Using your own cloth nappies at childcare

Clean Cloth Nappies member Jes shares why she decided to use her own cloth nappies at a childcare centre that included cloth nappies in their service.

Childcare centres that use cloth can be somewhat rare so it may seem crazy that we chose to use our own nappies at a centre that provides and launders their own cloth nappies but here’s why we did just that.

Our centre supplied cloth nappies as a standard, including the washing, drying and prepping. It was one of the selling points of this daycare, as well as the spa pool. The miniature pony helped too.

They had a fantastic system in place. We would provide a wet bag for nappies/dirty clothes and 2 of our own nappies (one to come home in and one for emergencies) per day, all while knowing we weren’t contributing to waste and pollution while our son was in daycare.

Initially, we took advantage of the supplied nappies, but after a few months, we opted to use our own nappies.

Why? Simply because being in childcare for 4 days in a row meant our wash routine was getting challenging with only 1-2 nappies a day at times.

It felt like a waste to run a first wash for 2-3  nappies as we didn’t do night nappies, but waiting 4 days to do the first wash was a bit much for our routine as well, we had a few telltale signs of ammonia beginning to build and I knew something had to change. We managed it for 3 months before opting to provide our own nappies. Now we run our first wash every 2ish days with bleach and life is much easier.

It seems odd not to use the provided nappies, but it makes things easier for us. We get a properly loaded main wash, first wash frequently enough to minimise smells and ammonia and his nappies are set to the right rise so changes are quick for the educators.

The educators welcomed us using our own nappies, their system for changes meant we didn’t need to label nappies as each child had their own wetbag for clothes next to the changing table and as soon as the nappy was off, it went into our wetbag which was in a tub with my sons name on it. 

Some educators would scrape and flush the poo but I never expected them to, and to be honest, I prefer when they don’t. It’s easy enough for me to plop it in the loo when I sort my son’s nappies out in the evening and when they rinse the nappies it just makes the bag heavier for me to carry.

Even though our centre supplies cloth nappies, I always felt like my son’s poo nappies were my responsibility to deal with.

Occasionally we would end up with a random nappy that belonged to someone else but in nearly a year it’s only happened twice, maybe three times at the most.

We are so grateful to have a centre that not only supports us on our cloth journey but encourages other families as well.