Cloth Diapers Out and About :)

Updated on September 28, 2010
R.B. asks from Grants Pass, OR
15 answers

Hello Cloth Diaper Mamas!
I'm recently returning to CDing after a break of about a year and I'd really like to make it work full time, this time. I've found some brands I like but my question is, how do you deal with dirty diapers when you're not at home? My infant's dirty diapers aren't too bad - I can just stick them in the wet bag. My toddler, on the other hand, has very healthy (messy!!!) dirty diapers. I'm planning to purchase a diaper sprayer for home use, but what do you do when you're not at home or (worse!) somewhere without a toilet or sink. Any input on what has worked for you would be much appreciated.
Thanks!!

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Featured Answers

B.B.

answers from Dallas on

I've been CDing for about 8 months now and LOVE it! I just take a wetbag with me when we go out. A plastic grocery bag will work, too, though. If I'm near a toilet I will go ahead and rinse the poo (dunk and swish, which I also do at home...it's not so bad). If we're not near a toilet, I just fold up the dipe and put it in the wetbag til we get home. No big deal!! Or you could always use flushable liners while out, that way you can just flush that and the mess. Or Grovia, Flip, and gDiapers all have flushable/tossable liners you could put in a cover. That way if you're not near a toilet you could just toss it in the trash.

(keep in mind that you're still supposed to flush poo out of disposables...something I learned after CDing and never knew when my boys were in disposables. Human waste is not supposed to go in the landfills)

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L.C.

answers from Portland on

Like the others posted, a wet bag works awesome. I have one made by Bummis that contains the wetness and the smell. I do not clean my diapers in a public toilet, the idea of it grosses me out! But I just contain everything in a plastic bag, and then place in my wet bag (or just directly in the wet bag, but if it is really bad and you don't want to seriously dirty your wet bag for further use in the next day or two use the plastic grocery bag) and then sort it out when I get home. If the poo has dried at all, I just leave the diaper in the toilet for a little bit and it softens up and makes it easier to clean. The wet bag is then washed with the rest of my cloth diapers. Good luck to you!

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T.L.

answers from Seattle on

Wet bag, and if you don't want to use disposible linners you can get fleece linners, or even buy some lightweight fleece and cut to right size. I'd just spray if needed when you get home, I've never needed a sprayer on the 3 times I wish I did I used the shower sprayer. The diapers always got a good cold rinse in the washer before washing here. Some of the good wet bags also have a tab to put some E.O. on so if your worried about smell. Good luck Iove CDing.

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M.L.

answers from Seattle on

When out and about, we just stick the diaper in the wetbag and deal with it when we get home. We recently went camping for the weekend and just put all the diapers in a garbage bag while we were there and then washed them when we got home. There wasn't a toilet or sink we could use to wash them in, but for 48 hours it didn't matter. We went on a 2 week vacation in the spring and used disposables then. It was a vacation for us from washing diapers too!

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F.M.

answers from Portland on

It has been a while since I did CDs, but one thing that I found to be a lifesaver was using an insert to contain the poop. I went to Joann fabrics and purchased maybe 1/4 yard of microfleece and made strips about the size of large sanitary napkins. You may have to experiment. Anyway, they worked wonders because the poop rolled right off of them into the toilet and my diapers were basically to contain the moisture. Hope that helps! Good luck!

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A.Z.

answers from Portland on

Cloth diapering on the go is pretty easy! I also highly recommend you do cloth wipes while you are out too!

For the messy situations, simply fold the diaper up and slip in a wetbag, just like your infants diapers. When you get home, you can dump the waste in the toilet and toss the diaper in the pail. When you wash the diapers, run a cold water rinse and then wash as usual. Some items that help are flushable liners - I love Bummis liners the best (I have tried several). They are lightweight and allow the fleece in pocket diapers to still help keep baby feeling drier in a damp diaper, they are biodegradeable (even with septic systems) although pee ones I will rinse and air dry and then reuse or if necessary just throw them away. The poopy ones go right into the toilet. They take most if not all of the mess with them. A real lifesaver when out and about! At home I don't always use the liners, so I use a diaper sprayer attached to my toilet. While baby 1, I didn't use it until she was over a year and I started kicking myself for not trying it sooner (ironic as I sell them and had them in stock). With babies 2 and 3, the sprayer is used daily and much loved as they are 9 months old and still most breastfed, so messy and sometimes chunky poop combined, makes for difficult clean-up! The sprayer makes it a breeze even if I have been out all day the diaper is sticky by the time I get home.

In general, I do not "clean" the diapers when out and about as it is very difficult to do it in a sanitary way. Public restrooms are just yucky. Where do I keep the children? How do I go back and forth between the stall and the sink without touching anything? getting the wet diaper stuffed in a bag without any mess getting anywhere and being able to scrub my hands. It is far easier to carefully fold the mess in and then clean up at home with everything I need handy.

Back to the wipes. Cloth wipes make clean up a breeze and sometimes I use them to cover the poop in the diaper to help keep it contained while putting the diaper in the wetbag if it's a super messy one. The messiest, dirtiest diapers only take 3 wipes with my cloth wipes and I have easily gone through more than a dozen disposables with similar messes and still felt like I needed one to wipe the area for good measure only to find poopy residue smeared all over the skin. No wonder my babies always get rashes when someone uses those types of wipes on them! Anyway, the cloth grabs and cleans better and faster. They are also super handy for a good scrub of your hands if a sink isn't nearby for immediate hand washing. I make a solution with lavender and tea tree oil for everyday use and when out and about, I toss in some colloidal silver so I know my hands are sanitary if I can't use a sink anywhere! They make great face wipes, nose wipes, etc too!

I have a ton of articles and I am happy to offer tons of free advice if you need help!

A.
www.punkinbutt.com

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Y.B.

answers from Seattle on

We just use wet bags and clean the diapers when we get home with the sprayer. My son is 2 and we have been cloth diapering since he was 2 months. We even cloth diaper when we go on trips. Our last trip to Montana we got Flip diapering system with disposable inserts. We actually didn't like it as well and eneded up getting a few more bumgenius diapers while we there and using them. But that is an idea if you are opposed to just putting the diaper in a wet bag and cleaning it with the diaper sprayer when you get home. It really isn't that bad and my husband is the main daiper cleaner around here :)

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R.C.

answers from Seattle on

Hello,
Your best bet is to shake any solids into a toilet and then keep them in a wet bag. I usually just wrap the diaper up in a tight little ball and put it in the wet bag to deal with when I get home. Whammies makes wet bags with a little strip of fabric on the inside where you can add a few drops of lavender or your favorite essential oil to help mask odors. Bummis bags are nice too, as they are a little smaller they are nice for one or two poopy diapers. If you are out and not anywhere near a toilet you can bring an extra small bag with you to keep the poopy diaper in seperately. Another option if you are going to be out and about for a long time and afraid you won't be able to find a toilet is to use a disposable liner (imse vimse makes great disposable liners) which helps minimize messes and makes them more easy to dispose of. The nice thing about the imse vimse liners is that they are strong enough to wash once or twice if you do want to reuse them, so a bag lasts a long time. Honestly, though, I find that it is very rare when you will be somewhere without a toilet, and if you are going to be somewhere very "rustic" for a few days (like camping) it is totally okay to use disposables for those occasions. You can buy all of the things I mentioned here at www.simplecloth.com. A local Olympia, WA diaper store owned by a very nice lady! Julie is also really good at answering questions through email if you ever have any concerns, too.

Good luck with your cloth diapering adventure!

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T.D.

answers from Portland on

Honestly I just used Seventh Generation disposables when out. It was 2 or 3 diapers a week. I could live with that, especially since I used them at night too (no cloth combo would get us through the night).

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J.C.

answers from Anchorage on

I guess you could bring those scented diaper disposal bags and just put them in your bag until you get home and than deal with the mess. I personally would use disposables out and about, but it sounds like you would really like to avoid that. You do not wash poopy diapers out in public sinks do you? I am hoping I read that wrong.

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J.T.

answers from Seattle on

Check out Blue Planet Baby
http://www.blueplanetbaby.net/
It's a company started by a mom that was having the same exact issue and you're having and didn't want to use plastic bags cuz they rip and are bad for the enviroment and are smelly, since she couldn't find a bag that worked for her she created one and now sells them. They work great, there's and outer bag that looks nice and inner bags that are smell/water proof and urable so they can be tossed in the washer repeatedly too. I just looked and she also has a section called Diapering101 about sucess diapering strategies http://www.blueplanetbaby.net/Cloth_Diapers.html

Good luck!

M.P.

answers from Provo on

Wet bags!!! Also you can buy flushable liners that will decompose in like a month and are safe for septic tanks. Here is a link to some.
http://nickisdiapers.com/catalog.php?category=1556
As for carrying around the diapers. I accidental bought just a wet bag and I wanted the Planet Wise Wet/Dry bag. It's one bag with two compartments in it and are completely waterproof.
http://nickisdiapers.com/catalog.php?category=582
But for just a wet bag I got a Gap bag that closes at the top and put the clean diapers in there and put it in the wet bag. This way I can still only carry around one bag, but carry both.

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D.K.

answers from San Francisco on

It's been a long time, but I always used zip lock bags. Never had a problem.

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S.S.

answers from Seattle on

Depends on the diapers, I suppose, but the Fuzzi Bunz really aren't that bad when we're out. If I have to change my 14-month-old twins and there's a toilet nearby, I usually dump the stuff and then put them in a plastic bag or the special diaper tote bag that you can get with them to cart them home in. If there's not a toilet nearby, then I just fold them up, stuff them in the bag and deal with them later. Sounds gross, but actually the poop is easier to get off when it's a little less fresh, I've found.

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S.H.

answers from Portland on

I put everything in a wetbag. If it is really mess I might snap it up but I still just take it home and spray it off. I wash every other day and have never had stick or stain uses. I suppose you could use a disposable liner when you are out of the house if you are really worried about it :)

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