Taking Cloth Diapers on the road, part 1

It’s the end of the summer.  School will be starting soon (or maybe already has for some of you).  Many people I know are taking the last minute vacations and weekend trips before life gets crazy this fall.

I have personally traveled with cloth diapers on the subway system (we live in Brooklyn, NY), on several plane trips, and many car trips.  It is not difficult…in fact it is very doable!

If you are a cloth diapering parent, you may be wondering if it is really feasible to take cloth diapers on your trip.  Whether you are traveling by plane or car, we think that you can very easily travel with cloth diapers!  Here are a few ideas and suggestions to make sure you pack all of the essentials!

Diapers

Don’t forget your diapers!  A general rule would be to bring 8-10 diapers per day, or one diaper for every 3 hours or so.  At home I use a mixture of prefolds and pockets.  When I go on the road I prefer to just take my pockets because they are easier.  It also means that I may have to wash a little more frequently.

Liners

If you are like me, you cannot imagine cloth diapering without your diaper sprayer.  So what will you do when you’re not at home with your sprayer close at hand?  There are a couple of options.  First, you could use some flushable liners in your diapers.  These thin liners make it easy to just flick the poo into the toilet and flush.  They will surely make poopy diapers a little easier to clean while you are traveling.

If you use a hybrid diapering system, such as GroVia (formerly GroBaby), or Flip!, then you can purchase the biodegradable, disposable liners, and not have to worry about the cloth at all.

If you choose not to use liners, you may have to dunk your diapers.  You can give them a “swirly” in the toilet by holding tightly to one end, and flushing the toilet while dunking most of the diaper.  The force of the flush will help remove the “ickies” from your diaper, but you may have to do this several times. 

You could also throw in some latex gloves to wear while dunking your diaper.  Then just throw the gloves away!

Wet Bag 

Don’t ever leave home without your wet bag!  We actually use a couple of wet bags when we travel.  First, we use the Planet Wise hanging wet/dry bag.  This allows us to put clean diapers in the dry pocket on the front, and as they are soiled we place them into the larger waterproof section.  This bag holds over 20 diapers, so you can go a couple of days without worrying about needing to wash.

In the diaper bag we carry a medium sized Planet Wise wet bag.  This goes with us everywhere – to church, on day trips, on the plane, and in the car.  It holds several diapers.  Once we arrive at our destination (whether final, or just for the night), we can refill the wipes and transfer any dirty diapers to the larger wet bag which we keep in the trunk.

We also use the Planet Wise mini wet bag to hold our pre-moistened cloth wipes in the diaper bag.  Usually on car trips the diaper bag is in the back seat with Elaine, and holds everything we need while on the road.