Cloth Nappies 101 Series: Part III - The Accessories
Now that the basic cloth nappy items have been discussed in parts I and II of the Cloth Nappies 101 series, lets deal with the rest of what you need. These accessories as they are generally called make your cloth nappy use a bit more convenient and easy to use, be it washing, storing or dealing with poop.
Dirty Nappy storage:
These are used to store your nappies until you are ready to wash. Back in the day this consisted of a bucket with a cover filled with water to soak the diapers before they were washed. This is generally called using a wet pail. These days you do not need to soak the nappies, instead a dry-pail system is used. This consist of popping the dirty nappies in dry seal-able container before they are ready to be washed, however, do make sure you wash every 3 days at the max. Nappy storage can come in the form of:
Diaper bag:
Also called a wet bag or nappy bag. These are waterproof zippered bags made of PUL fabrics. These are used to store the dirty nappies till you need to wash. No need to soak in a bucket. when ready to wash, the bags are unzipped and the contents of the bag tipped into the washing machine including the bag as well. Nappy bags are great in that they reduce the physical handling of dirty nappies to a minimum. they are also available in various sizes ranging from small versions which fit into your handbags to the humongously large wet bags can fit like 2 dozen nappies - this is handy if you have more than one child in nappies at the same time. Currently on our online shop we have the medium and large sized wet bags.
Small, Medium and Large sized Wet/ Nappy bags
Nappy Buckets:
Buckets with a tight fitting lid/cover can be used to store dirty nappies, whilst you may find products specifically marketed as nappy buckets, any good sized bucket would do. Some people also use plastic dustbins if more than one child is in diapers and you do not want to have 4 different buckets stationed around the house.
Example of Nappy bucket
Pail liners:
These are essentials to be used with a nappy bucket as you use them to line the bucket. these are very much like bin liners in that they help the handling of the contents without one having to touch the contents. Pail liners can come as extra large PUL bags with the open sized elasticated or with drawstrings. They also come in the form of a net bags / mesh bags, also elasticated or with drawstrings. when the nappies are ready to be washed the pail liner is lifted out of the bucket and used to transfer the contents into the washing machine
Pail liners that are used to line a nappy bucket
nappy bins with pail liner
Bucket with mesh liner
Nappy Liners:
Nappy liner help to catch poo and makes disposal easier. you simply lay the liner between the fabric of the nappy and baby's bum. Although liners can be used from birth if you wish, they are especially useful once baby has been weaned and the poo becomes more solid. Liners come in the following form:
Re-usable liners on a fitted nappy, before wearing on baby
Re-usable liners:
These are made of microfleece fabric. These type of liners have the added use of being a stay-dry liner as they wick moisture away from baby's bum into the fabric layers below. When you baby poos, you pick up the poo with the liner and empty it into the toilet. the small size of the liners also helps in how it is handled so that one is not trying to navigate a 60 sq cm piece of cloth over the toilet to get rid of the poo.
Re-usable liners
Flush-able liners:
These are made of paper or bio-degradable viscose sometimes of bamboo fibres. These usually come in a handy roll with pre-perforated sheets so tearing off individual sheets are easy. Some flush-able liners can be re-used a couple of times before discarding if baby has only urinated on them. some can only be hand washed as they cannot survive a machine wash cycle. however once baby has poo'd, the liner and its contents are popped into the toilet and flushed away.
Flushable nappy liners
Please note that the liners will not totally prevent soiling from getting into the surrounding nappy, however, they do minimize this significantly.
At Mima Bear, we have both reusable and flush-able nappy liners.
Nappy Fasteners:
If you are using traditional terry squares a.k.a napkins or any form of flat cloth or nappy that you need to wrap around baby, you will need a fastener to keep it in place. You can either use:
Baby Safety pins:
These have been used since time immemorial. Depending on the size of your baby and the size of you nappy, you are likely to use one or two of these to secure the nappy.
Nappy pins
Snappi Nappy fasteners:
These are modern day nappy pin. These are T-shaped plastic/ rubber fasteners. each of the 3 prongs of the "T" have "teeth" that grab the fabric to be fastened and keeps it in place. Some fabrics are easier to "snappi" than others, so the smoother the fabric or less open the weave, the harder it is for the snappi to grab the fabric. terry (towel) fabrics are very easy due to the loops and simple weave fabrics are also easy to snappy. Fleeces and tighter weave fabrics are not ideal for using a snappi. At Mima Bear, we are official stockist of Snappi in Nigeria and we carry a range of 12 different colour options.
Snappi Fasteners for flat nappies
Boingo:
These are similar to the Snappi in that they use small teeth to grab on to the fabric to be fastened together. however unlike the Snappi, they come as a straight piece, for smaller babies, only one boingo may be used to fasten the nappy, however as baby grows you will need two boingos on each side.
Boingo Nappi fasteners -images from babycentre.com
We do not stock this fastener system at Mima Bear, but a search of the internet should point you to large cloth nappy shops in particularly in the United States where you can be able to purchase it.
Nappy Cream:
This is very essential if using cloth nappies as zinc based nappy creams are are huge NO-NO!. this is due to the zinc coating the fabric and causing it to repel liquid rather than absorb. Therefore, for cloth nappies, simple things like plain petroleum jelly, coconut oil, shea butter, cocoa butter are recommended.
Please do not use standard nappy creams like sudocrem, metanium or the like. if you need to use these it is advised you use a flushable liner Or use disposables for the time period that such creams are required.
Cloth Wipes:
These essential do the same job as a disposable wet wipe. these are made from an absorbent piece of fabric, usually cotton or bamboo terry (Towel fabrics), which is moistened with water or a diaper solution to clean baby's bum at each nappy change. after use, these popped into your dirty diaper storage and washed with the rest of your nappies. There are various ways to use a cloth wipe and we will deal with this in a different post. These are quite an economic way to use wipes as they are generally better at cleaning a soiled bum than disposable wipes.
Example cloth single layer cloth wipes
They also have a lot of uses not only relating to nappy use and these include hand and face wipes, washcloths, and burp cloths.
2 layer cotton wipes with flannel on one side and terry fabric on the other
At Mima Bear, we stock 2 types of cloth wipes (cotton and bamboo) in 2 sizes (small and large), in 2 pack sizes ( Sets of 5 and Set of 10).
Diaper Sprayer:
This is a nice to have item if you have a decent plumber and can find a way to fit it to your toilet cistern.
Diaper sprayer
This is essentially a shower head attached to the toilet water supply and you use it to spray off the poop from your cloth nappies before washing or storing in your nappy bag. The image below shows what it looks like when attached and it is very similar to the little spray head typically found in toilets in public buildings in Nigeria such as the airport or malls that offer the option to rinse out your bottom / douche. This little contraption is also know as ta douche shower spray.
Installed diaper sprayer/ douche shower spray
If you by chance have one of these douche shower sprays in your home, this can essentially be used to rinse out your poopy nappies.
Bath tap shower head
This can be substituted with the extendable shower head as shown above that is attached to the tap, especially if it is long enough to reach over your toilet bowl, you can used this instead or rinse under a runny tap into a bucket and pop the soiled water into the toilet bowl.
Washing Machine:
Oh Lawdy!!!!! This I most forgot! Very very useful in making your cloth nappy use much easier as you do not need to hand wash your nappies. A washing machine makes nappy laundry a breeze, as all you need to do is rinse, hot wash at 60 degrees Celcius maximum, and rinse again. they are also very effective in squeezing / spinning out the water from the nappies so drying will be a bit quicker than if you were to hand wash.
Washing machines simplify cloth nappy laundry
Standard laundry powders or liquids are generally ok, however no matter how tempted you are DO NOT USE fabric softeners as this will ruin the absorption of you nappies. A seperate post on diaper laundry will be made and I will link it here.
So there is my list of accessories. Kindly let us have your comments and let us know if there are other items not included here that ease your cloth nappy journey.
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Snappi Fasteners for flat nappies
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