Sunday, June 13, 2010

Review: Diaper Trials




Back in February, I decided to try out cloth diapering and ordered a trial set from cutecaboose.com. There are lots of trials from lots of companies available but I chose this one because initial shipping was free, there was good variety, and I'd get a discount if I wanted to order more. I made sure their prices were decent so buying more from there made sense and also found a coupon code for another 5% off.

In retrospect, I would have gotten the trial from a better known vendor, I think. It took several days to get the package in the mail and overall, they didn't seem organized. Waiting 2 weeks to be able to start cloth diapering took a lot out of my momentum. This was fine though.



Anyway, I received:
  • 2 Prefolds
  • 1 Thirsties Diaper Cover
  • 1 Fuzzibunz Perfect Fit Pocket Diaper + MF Inserts
  • 1 bumGenius 3.0 One Size Cloth Diaper + MF inserts
  • 1 bumGenius All in One Diaper
  • 1 Thirsties Fab Fitted Cloth Diaper
  • 1 Happy Heiny One Size Pocket Diaper + MF Inserts
  • 1 Snappi
  • 1 The Natural Baby Co. Wet Bag
  • 1 cloth wipe

By this time, I'd also purchased
  • 2 Sposoeasy all-in-ones
  • 1 grobaby system
    1 bumGenius one size cloth diaper (no inserts because I got it from ebay and didn't know I should ask about that)



This was a good set to start with. There was a lot of variety and I was very surprised about what I liked and didn't like. Bottom line: The only diaper that I liked enough to keep from my trial set was the bumGenius all-in-one.

I also figured I could probably use more prefolds and I'd need a wet bag so given that I'd get a discount for keeping the set and they'd waive the trial fee, I considered trying to resell the diapers instead of returning them. If I could sell them for a little over 50% of the original cost (plus shipping), then I'd basically break even and then I'd get the 20% discount on future purchases. I wasn't able to resell them in about a week so I decided to send it all back.

Even though I was interested in the bumGenius all-in-one, there was a coupon out at that time for a free BG AIO with the purchase of $10 in their other products. This basically meant I could buy one and get one free if I could get my hands on a coupon. Since I knew I could get at least one from a friend who got Pregnancy and Newborn magazine, it didn't make sense to keep one diaper when I could get two for the same price.

Anyway, I ended up returning the whole thing so it cost me $11 in return shipping plus the $10 trial fee. Oh, and the wipe was just tossed in so I kept it. Overall, not a bad cost for about 2-3 weeks of diapers. (It was 3 weeks minus shipping time.) It was almost exactly the same as what we were spending on disposables at the time ($1/day) plus the cost/time of washing every 36 hours. Oh, and initially all the diapers have to be prepped so they were washed several times in a row before they could be used. It was a lot of washing. I just used our normal detergent (Tide Free) so that didn't seem like additional cost and I was excited enough about the new endeavor that the time was ok. (This happened to coincide with me going on strike from doing my husband's laundry so it actually wasn't much extra laundry. It wasn't related at all, but good timing!)

I highly recommend a trial set to anyone who is considering cloth diapering. In fact, I suggest you find a couple of places to get trials from and schedule them back to back or overlapping. It'll cost a little bit more overall, but I would have liked more time to try them out and more variety. Also, once I decided I really didn't like a certain type, I was stuck still using it or having to do laundry even more often.

Diaper Trial: A

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