that in mind. Anyway, i have heard they are better for baby skin and lungs?? Best of luck. When i researched i only found the deerfield service and they didn't come to my town.

I can vouch for using cloth and washing at home. You'll find lots of comparisons of the environmental impact between cloth and paper on the web. Yes, more loads of laundry, but it becomes part of the routine and it's not a big deal. As for the water issue, you need to factor in the water (and other resources and chemicals) that go into making disposable diapers.
I highly recommend Baby Bunz (babybunz.com), as mentioned below-- and call them if you have questions, the woman is very helpful. Nikki covers and shaped diapers are the way to go. Seems like a bunch of money up front, but the costs, even when you include the electricity, soap, and hot water, are still less than disposables over the long run.
A word of warning if you do go the cloth route-- if you ever have diaper rash trouble that doesn't clear with cream, try different soap. After weeks of trying to solve the problem we found that our soap was leaving residue in the diapers that caused irritation. Once we switched soap we have not had any more trouble. We use disposable diapers at day care and we've had similar incidents of rash, leaking and blowouts with disposables as we've had with cloth.
Good luck with your decision.