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Cloth Nappies

Picking Your Nappy System

"Cloth nappies" sounds like one product. It's actually a handful of different systems, and most mums end up mixing more than one.

Cloth Nappies

Tell someone you're doing cloth and they'll picture one specific style, when really it's an umbrella term for several different systems that all just happen to be washable. Which one you land on (and most mums land on more than one) comes down to the entries below, not the label on the packaging.

Disposable Nappy

Even in a fully cloth house, a pack of disposables tends to live in the cupboard: for daycare drop-offs, the night the machine's broken, or a weekend away with nowhere to hang a nappy to dry. Going cloth doesn't mean going cloth every single time.

Fitted Nappy

Get a fitted nappy home and put it on without anything over the top, and you'll find out within one feed why the cover exists: it's the sponge, not the raincoat. Elastic around the legs and waist keeps it snug, but a separate waterproof layer is what actually stops the leak.

Pocket Nappies

Daycare centres tend to love these for one reason: an educator with six other kids to get to nap time doesn't want to be folding and stuffing anything. A pocket nappy's insert goes in once at home, before the bag's even packed, so putting it on is just like a disposable.

Nappy Cover

Where a fitted or terry towelling nappy is the sponge, the cover is the raincoat, a separate waterproof shell worn over the top to stop leaks reaching bub's clothes. Given a quick wipe, one cover can outlast two or three nappy changes before it needs a wash itself.

Terry Toweling Cloth

Ask why shops still stock what's essentially a giant square of towelling, and the answer is it does more than wrap around a bum: burp cloth, spew rag, emergency change mat cover. As a nappy it takes some folding know-how, which makes it the pick of mums who watched a grandmother do it first.

What Goes Inside (and On)

Insert, booster, liner: three different jobs that get used interchangeably online. Mixing them up is the fastest way to end up with either a soggy nappy or an unnecessarily bulky one.

Nappy Inserts

Every pocket nappy is really just a waterproof pouch until something's tucked inside it to do the actual absorbing. That something is the insert, usually microfibre, bamboo or hemp, and it's what determines how long bub can go between changes, not the outer shell.

Nappy Booster

Some bubs, and most toddlers overnight, soak straight through a standard insert well before the next change is due. A booster is the extra layer that goes on top of the insert rather than instead of it, and it's usually the first thing added once naps start stretching out.

Nappy Liners

Once solids start, a nappy without a liner turns wash day into a scraping job. A liner sits between skin and nappy, catching mess so it can be tipped straight into the toilet or bin, and it does nothing for absorbency at all.

Snappi Fastener

Folding a terry towelling flat is only half the job; it also has to stay folded through a nappy change and a car seat. A Snappi does that with an elastic T-shape and three sets of plastic teeth, gripping the fabric without a sharp point anywhere near bub.

Nappy Pins

Before Snappis, this was the only way to hold a folded flat together, and plenty of mums still reach for them out of habit. Modern nappy pins have a locking head so they can't spring open against bub's skin, but they're still metal, so they belong nowhere near a wriggling toddler's fingers.

Out and About

A dirty nappy away from home is a different problem to a dirty nappy at home: there's no bucket, no sink, sometimes not even a bin.

Nappy Wallet/Clutch

For a quick trip to the shops, hauling the whole nappy bag is overkill. A wallet or clutch holds one spare nappy, an insert and a couple of wipes zipped into something the size of a makeup bag, small enough to actually fit in a handbag instead of living in the boot.

Wet Bag

The soiled nappy still has to go somewhere between the change and the washing machine, and a plastic shopping bag knotted at the top isn't it. A wet bag zips shut, holds the smell and the damp in, and can go straight in the wash with everything inside it once you're home.

Baby Wipes

Standard baby wipes do the job at the change table, but the fragrance and lotion in some brands can build up on cloth nappies over repeated washes and start affecting how well they soak up wee. Worth checking the label if the nappies start smelling off despite a proper wash.

Dry Wipes

Some mums skip the residue question altogether and use dry wipes instead: plain cloth squares wetted with water from a bottle or spray as needed, then thrown in with the nappy wash rather than the bin. No lotion, no fragrance, nothing left behind to build up.

Nappy Rash Cream

Not every bub needs a rash cream in regular rotation, but most families keep one within reach for the bad weeks. The catch with cloth: zinc-based barrier creams can coat the fabric and stop it soaking up wee properly, so a liner between cream and nappy saves the absorbency.

Between Wash Days

Bucket, pod, caddy: three containers that sound interchangeable and do three completely different jobs, and only one of them holds anything dirty.

Nappy Bucket

This is where soiled nappies wait out the days between washes: a lidded bucket, kept dry rather than filled with soaking water the way older generations did it (soaking can wreck the elastic and waterproofing over time). It usually lives in the laundry, out of the way until wash day.

Nappy Pod

Where the bucket lives in the laundry, the pod lives at the change table itself, so a dirty nappy goes straight in without a trip down the hall first. Come wash day, the whole liner gets tipped into the machine and the pod's ready to start again.

Nappy Caddy

Don't confuse this with the pod above: a caddy holds the clean stuff, not the dirty. Fresh nappies, inserts, wipes and cream sit together in one basket at the change table, and the whole thing can be grabbed and carried if a change happens somewhere else in the house.

Nappy Sprayer

Before solids start, this one sits in the box unused. Once they do, a sprayer attached to the toilet's water line lets you blast the worst of it off the nappy directly into the bowl, so what lands in the bucket is a lot less than what came off bub.

The Actual Wash

Normal laundry habits don't survive contact with cloth nappies. Half of getting this system to work is what happens in the machine, not what's on bub.

Laundry Detergent

Most nappy smell complaints trace back to the same cause: not enough detergent, not the wrong nappy. Mums further down the track tend to measure against the machine's actual load size rather than the scoop line on a nappy brand's leaflet, and skip anything with added fragrance or softener.

Laundry Soak

For the days a nappy needs more than a quick rinse, a soak loosens what's set into the fabric before it hits the main wash. Reach for an oxygen-based one rather than chlorine bleach though: chlorine breaks down the elastic and waterproof layers over time, on covers especially.

Stain Remover

A direct spot treatment handles the stains a normal wash won't shift, though plenty of mums skip the bottle altogether and peg the nappies straight out in the sun instead. Something about UV light and stubborn stains just works, even the ones from bright orange pumpkin dinners.

Dryer Balls

Thrown into the dryer with a load of inserts, a few wool balls cut down drying time and stop everything felting into one solid lump. What they don't do is replace fabric softener, which is a good thing: softener coats the fibres and is exactly what kills absorbency.

When You Need Backup

For the weeks the system needs a hand, a few extra products exist to take some of the load off.

Nappy Bin

Even in a cloth house there are disposable days, and a disposable doesn't belong in the cloth bucket. A separate nappy bin, the kind that wraps and seals each one as it drops in, keeps the two waste streams apart, and you're not touching a lid with sticky hands to do it.

Nappy Bin Liners

Line the cloth bucket with a washable liner rather than a plastic bag, and wash day gets simpler: nappies and liner go into the machine together, no digging soggy fabric out of a bucket by hand. The bin from the entry above still takes its own disposable liners; that's a separate job.

Nappy Cleaning Service

For families who like the idea of cloth but not the idea of a bucket in the laundry, a nappy cleaning service picks up the dirty ones and drops off a clean, sanitised batch on a schedule, usually weekly. It exists, and for some mums it's the whole reason cloth stayed on the table at all.

Every product here solved a very specific cloth nappy problem for somebody. You won't know which problems are yours until wash day rolls around for real. Start small, do a load, and come back to this list once you know whether you're dealing with a heavy wetter, an overnight nappy that needs backup, or a toddler who fights every single change.

The nappies aren't going anywhere. Wash day will still be wash day either way.