Funny Things Cloth Diaper Moms Do

When you first start dipping your toes into the wonderful world of cloth diapering, you may feel a bit disoriented. Heck, when you first start researching baby gear things can get really weird, really fast. As soon as baby arrives, bowel movements become a frequent topic of conversation, and age is counted in days or months. Moms who cloth diaper and who participate in the unexpectedly active and decidedly wonderful online cloth-diapering community are a subset of parents with behaviours even more peculiar to the uninitiated than those of your average mama bear.

10 Funny Things Cloth-Diapering Moms Do

1- Speak in code. If you lurk in a cloth diaper group on Facebook, you may question your grasp of the English language. There’s a lot of shorthand going on, and you may feel like the only one who doesn’t understand the code! Also, stripping. A lot of moms are stripping.

2- Create an ISO inventory. Just like Pokémon, when it comes to cloth diapers, some mamas just gotta catch ’em all! “ISO” means “in search of,” and some go to great lengths and great expense to complete their collection. I know many operate with spreadsheets, while others prefer a visual to track their stash.

Thanks to Susan (Funky Fluff), Heather (Glow Bug), Hilary (AppleCheeks) and Britney (Blueberry) for sharing their charts!

3- Plan a “line up” of diapers to match the day’s outfit. It may just be on special occasions, or it may be every day, but cloth diapering mamas love to get all matchy matchy. Finding a shirt that matches a diaper colour or print in your stash is super exciting! Celebrating the 4^th of July with multiple outfits and coordinating diapers? Amazing! Preparing for a road trip with 00 AppleCheeks and matching Mini Zips? Ashe for the win!

Thanks to Ashe (AppleCheeks and Mini Zips), (4^th of July), Janice (football) and Cari (gingham dress).

See all the submissions and add yours here.

4- Make or receive cloth diaper “jerky.” Oh yes, in the parlance of moms used to sending and receiving cloth diapers packed into vacuum-sealed bags, behold the coveted-and-less-expensive-to-ship cloth diaper jerky!

Thanks to Annie, Tania and Sophie for their jerky shots and Marley’s man for sharing his enthusiasm for fluff mail!

See all the submissions and add yours here.

5- Fangirl over cloth diaper celebrities. Brand owners and industry insiders are kind of a big deal if you’re bigtime into cloth diapering. I was pretty psyched to meet Amy from AppleCheeks at a recent event in Calgary, not to mention the Baby Guy NYC!

Thanks to Casey for sharing her picture with Mr. Spray Pal (after he signed her Men of the Baby Industry Calendar) and Tabitha for her picture with Smart Bottoms owner, Christy.

See all the submissions and add yours here.

6- Take stash shots. It takes commitment to get a good stash shot, otherwise known as a picture of all the diapers you own. You’ve got to time your laundry just right, decide which diaper’s not going to make the shot since it’s in use, decide if you’re going to arrange by brand or colour …

Thanks to Bailey, Carli, Chantal, Nina, Erika and The Monarch Mommy for sharing their stash shots!

See all the submissions and add yours here.

7- Discuss bum placement. What, you may ask, is bum placement? Well it would be the way in which a print appears on the bum of a diaper. It is, of course, of the utmost importance. What makes for a perfect “bum” is of course somewhat subjective, but certainly there’s a lot of weight placed upon whether or not the print is the right way up on the bum and centred. If a print features multiple graphics, having them all appear in perfect harmony on the bum makes for a more desirable diaper!

Thanks to (left to right) Stefanie at TheMonarchMommy.com, Alyssa, Kait, Nancy, Amy, Kait (again) and Sarah!

See all the submissions and add yours here.

8- Attend release parties. A release party is an online happening in which a brand will reveal a new colour or print to eagerly awaiting fans. There are giveaways, lots of excitement, and you don’t have to get out of your pajamas to participate! I love planning release parties for Funky Fluff, and I even wrote a post about why I think release parties matter.

 9- Get excited about HTF prints or colours. HTF? That stands for “hard to find.” And what, you may ask, is a HTF diaper? Well, it’s a diaper print or colour that has been retired (fancy word for discontinued) and is now impossible to find at a retailer. It’s kind of like the Beanie Babies craze of the ’90s … but with diapers. Sometimes, you’ll see coveted HTF prints being sold for hundreds, yes, hundreds of dollars. USED! My personal preference for such prints is to treasure them, use them and then find them a new home. (Although it is tempting to try to make a tidy profit!)

Thanks to Bailey for sharing her SmartBottoms Emeron, Lakin for her BumGenius Jules, Sarah for her AppleCheeks Sailor Blue and Kait for her Best Bottom Spooky.

See all the submissions and add yours here.

 10- Sport swag promoting their favourite brand. Our kids can’t be the only ones having all the fun in cute cloth diapers! Nope, we mamas need some swag for ourselves! From bumper stickers to coffee cups, t-shirts to key chains, there are lots of awesome ways to wear or display our love of cloth diapers loud and proud!

Thanks to Smart Bottoms fan Tabitha, AppleCheeks aficionado Megan, and Bambino Mio fan Kristin, for sharing their goodies!

 

So, how many of these funny things do you do, cloth-diapering mama?

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