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| Cute sundresses & matching diapers are the way to go! |
Our last family visit to Disney World was a couple months ago and we had a blast staying in a vacation home with my friend and her family. I did a quick review of the property and staying off-site in a vacation home as a guest author on DisneyGals.com.
Of course, we continued to cloth diaper our littlest family member, who was celebrating her first birthday. Using cloth was tons easier at a rental home because we had a washer and dryer right there. We brought our own detergent, EcoNuts, which was used for all of our laundry. The biggest advantage here was not having to trek across a resort to laundry facilities and wait for the machines to finish. The washer and dryer were available, whenever we were. Late night/early morning washing was a breeze.
When we stay on-site, I can pretty much say with 100% certainty what kind of washer we will get; a top loader with limited cycle options. Obviously, the appliances vary at every vacation home. Be sure you ask whether or not you have a standard washer, an HE machine, front loading or top loading washer as you will have to change your wash routine accordingly. It is much easier to research that online before leaving so you don't have to deal with tweaking your normal routine on vacation. There was laundry soap available for use, but none were cloth diaper friendly detergents. I love EcoNuts. They are compact, inexpensive and work great in all machine types, so the only thing I had to change was washer settings on the HE machine to accommodate for less water in the standard cycle. (Run a pre-wash or rinse, with no spin to make the load heavier, causing more water output in the wash cycle.)
We did do a few things differently while at the parks. Since we were driving a rental car, we took an extra wet bag with us to leave in the car. Halfway through the day, we returned to the car for a clean wet bag, and tossed the filled one in the trunk to prevent walking around with a heavy bag all day. If you don't already have one, invest in a good wet bag. It is a must have when travelling with cloth. The two we traveled with were the medium sized Planet Wise bags, and a large hanging bag that we kept in the bathroom at the vacation home. We use AI2s and pocket diapers. This time, we took diaper liners with us to easily dump the contents of dirty diapers. Babies that are exclusively breast fed may not need liners, but our solid food lovin' baby needed them, especially in the absence of a diaper sprayer. Liners and diaper contents can be easily flushed down the toilet after changing baby at any of the very plentiful changing stations in the bathrooms or Baby Care Centers.
Fewer diapers were taken on this trip since we had washing facilities so close. The last few trips, I've packed what I need for 2.5 days; about 18-20 diapers. This time, I only packed 12-15. We were there for just over a week and I washed every other day.
The other benefit of staying in a vacation home was that I had the entire pool area to sun diapers. Sunning isn't going to happen at a Value resort, possibly at a Moderate or Deluxe if you have a balcony. I was a lot less diligent about making sure all of our diapers were out of the washer and dryer on this trip. The friends we stayed with left after we did, and brought a few things we left at near the pool and in the dryer back with them when they came home. Don't follow my poor example on this. Be sure you check & triple check all areas before you leave to make sure nothing is left behind. A good diaper stash is too hard to build to leave things behind on vacation.
Don't give up your fluff just because you are on vacation. Whether staying on-site or off, in a rental home or hotel, you can continue to enjoy the benefits of cloth diapers on vacation.
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