All About Cloth Nappies

With both my children there was one shining light which helped me feel as if I was achieving something special, whilst pinned under a breast-feeding baby unable to do much else. That something was cloth nappies.

Introduced by a friend of a friend, I started using cloth when my eldest was 12 weeks old, and never looked back. She wore them until she potty trained at 2 and a bit, and our youngest wore them from when her very first nappy went on in the maternity ward. We saved about 8,000 disposable nappies going to landfill and about £1200 in hard cash!

Many people worry that cloth will be hard work, smelly, or dirty. I hear you mamas…poop is not something any of us wants to embrace! But I can honestly say it is none of those things. All babies come with their fair share of the brown (and yellow) sticky stuff. With cloth the main difference is you pop it down the loo rather than into your bin. So much more hygienic ☺️ And yes, there’s more washing…but on average only one extra load a week - you stick the nappies in with the baby clothes you’re inevitably washing in any case.

Plus, for me, it was something positive and enjoyable at a time in my life when in most other things I had no clue what I was doing. It always made me feel that I was doing my best to protect the planet which takes me to my happy place. And I know of other mums for whom using cloth has helped them battle post-natal depression both through having something positive to focus on, and because of the incredible on (and off) line community of supportive cloth nappy mums.

This week is meant to be Real Nappy Week 2025 - I first wrote this blog in Real Nappy Week 2020. And I feel exactly the same now as I did then. If you’re on the fence, why not give it a try?

Also, we’ve created some fab infographics all about cloth. We’d love it if you’d download them (right click and save image) to use, and share them far and wide to help spread the word about the wonder of cloth. 👇🏻👇🏼👇🏽👇🏾👇🏿