Keeping the cloth nappy love in Winter

Sometimes the wet and cold weather in winter makes using cloth nappies hard, no matter how much you like using cloth, keeping the cloth nappy love in winter can be difficult.  Here are a few reasons why cloth nappies are still great.

Saving money

Even though washing and more importantly drying in winter can be a real nightmare, you’re still saving money.  It might cost a little bit more than usual, as you perhaps have to use the tumble dryer from time to time, but it’s still WAY cheaper than buying disposables every week.  You’d also be spending extra on rubbish bags, or collections each week too, with stinky nappies sitting around waiting to be collected if you didn’t use cloth, nice….

You get to be creative with drying

The wet and cold weather often means that you have to dry everything inside, although it can make your house look like a laundry, and the washing seems never ending.  It does mean that you can get quite creative with where and how you dry.  Clothes horses over night are always a good idea (but remember to keep them at least a metre from the heater).  Clothes racks that hang from the ceiling are very handy, work really well, and keep everything out of your way (and out of reach of small hands that might try to help and empty everything off).  Even little ceiling mounted airers, like this cool octopus peg thingy, one of our facebook fans uses, can make a huge difference.

Plenty of nappies

If you use cloth, then you’ve always got nappies at home. You wont have to dash out in the freezing cold or wet weather to the local supermarket because you’ve run out of cloth nappies.  You might have to come up with a few plans to make sure that you’ve always got enough dry and ready, but at least you can stay in the warm when you’re doing it.

Appreciating the nice day

When you’re battling to get your cloth nappies dry, and the weather is awful, it really makes you appreciate those lovely, bright sunny days that we sometimes get in winter. Being able to line dry for a change is enough to life your spirits and help to get some of the cloth love back.  Even if it’s not that warm, it does your nappies good to be out in the sun, you can always air them in front of a heater inside over night to finish them off.

Tips for keeping the cloth nappy love in winter

If you are struggling to keep the cloth nappy love in winter, here are some tips to help you:

• Get extra inserts; nappy outers tend to dry quickly, stock up on extra inserts so that you always have some ready when your usual ones are taking a while to dry.
• Consider getting some quick drying inserts; the more that you can open something out flat, the quicker it will dry.  Prefolds dry fairly quickly too.
• Make the most of sunny days, when the sun is out, get your washing out too.
• Dry your washing over night, set up your clothes horse when you go to bed, especially if you have some form of heating on, it will be mostly dry by the morning. (But remember the metre from the heater rule.)
• Use the tumble dryer, you don’t want to be using it all the time, but over the winter, the odd use won’t hurt. Try to dry just the inserts, as they take the longest to dry.  You can use it to finish off drying too.
• Take a break, if it really is getting too much, have a few days off cloth nappy use, and then hopefully you can find the love and try again.

If you’re looking for some more inserts to stock up for winter, our bamboo and cotton prefolds are all 15% off until the end of May.  SALE They are fairly quick dry and make great inserts.

I hope that these tips have helped and that you are keeping the cloth nappy love in winter.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you keep it alive.