QUESTION: Can you travel with cloth diapers?
ANSWER: Speaking from experience, YES!
As long as you have laundry facilities available while you are away from home, it is completely reasonable to cloth diaper on the road and flying. If you are taking a 2-3 day trip without laundry facilities and have enough diapers I say go for it!
We have used cloth diapers on 2 trips to Disney World and two trips from Georgia to New England to visit family (both driving and flying).
Both times we drove to Disney World which takes us about 8 hours. I just make sure I put Allie in nap-worthy diapers in the car since she will nap sporadically and tends to drink a lot in the car.
The first time was very easy because we had a washer/dryer in our suite. It was really no different then being at home!
During our last trip over Thanksgiving I had to use the hotel's laundry center. This wasn't as convenient, but not a burden by any means. I only ran into one problem in the laundry facility dryer temperature (see below).
When we travel to some place where we have direct access to a washer (in the house, or inside the hotel room) I use a
Doorknob Diaper Pail since it is perfect for travel. Otherwise I load up wet bags and then tote them inside the doorknob pail or a
Wahmies Pail Liner when I am ready to wash.
Take plenty of
wet bags! These are great for storing the diapers each
day. I would go to the theme parks with a clean bag. Once we went back to the hotel I would use that bag to store any diapers I changed while we were in the room and just stuffed it to the max! Then, I would grab a new bag for our next outing. By the time I washed diapers I had 2 large wet bags and 3 medium size wet bags jam packed with diapers and wipes.
We have also survived 2-3 day drives from Georgia to New England in cloth. I do the same thing with the wet bags, but put the wet bags right into a pail liner so they are not floating all over the car. I try to wash once on the road and wash day 2 and 3 diapers upon arrival.
I traveled alone by plane with Connor and Allie over Spring Break [insert panic smiley]. Once again, we used cloth
the entire trip. Even with the first day being VERY long, we did just fine with the cloth diapers. Between the drive to Atlanta, crazy delays, the flight and drive from Boston to Cape Cod we were on the go for 12 hours and 45 minutes! Again, I was using nap worthy diapers on Allie. I also put her in a night time diaper before the drive to Cape Cod since it was so late I knew she would fall asleep.
My carry-on was packed to the brim with my laptop, 6-8 diapers diapers, wet bags, change of clothing and miscellaneous items! Connor had a backpack with his essentials and we all managed to survive the trip without incident! Allie's cloth diaper suitcase had about 24 diapers, the wipes, doorknob pail, wipes solution (I forgot their bath wash so I used Baby Bum Drop which worked out great!), changing pads, and wet bags! This is the before pictures! It didn't get repacked nearly as neat!
I washed every 2-3 days of our trip. Again, I brought my own detergent and plenty of wet bags.
We didn't have any problems and I was so glad to have Allie in her cloth diapers the entire trip.
WARNING: If you are using public laundry facilities you may NOT want to use the highest heat on the dryers. Being in a hurry to wash the diapers I put everything into the dryer at Shade of Green during our November trip. I checked it a few times so I could get back to the room and found the temperature to be WAY hotter than my dryer at home. I later found that a couple snap diapers that became damaged in the high heat for some reason ~ the snaps don't quite snap into tightly into place anymore. :(
I'll be sure to update in June after we make the 2700 mile drive from Georgia to Washington State...in cloth!
