www.incontinentsupport.org

After much deliberation, I recently switched to cloth prefolds. I was able to make the purchase of 8 heavy weight and 8 medium weight diapers and plastic pants to go with them. My household garbage is a fraction of what it was. I calculated it out. For the last 11 years since becoming incontinent and based off my monthly allowance of disposables...I used roughly 32,000 disposable diapers over the last decade+. Perspective. Thats a lot of money sitting in landfills. That’s a lot of trash! I use about 4 cloth diapers in a 24hr period due to their superior absorbency and wash my laundry every morning. So far, I’m glad I made the switch. They take a little more work but overall, it’s not bad.

If you’re wondering how I arrived at that number, the VA provided me with 240 abenas per month x 12 months = 2880 diapers per year x 11 years = 31,680. Ecologically speaking, I feel bad.

Some excellent points and perspective! I am starting to use cloth more often, especially around the house. For a while, I used cloth exclusively at night, but since the early morning fecal issues started, I use cloth over a disposable to make clean up easier. Even so, wearing cloth during waking hours would save me in the neighborhood of $7 to $10 a day. And seeing the numbers showing what goes in a landfill over time, makes it even more worthwhile.

Thanks for posting this! It gives me a renewed desire to transition more fully to cloth.

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"When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Look up the ingredients it takes to make a disposable diaper. That’ll make you feel worse. Dioxin is a severe known carcinogen and is one of the ingredients in disposable diapers. I’m not so naive to say it’s impossible that that doesn’t absorb into the skin in the groin region. That scares me enough.

Wow! Those are shocking numbers. I noticed some have posted that they use cloth OVER disposable. Can someone give perspective about how that works or why?
I deal with fecal and urine incontinence. I like the idea of cloth but I am reluctant due to the size and discretion of a cloth diaper. I am in Canada and I can’t find where to buy and ship plastic pants and cloth diapers. It would be so nice to have continence advisors that could help with fit and where to buy and how to dress etc.

I use angelfluff diapers. I took measurements of my dimensions at their instruction and gave them the numbers. I told them I was both urine and fecal incontinent and that my incontinence was very heavy. They recommended diapers based off my needs and also advised on plastic pants. They have been working well. They are bulky though. I also trifold a flat diaper and lay it in the middle providing even more protection. I never leak with this. I have to be honest and say that I am more concerned with not leaking on my clothes or leaving a mess in a public space than trying to make sure no one sees. I try to be as discreet as possible in public but there is some sacrifice. I just do the best I can. I also don’t understand using a cloth diaper over a disposable. My cloth diapers are absorbent enough I have no use for such a thing. The beauty of cloth is if you need more protection, you can just add and fold more layers. As far as Canadian companies, I know Kins is in British Columbia. I’ve bought from them in the past and just paid the exchange rate. It wasn’t bad.

For those of you that wear cloth diapers and can use a sewing machine, you can make plastic pants for about 50 cents. I have done just that with a Publix trash bag and some elastic. If anyone is interested let me know.

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RetiredRN

https://rearz.ca/incontinence/washable-diapers/


https://rearz.ca/incontinence/diaper-covers/


Have you tried this source?

They are Canadian. (Cambridge, Ontario)

Check out B4NS.com. They are located in Canada and carry premium diapers and high quality Suprima plastic pants.

I’m SO GLAD to hear of others praising and going to cloth!! If managed correctly, cloth has ‘many’ advantages over disposable diapers.
Funny in that over the years, I felt like the black sheep compared to most others I know that had IC issues. They all generally used disposable products and downplayed the use of cloth, mostly due to cleaning and bulk. Many of them now tell me that they use cloth at night and some during the day. I’d use them exclusively but disposable diapers definitely have a place in my management.
Interestingly, most that I talk to about the advantages of cloth site 1. leakage, 2. comfort, and 3. cost as the advantages. Few site land fill issues, but YES, that’s a huge advantage as well! It’s very flat here where I live, but there are a few very high hills in the area, comprised of garbage and trash covered by dirt and thick green grass!

A folded cloth insert inside of a quality pull-up works great for me at night. I'm a side sleeper and even super premium diapers would leak from time to time. Once I started using the cloth inserts the leaks stopped. One of the reasons the cloth inserts work so well for me is that I have a fairly small bladder and my voids are relatively small. I also have very inconsistent night wettings, sometimes it's as few as once a month, other times it's as much a 8+ times a month. I never know when it will happen so I have to be well protected every night. Another plus is that since the cloths are relatively small (28" x28") I can always just rinse them out in the sink, hang to dry, and then put them in the hamper to wait for the next wash. When I travel it's also a big plus as I can either rinse and dry, or if that's not an option, I can simply bag them and throw them away as they cost under a dollar a piece.