Anyone use a diaper service?

Hello,

I am due with B/G twins in March and was wondering if anyone used a diaper service and how it worked out for you. In our area there is only one and it picks up the dirty diapers once a week. We have a small apartment, and I am concerned about the smell from a diaper pail that is only emptied once a week. We do not have a garage, balcony, or other outdoor area to put the diaper pail. Also, how large a diaper pail would I need? I would like to cloth diaper, but I'm thinking I might have to use disposables. Also, washing the diapers myself is not an option because we don't have a washing machine in our unit. I can't imagine lugging down a diaper pail filled with dirty diapers to our first floor laundry room. People in the elevator or laundry room might complain.

Any advice about the feasibility of using a diaper service with twins would be appreciated.

 

We cloth diaper and one thing you may want to consider purchasing is a diaper sprayer. It connects to the water pipe at the back of the toilet and allows you to easily and quickly rinse the diaper into the toilet. This way you could rinse any poopy diapers before placing them in the pail and that would decrease the possibility of smell.

That being said, I've never had a problem with smell from my diaper pail. I don't rinse the diapers and I wash every 2-3 days. A small piece of terry cloth with a couple drops of tea tree oil or a Deodisk both are good smell busters if you have a problem.

 

Like Alison said, smell wasn't really an issue for us. We used tea tree oil and not only did it keep the pail from smelling up our bathroom, but it also kept our bathroom smelling really clean, too. We even left the pail in there when we were showing the house for sale and I doubt anyone realized what was in there.

Me personally, I'd skip the service and wash myself. It would probably be 2-3 loads a week and your neighbors would likely never know what you had in the bag

as for the diaper pail question...I'd get a large kitchen trash can. The diaper pails are essentially the same thing, but more expensive. And you'll want a water-resistant pail liner, too. I tried a Bummis and Snap-Ez and Snap-Ez were by far my favorite. They were stretchy and fit really well. The bummis always felt wet and didn't fit comfortably over the top of my pail.

 

QUOTE(Donia @ Jan 6 2008, 03:07 AM) [snapback]559316[/snapback]
Like Alison said, smell wasn't really an issue for us. We used tea tree oil and not only did it keep the pail from smelling up our bathroom, but it also kept our bathroom smelling really clean, too. We even left the pail in there when we were showing the house for sale and I doubt anyone realized what was in there.

Me personally, I'd skip the service and wash myself. It would probably be 2-3 loads a week and your neighbors would likely never know what you had in the bag


I agree with pp. We do not use tea tree oil, but bought two Diaper Dekor (disposable pails) from a friend second hand and they came with refills for that system which are scented and keep in the smell well. HTH.

 

I was very interested in using cloth and a great deal of pp said it was to much trouble, was is everone elses input? Does it save money? Is it a lot of work?

 

I used cloth diapers for my first son and am using them for the twins this time arounds as well. I had a diaper service for the first 6 months after DS was born, and would recommend it to anyone. I saved me so much time, and as I lived in an appartment at the time,it was so handy to be able to have someone else take care of the washing. Now I'm in a house, with a high effiency washer and dryer, and I am starting on sewing my cloth diapers this week.

http://www.diaperdecisions.com/cost_of_cloth_diapers.htm

This is some information I found regarding the cost difference in cloth versus disposable. Keep in mind, this is for one baby, so you may want to multiply it by 2 for twins. It can work out to be savings in the thousands of dollars, depending on what type of cloth diapers you are going to use. I found an awesome site that shows you how to make your own cloth diapers from recycled clothing, and that's what I'm doing.

http://hyenacart.com/FernandFaerie/index.p...=10&p=60782

I'm planning on making a combination of fitted diapers and prefolds. The fitted are mostly for DH and DS when they change the babies. If I make it easy on them, they are more likely to do it :lol: I used the prefolds before, as well as the flat flannelette diapers, so I don't mind what I use. It's not a lot of work for me, as I do laundry all the time anyway.

IMHO, I'd rather put that extra couple of thousand dollars into the children's college funds then into disposable diapers that go into the land fill. That being said, I will also have some disposables on hand for trips out for dinner, shopping, visiting. Conveince.

 

We used a cloth diaper service with our boys, and we are planning to do the same with this next set. We didn't do the calculations, but I imagine we've saved tons of money going that route rather than disposables - not to mention the amount of space disposables would've taken up in our weekly garbage pick up. (We would have had to upgrade to a bigger garbage can!) We considered washing our own cloth diapers, but given that these were our first children and that we envisioned enough stresses to keep on top of our household with just having the newborns in our house, we thought the diaper service was the best way to go. (I'm not the best housekeeper as it is.) We also had disposables on hand for trips out, etc.

The smell actually wasn't too bad, in our opinion. The diaper pail we had was provided by the service (we paid for it), and they also gave us these deodorizing discs to slip into the back of the lid. To be honest, it only smelled bad when we opened it... and at that, only smelled really bad once the boys started eating more complex foods. The diaper pail we used is about the size of a very large hamper - and we just about filled it every week. This worked out well for us. If it had been any smaller, we wouldn't have a place to store a bag of used diapers mid-week to avoid the smell. If the smell started to seep even with the lid closed, we'd wash it out/hose it down, and that usually did the trick. The other tip I suggest if you go with a service is having a changing table with an open shelf where you can stack all the clean diapers for easy accessibility. (We used the entire top shelf of our two-shelf changing table.)

My favorite things about the diaper service: You get bigger diapers as the kids get bigger - i.e., no worries about a one-size fits all deal. There was a small price jump for significant size-ups, but the only thing we had to worry about was getting enough diaper wraps as they got bigger. The boys didn't get rashes. Also, when they were ready for potty training, our diaper service had cloth trainers (I think that's what they were called), and it was nice to be able to dump those in the diaper pail when there were accidents.

If I can answer any other questions, let me know!

 

Here's a good thread about cloth diapers vs disposables and the money savings:

http://www.twinstuff.com/forum/index.php?s...c=52533&hl=

Here's a couple more threads on other cloth diapering issues:

http://www.twinstuff.com/forum/index.php?s...c=52158&hl=
http://www.twinstuff.com/forum/index.php?s...c=47078&hl=

 

I have used a diaper service continuously for 4.5 years for all my singletons. We really appreciate the convenience of the delivery to our door, and have not noticed a major smell in the house. I feel much better about my contribution to the environment, and can't imagine how many thousands of disposables I would have gone through by now. We chose to use a service as opposed to washing our own because we live in an apartment, but with twins on the way, we will be moving to a house, and will wash our own then.

I know some people use a combination of cloth and disposables, but we never have. I use cloth when I go out, and overnight, and have no problems. I use fleece covers and doublers at night to keep them dry. I also keep a wet bag and extra covers in the diaper bag for when we are out. Simple and easy for us.

 

I started cloth diapering my boys around the time they turned a year old. The smell of cloth diapers isn't as bad as disposables at all IMO so keeping them in the house for a week is quite do-able. I second (or third?) the idea of getting a sprayer to spray off as much of the poop as possible (although with breastfed poop you don't need to do that if that's something you are considering) and they sell washable disks or tea tree oil to cut down on the aroma. I think it would be a great idea for you to try a diaper service. Besides, if you are unhappy with it you can always stop and do something else, right?

You know, people look at me like I have 2 heads because I cloth diaper (twins, no doubt) but we are REALLY happy with our experience so far. Sean's only had 1 rash in the past 6 months and this was the boy that had a never ending rash for the first 12 months of his life!