How much time does it take to cloth diaper?

When you have a baby how much time something takes becomes a lot more important, you want everything to be as fast and simple as possible.

Most people seem to think that cloth diapering will take up all your free time because you will spend hours washing and folding cloth diapers every single day.

Washing cloth diapers can take less than 30 minutes to a little over a hour, it does vary depending on the type of washing machine you have and how you choose to dry them.

How long does it take to wash cloth diapers?

The amount of time it takes to wash cloth diapers depends greatly on the type of washing machine you are using.

The amount of steps in your wash routine also affect the amount of time washing cloth diapers will take.

If you are using an HE ( high efficiency) washing machine it will probably take longer to wash your cloth diapers.

It may also take longer to figure out a good wash routine since you have to find a way to trick a washing machine that is built to use very little water into giving you more water.

Some HE top loaders have a “Deep water wash” setting that fixes the water problem.

Some people have a ton of steps in their cloth diaper wash routine with lots of extra rinses and special cycles where they add bleach or vinegar or Borax.

While adding extras to your wash routine isn’t bad necessarily it does make things more complicated and therefore more time consuming.

I have a non-HE, top loading, Roper washing machine and I wash my cloth diapers in Gain original powder

• First cycle is a short cold wash cycle with about 2 tablespoons of detergent
• Second cycle is a long warm wash cycle with about 1/2 cup of detergent

The first wash cycle will usually take about 20 minutes.

The second cycle takes about 40 minutes.

I wash my cloth diapers every day and of that hour I’m only at the washing machine for less than 3 minutes.

The other 57 minutes I just go about my day, I play with my kids, I read or I get the other house work done.

How long does it take to dry cloth diapers?

The fastest way to dry cloth diapers is probably to just throw them in the dryer, the more absorbent your inserts are the longer they will take to dry.

Another factor is that most cloth diaper brands do not recommend that you use high heat on the diaper covers.

That much heat can cause the PUL/TPU ( the water resistant outer layer) and the elastics to break down faster.

I don’t put anything with PUL/TPU or elastics in the dryer at all unless it’s an emergency.

If I can’t hang the cloth diaper laundry outside, I put the inserts and wipes in the dryer on high for about 90 minutes and hang the All-in-ones, pocket diaper shells and diaper covers on a drying rack.

The All-in-one depending on their material and how many layers of that material are sewn together will take 12-24 hours to dry on the drying rack.

The pocket diaper shells are usually dry in 8-12 hours depending on the material of the pocket lining (micro suede is thinner so dries faster and micro fleece is thicker so dries slower).

Diaper covers take about 4-8 hours depending on the thickness of the PUL/TPU.

Some diaper covers have a double layer of PUL/TPU which is just 2 layers of PUL/TPU sewn together for extra water resistance.

When I hang my cloth diaper laundry outside it takes about 15 minutes to get everything hung up and most things are dry in roughly 9 hours.

In the evening when I take the cloth diaper laundry off the line I put the inserts and wipes in the dryer on high heat for about 30 minutes to soften them up a bit.

That 30 minutes in the dryer will also finish drying anything that was still a little damp.

If there are any diaper covers or All-in-ones that are still a little wet I put them on the drying rack and they are dry when I check them the next morning.

How long does it take fold cloth diapers?

Folding cloth diaper laundry is going to be the most time consuming part of cloth diapering.

I use mostly pocket cloth diapers, which means I need to fold and sort laundry and I need to stuff what I’ve folded and sorted into the pocket of the cloth diaper shell.

I probably spend a good 20-30 minutes every night folding, sorting and stuffing cloth diapers while I watch TV with my husband.

Keep in mind I have 3 children, a 3 year old, a 18 month old and a 3 month old, so every night I need to deal with around 48 cloth diapers.

I need to fold and sort the 24 diapers my 3 kids went through the day before and stuff the 24 my kids are going to need for the next day.

If one of the kids had a really poopy day I’ll have more to fold and if one or two of them took a really long nap I might have less.

How long does it take to change a cloth diaper?

There really isn’t a significant difference between cloth and disposable diapers when it comes to the actual diaper change.

However if you are using a 2 part system like flats and covers or prefolds and covers that extra step of putting the flat/prefold in the cover is going to take an extra second or two.

Then if you are wrapping the flat or prefold around your baby it’s probably gonna take longer than a Velcro All-in-one which would go on exactly like a disposable.

Then there is spraying out the poopy cloth diaper after a change, the worst poopy diapers usually take about 45 seconds to 1 minute to spray out.

However if the poopy diaper has sat for a little while and dried on to the diaper some it tends to be a lot harder to spray out.

In conclusion

I have 3 kids that need diapers full time, so every week we go through about 170 diapers, that’s 680 diapers a month.

I only spend 33-47 minutes of my time everyday doing cloth diaper related tasks, however I feel that 33-47 minutes everyday actually saves me time.

Disposable diapers are an extra stop at the store, they are a weekly or monthly expense that someone has to trade their time for money to pay for, they are extra trash that has to be taken out.

I don’t have to spend time worrying about how we are going to afford 680 diapers a month.

I don’t have to spend time stressing about having time to stop and get diapers before 3 small children decide they are done shopping and flip out.

So for me cloth diapers save me a lot of time and stress.