Our daughter just turned 13 months a few days ago, and since the day she was born, my wife and I never used anything besides disposable diapers. Neither of us had ever considered cloth diapers in the past, but in the last few months, we began to hear more and more parents talk about them, which got us more interested in them. The two biggest driving forces behind our consideration of cloth diapers were the possibility of saving money and the chance to do some good for the environment. Saving money was key, since the costs of buying disposable diapers can increase quickly, while cloth diapers are much cheaper once you get past the initial process of buying them. The environmental factor was not as much of a priority for us, but we still wanted to reduce the amount of trash we were throwing out each month, and switching to cloth diapers was an easy way to do this.

I know there are a lot of dads out there who are reading this post and thinking, "dude, why would you do this?" I know, because I used to feel the same way myself. Why would you want to add one more chore to the list of things you had to get done every day? Why would you want to add even one more step to the process of changing diapers?

Well, I'm here to let you know that it's really not as bad as you might be thinking! If you've got a little one at home and are currently using disposable diapers to get the job done, you might be pleasantly surprised to find out that using cloth diapers is far easier than most parents think.

There are different types of cloth diapers out there, so it's a good idea to do your research first. This is generally a good idea before any major purchase, and since this is one that involves your child, you don't want to rush the process. My wife and I did about 10 or 15 hours of searching online, which included browsing forums, reading personal blogs, scanning reviews, and just looking for personal experiences in general about the diapers.

We ended up going with cloth diapers that were designed to be one size fits all. The ones we've got allow you to adjust their sizes by buttons located on the front, and they can fit babies anywhere between 7 and 35 pounds. Our little girl is about 21 pounds these days, and the diaper we use currently is on the largest setting. I feel good knowing there's still room for our girl to grow in these diapers, and the velcro straps can be adjusted as she gets bigger.

Cleaning is pretty simple with the diaper. This was one of my biggest concerns, and it was a relief to see how straightforward it was. If you're simply dealing with a wet diaper, all you need to do is take out the insert in the diaper and throw the insert and the diaper together into your diaper container or wet bag. That's all you have to do. If our little girl does a #2 instead of a #1, I take the diaper over to the nearest toilet, flip the poop out into the toilet, scrape off any extra poop from the diaper, take out the insert, and stuff both of them into our wet bag. If you use a diaper pal, that's fine too.

Hopefully this convinces you to take a closer look at cloth diapers if you haven't before. My wife and I are more than satisfied and will only buy cloth diapers from now on for our kiddo.

Thanks for the guest post Mike O! Mike and his new family are now part of the cloth diapering world!