Zephyr Hill

A Family Blog

How to Hand Wash Your Cloth Diapers: Photo Tutorial

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I had this idea that washing diapers by hand was really hard or complicated. I'm discovering that neither is true. We mothers know how to get things clean, and that's all you've got to do when hand washing diapers. It's a simple matter of rinsing, washing and wringing them out when done. You do have to set aside a lot more time, though. Here's the routine I've used this week, which closely follows the guidelines at the Cloth Diaper Geek blog. Yes, I used the bucket-and-plunger method, BUT I Continue Reading

Kitchen Towels and Kawaii: Flat Diaper Challenge

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If you saw yesterday's blog post, then you'll know I'm taking the Flats and Handwashing Challenge this year. We're diapering Ingrid in flats-only this week and laundering/drying them by hand. Today I want to show you the stash I put together. My goal was to use the most affordable options I could find, without having to make or sew anything, or buy costly accessories. In this way, I felt that I could more strongly make a case for cloth diapering even if you have a tight budget. Here are Continue Reading

Why I’m Handwashing Our Cloth Diapers This Week

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In my 7 years of blogging, I've encouraged people to give cloth diapers a try even if their budget is tight, or there's no washer or dryer. This year, I figured it was high time I put my money where my mouth is. So I'm taking Dirty Diaper Laundry's Flats and Handwashing Challenge this week. Six years strong, this is a week-long event that aims to prove that pretty much anyone can cloth diaper. After all, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had no choice in most situations, and they rolled Continue Reading

Can You Make One-Size Diapers Work for a Newborn?

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This post contains affiliate links. It's no secret that I love newborn cloth diapers. In fact, one of the most popular places on my blog is the newborn section. One of the questions I was dying to answer when we cloth diapered our first newborn was "will our one size diapers work on him?" Turns out, most of them did not. With most of our one-size covers, we couldn't get a snug enough fit around Erik's bird legs. You can see this with the Flip cover below: Same with the BumGenius 4.0 Continue Reading

Diaper Fabrics: What are PUL and TPU?

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Most waterproof poly cloth diapers are marketed as being made with PUL. However, some diapers are described as being made from "TPU," which gives the impression that TPU is a completely different fabric. In fact, TPU is not a fabric at all. Let me explain because I was pretty confused until I spent way too much time last week doing some research. Here's what I learned. TPU is Not Really a Fabric First of all, here's what the acronyms stand for: PUL is Polyurethane Laminate TPU is Continue Reading