Workhorse cloth nappies

There are lots of terms that you might come across when looking at cloth nappies that you might find confusing. I’m going to be looking at some of these terms in a series of blogs, starting this week with workhorse cloth nappies.

What are workhorse cloth nappies?

Workhorse cloth nappies are simply your day to day, go to nappies that work well but aren’t particularly fancy. If you have a pile of different types of cloth nappies, your workhorse cloth nappies are those which you tend to reach for first, and that are often quite ordinary looking. Most people tend to fill most of their cloth nappy stash with workhorse cloth nappies, something reliable that you can use every day. Most of the nappies that we sell here at Nappyneedz would count as workhorse cloth nappies, our dinky pocket nappy, and ecobots prefolds would certainly fall into this category.

A workhorse cloth nappy doesn’t have to be boring or ugly, but as a rule they tend not to have lots of embroidery or pictures on them.

Pretty cloth nappies

As well as workhorse cloth nappies, you may hear people talking about “pretties”, these tend to be cloth nappies that have deigns embroidered or appliquéd onto the back of them. These nappies are not necessarily less reliable than workhorse cloth nappies, but they do tend to be more expensive. For this reason, people often tend to only have a few of this type of cloth nappy in their collection, as it would be too expensive to have all “pretties” in the collection. In some cases, these nappies may be delicate, which does make washing more awkward, although many of them can be washed just as you would wash any other cloth nappy.

Choosing workhorse cloth nappies

When building up your nappy stash, it’s worth thinking about what type of nappies you would consider to be your workhorse cloth nappies. If you like a pocket nappy style, where the insert is in the nappy and the whole thing put on as a unit, then you might prefer something along the lines of the dinky nappy. If you like to just change the insert each time, then a prefold system like Ecobots is probably better for you. Think about things such as washing facilities, who is likely to be doing the nappy changing and what they will find easiest, and what kind of clothes your little one is likely to be wearing. Try and find the workhorse nappy that works for you and your baby.