Our Top 10 Picks for a Cloth Diaper Baby Registry

First, let us ​say,​ “Congratulations!” This is such an exciting time, and we’re excited that you’re here. You may have heard some chatter in cloth diapering groups about families being less than supportive of the decision to use cloth, or just not knowing what to buy. The good news is that there is a huge community that knows how easy it really is, and we’re here to help.

Often times family and friends just don’t realize how different cloth is these days: how well it works, how easy it is, etc. By setting up a registry you can gently nudge them in the right direction. While there are a great many cloth diaper retailers that we love, that may not be the easiest way to get to the most stuck-in-the-mud family members. Amazon.com is actually the #1 marketplace and not only do they have a great baby registry option, they also carry a wide range of cloth diapers and accessories. BabyList is another fabulous registry website which will allow you to register for any of the items below from any online retailer! We’ve compiled a short list to help show how easy cloth is, while giving helpful solutions that family members may actually be interested in buying as shower gifts.

Here are our top picks to help you get started: 

Spray Pal & Sprayer Bundle

• The first objection you may hear is about sanitation and having to deal with poopy diapers. Ease their worries with the original Spray Pal spray shield and cloth diaper sprayer. Messes will never be a worry with these two around!

Planetwise Wetbag & Pail Liner

• Wet pails for cloth diapers are dated and potentially unsafe to both baby and your diapers — and admitted we’re kind of grossed out by them too. Planetwise wetbags and pail liners are known for their wide assortment of fun prints to match any taste, and they help make cloth diapering a breeze at home and away.

GroVia Magic Stick

• One big change with cloth diapers is the type of diaper creams allowed to be use (or risk making a mess of your diapers). Traditional creams provide wetness protection and can quickly leave residues on diapers causing leaks, repelling, and even some pretty rank smells. GroVia Magic Stick is one of our absolute favorite tender bottom solutions. The ingredients are better for baby, and they're completely cloth diaper safe!

Osocozy Wipes

• You may not realize it yet, but you’ll *love* cloth wipes. They grab so more and clean better than any disposable wipe, and you’re already washing diapers so you might as well give them a try!

Thirsties All in One

• Available in one size and newborn, Thirsties All in One diapers are a favorite in this category. They are affordable and come in some lovely colors and prints, including our favorite “Ocean Life."

Rumparooz Diaper Cover

• Available in one size and newborn, Rumparooz covers are stylish and functional. Use with your favorite inserts, or put them over an old fashioned prefold!

Molly’s Suds Cloth Diaper Detergent

• There are lots of great detergents that are safe for cloth diapers, but Molly’s Suds is one of our personal favorites. This detergent is specially formulated for baby and your diapers.

Smart Sheep Dryer Balls

• Premium wool dryer balls will soften your laundry without the harsh chemicals found in traditional softeners — plus they can drastically decrease dry time. What’s not to love?

Line Drying Octopus

• “Line” dry your diaper covers anywhere with this adorable octopus. Line drying (vs) machine can help extend the life of your covers — especially if you favor hook & loop closures.

Bamboobies

• So these may not be for baby’s bum, but they are cloth and washable… and they rock! You’ll love these absorbent but discrete breast pads.

Have a tip or favorite item that we've missed? Let us know below!

How to do a Loop Giveaway on Periscope

Alright, so I've been using Periscope for approximately 2 weeks now, and as I've mentioned, I'm hooked. When I start experimenting with a new social media platform, I like to think outside the box and come up with fun ways to engage our followers. Periscope is very engaging by nature, so then I started to think of fun ways we could use this for a giveaway!

Here's what I'm thinking:

We'll loop through a few different brands and each brand will have a specific question they plan to ask during their broadcast. The people who tune in live will be able to respond to the question with a comment, and then they can move on to the next brand's scope and answer the question there until they get to the end of the loop. When they've finished, they will go back to the host's broadcast to wait for the winner's names to be announced.

Things for the sponsoring brands to keep in mind:

You'll probably want to write your question down on a sheet of paper to hold up to the camera so that you don't have to keep repeating it as new people enter your broadcast. You can talk about other things as people enter, like maybe your latest products or whatever. Or you can just interact with people as they comment. People love the engagement :)

Things for viewers to keep in mind:

The sponsoring brands will only be live for a limited amount of time, so you'll want to make sure you head to each account and follow them/comment before time runs out so you have more chances to win. It will probably be easiest if you follow them all ahead of time. The host (look for the title that says START HERE) will stay live after the others sign off to choose their winners, so once you are finished you can head that way to wait and hear who has won. The sponsoring brands are being VERY generous with their prizes, so be sure to show them all some love by tapping your screen to make those hearts FLY!

We'll be doing a test run (without the prizes, just to practice) tonight at 7pm Eastern/ 4pm Pacific, so be sure to tune in and learn along with us! Let us know if you have any questions below, and we'll see you there!

Seriously addicted to Periscope!

Ok, you guys. It's almost starting to look like we are sponsored by Periscope around here, but I assure you we're not. We just REALLY love it. Like a lot. (Although, if Periscope is reading this, we are TOTALLY open for sponsorship opportunities, LOL!)

This new platform, which is owned by Twitter, was introduced to me by a networking group I'm in on Facebook (see how the world of social media is so intertwined??) and I've been hooked ever since I finally caved and downloaded the app on my iPhone. It was super easy to set up an account because it just connected everything through my Twitter account. I was able to find the people I already follow on Twitter and follow them, then I just waited for the magic to happen.

I highly recommend spending a little bit of time exploring the app when you first get it installed. It's fascinating, really. I went to the map page and right away I could see little red dots with numbers indicating people who were live periscoping around the world. It's pretty easy to figure out which a random spammers or 12 year olds and which might actually be worth popping into. I got to watch the Disneyland and Sea World fireworks shows live from my bed, and the other night I even got to see 311 perform live in Austin from my home in Southern California! (Which begs the question if there will be certain copyright and piracy block put in place eventually, but...yeah.) Periscope is so new to the scene that I think there will still be a lot of kinks to work out as they grow, but mark my words, I think this will be the hot new social media platform of the future!

Now, the big question for us is: How can we use Periscope to #makeclothmainstream? Right now we are still in the exploration stage, but I see great things coming soon...like live cloth diapering 101 classes, Spray Pal demos dealing with specific styles of diapers, etc. We even did a Periscope Take Over on Green Child Magazine's channel which was super fun and got them over 11,000 hearts!! I'm basically just playing around with the app and figuring out the ins and outs of how it works at this point, but I LOVE asking you guys questions on there and seeing what works for you. Remember when I was still trying to figure out Twitter?? Spray Pal fans are so helpful and knowledgeable...I know we can figure out this Periscope thing together, too!

If you haven't downloaded the app yet, I really think you should! Be sure to follow @spraypal so we can connect! We like to talk cloth diapers, small business, social media, and we'll live broadcast on our travels! We're open to suggestions, too! What would you like to see on the Spray Pal Periscope channel?? Leave us a comment below to let us know!

Spray Pal + Gerber Childrenswear HUGE Giveaway!

You guys, I'm seriously about to become the Oprah of cloth diapers. We're doing something completely different around here and it's going to be SO MUCH FUN. Oh, and did I mention I'll be giving away some cloth diapers? How many, you ask? Well. Let me tell you. 60. Yes, you read that right. Six - ZERO. S-I-X-T-Y cloth diapers. See? We're going Oprah style all up in here! YOU get a cloth diaper, and YOU get a cloth diaper! And your friend gets a cloth diaper, too!

So, how's this going to work? Well, there's one GRAND PRIZE. That's the one you see below on the Rafflecopter. The Grand Prize winner will receive a Spray Pal diaper sprayer + splatter shield plus 10 Gerber AIOs. It's the perfect starter kit for anyone wanting to get started with cloth diapers (or for those currently using cloth who want to add a little variety and EASY spraying to their stash)! Anyone who enters the rafflecopter and has a chance to win, the rafflecopter widget will give us a random name at the end and we'll verify that you've completed the entry and then you'll get an email from yours truly. That's it!

Now, what's so different about that, you ask?? Well you may have noticed I mentioned we were giving away 60 diapers. The grand prize contains 10 of those, but what about the other 50?! That's a pretty significant number of diapers to be given away, right? Here's what we're going to do:

Throughout the week of this giveaway, you'll want to be paying VERY close attention to the Spray Pal and Gerber Childrenswear Facebook and Instagram accounts because that's where the magic will happen. We'll randomly post a SURPRISE FLASH GIVEAWAY on one of the accounts. You never know when or where, but here's a PRO TIP: If you visit those four spaces on social media and set the notifications to "on" you'll be ahead of the game. Both Facebook and Instagram will send you a notification within the app when we post so you won't miss a beat!

The FLASH GIVEAWAYS will be quick and easy...and we'll be giving away diapers in each one! Sometimes it might be one diaper, sometimes it might be a few, sometimes it might be one for you and one for a friend. That's the fun of it, you'll not know in advance what to expect, but you'll have TONS of chances to win yourself some new fluff!

Are you ready for some more great news? Even if you don't win the flash giveaways, you'll get 5 bonus entries on the rafflecopter form for the Grand Prize below just for playing! See why it pays to pay attention? After the flash giveaway ends, just click back over here and grab those bonus entries by telling us where you played. EASY, right? We're huge fans of easy around here. ;)

So let us know what you think in the comments! Are you as excited as I am?!

The contest will open for entries starting on Monday, July 13, 2015 at midnight pacific time! GOOD LUCK!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

San Antonio Pets Alive and Spray Pal are teaming up!

A few weeks ago this Kleenex commercial was released on Facebook, and one of my friends immediately sent me the link. She gets me. Of course I would LOVE an adorable ad that combines to of my favorite things...dogs and cloth diapers.

I immediately shared this on the Spray Pal Facebook page because what better way to #makeclothmainstream? It turned out that a few of our fans had actually adopted pets from San Antonio Pets Alive and mentioned that their dogs, too, were using cloth diapers! Which made me think back to a few months ago when we sent Heather B. Armstrong of dooce.com fame a Spray Pal diaper sprayer and splatter shield for her beloved Chuck (who I was so sad to read had passed last night). Chuck also wore cloth diapers and was an inspiration to many adoptive pet parents and humans in general.

Between Chance and Chuck I came to the realization that these amazing pets and their owners can benefit from the awesomeness of cloth as much as our babes can! That's what inspired me to reach out to San Antonio Pets Alive to see if we could send them a Spray Pal diaper sprayer and shield to make their cloth diapering journey easier for them. And then we decided to work on something BIG together. This collaboration is two fold:

1) We will raise awareness for no kill pet shelters like San Antonio Pets Alive and encourage people to adopt these loving animals and give them a second chance.

2) We will promote the idea of reusable cloth diapers as a viable option for ANYONE needing diapers and help spread the #makeclothmainstream love! We'll also promote the WAHM cloth diaper makers who can recycle their fabric scraps and custom make diapers for dogs.

It's a win-win-win, right?

So, are you interested to know how you can help? GREAT! We were hoping you'd ask! ;)

If you are a WAHM cloth diaper maker and you're interested in donating your time and materials (can be recycled scraps) to make some simple, but custom cloth diapers to be used on dogs of various sizes, please email me at jen@spray-pal.com.

If you are interested in supporting the mission of the good people at San Antonio Pets Alive, you can make a direct donation here: http://www.sanantoniopetsalive.org/donate/

Additionally, if you'd like to help BIG with the smallest of gestures, just SHARE this post and help us spread the word!! As always, THANK YOU for helping to #makeclothmainstream!

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

In our mission to #makeclothmainstream, I've been doing a lot of research on Instagram and how to use this social media platform to its full potential. In fact, many of the workshops I attended at Alt Summit last month were directly related to this topic. I heard so many experts in the industry encouraging me to make my photos beautiful and inspiring. I couldn't help but think to myself, "How exactly should I make a poop splatter shield look beautiful?!" It seemed like quite a daunting task. That is, until I looked through the #spraypal hashtag and realized a few different Instagram accounts were able to do it effortlessly and flawlessly. Check out the posts below and let me know if you've ever seen a more beautiful poop splatter shield!

To purchase one of your own (these make a great baby shower gift for anyone planning on cloth diapering their babes) you can head to our website for free shipping over $25 in the US! We also carry a variety of cloth diapers from brands like GroVia, Sloomb, Happy Heiny, Lalabye Baby, plus wetbags, reusable pads and other necessities for cloth diapering!

www.spray-pal.com

A photo posted by Ivanna Cardenas (@ivicardenas) on Apr 15, 2015 at 4:37pm PDT

A photo posted by Swell Forever (@swellforever) on Jun 25, 2015 at 8:51pm PDT

A photo posted by tay & tribe (@dirtydiaperdiaries) on Jul 2, 2015 at 12:17pm PDT

Thank you to @spraypal for making this job 99% easier!!!!! #clothdiaper #clothdiapering #spraypal

A photo posted by GetFITKatie (@getfitkatie) on May 4, 2015 at 3:25pm PDT

A photo posted by @push_pack on Mar 29, 2015 at 4:13pm PDT

A photo posted by Itty Bitty Birth Services (@ittybittybirthservices) on Jun 8, 2014 at 11:57pm PDT

A photo posted by Kari (@kari_rae) on May 1, 2014 at 4:46pm PDT

A photo posted by Kim Rosas (@kim_rosas) on Mar 31, 2015 at 12:38pm PDT

A photo posted by 👜 Maggie (@maxwell_designs) on Oct 28, 2014 at 6:26pm PDT

If you'd like to get your hands on the most gorgeous piece of poop protection on the market, head to our website (www.spray-pal.com) and click "Shop" to order online or check out the "Retailers" tab to see if there's a cloth diaper retailer near you that carries our products! The Spray Pal diaper sprayer and splatter shield make the perfect baby shower gift for any mom planning to use cloth diapers, too!

What Does a Spray Pal have to do with Cloth Pads?

Why, I'm so happy you asked! The Spray Pal shield is so amazingly versatile that you really can use it for ANYTHING you want to pre-rinse! But today, we're going to focus our attention on reusable cloth pads. Bear with me as I make this connection for you. ;)

Many moms who get hooked on cloth diapers often dread the day their kids learn to use the potty. This seems odd to those outside of our cloth community, but most fluff loving moms can relate. Gone will be the days of matching outfits to the cute diapers you waited patiently to score on release days. No longer will you be able to show off your child's cute fluff at play dates.  What will you talk about at your next family gathering??

I get it, believe me. I do.

But here's the good news! You don't have to stay completely cloth free forever! I'm here to tell you that I was one of these reluctant "crunchy moms" at first. Once you start switching over to the crunchy side, you'll find there's a natural progression. It starts with one or two lifestyle changes. The "Gateway Crunch" I'll call it. Sure, I loved breastfeeding and cloth diapering, but that seemed tame enough. But once you make those changes and realize how EASY they are, you start to wonder, "What was I so afraid of? Maybe I should start looking into xyz." We started looking into our grocery labels more closely. We switched to mostly organic food when possible. We started getting "Farm Fresh to You" boxes delivered. I MADE MY OWN DEODORANT. That was probably the moment my husband looked at me and said, "You've gone full crunchy now, haven't you."

Oh, but I hadn't. Not yet, anyways. Once I hit full crunchy in his eyes I felt I just HAD to find a way to take it one step further. And I did. And THIS change was literally the one that has been the easiest to stick with (aside from cloth diapers) and it's the one that has been the most immediate positive change for me. I ditched tampons and pads for a menstrual cup and cloth pads. Seriously. If you had asked me 5 years ago if I'd ever even consider using these things I probably would have crazy-laughed at you and asked you to leave my house. I was AFRAID. I thought it would hurt. I though cloth pads were SO GROSS. The thought of the whole thing was ridiculous! I could NEVER!!

Until I did. And now I know for a fact I will never do it any other way again. My only regret is that I didn't start sooner. It especially makes a whole lot of sense if you're already using cloth diapers. I pre-rinse my cloth pads using my diaper sprayer with the pad clipped into our Spray Pal shield. Then I drop it into the laundry bag. It could not be any easier. And the comfort!! Ladies, it's been years since I've worn one, but I'll never forget the uncomfortableness of a disposable pad. That's one of those memories that will never fade because it's just that awful. If that's a level 2 on a comfort scale of 1-10, then cloth pads are an 11. I'm not kidding. Have you ever bough a brand new cloth diaper and just nuzzled your face in it when you opened it because you can't get over how soft it is? Maybe you've uttered the words, "This thing is so soft, I wish they made these in adult sizes because I'd TOTALLY wear one!" You have? In that case I have two words for you: cloth pads. Seriously. Get some.

(PS - The Pink Lemonade cloth pads will launch on the Spray Pal website later today, July 2nd, with free shipping on orders over $25. Stay tuned on our Facebook page and keep those notifications turned on because we'll announce their release there first!)

If you're still on the fence, here's a chance for you to win EVERYTHING you'll need to #pamperyourperiod and get going with reusable menstrual products. Since Spray Pal is now carrying Pink Lemonade cloth pads, we've teamed up with them, Intimina, and Maxwell Designs for this great giveaway! Co-hosted by the ladies at Put a Cup in it, which is a great resource if you're looking into switching to a cup. You'll never look back once you do! Let us know if you make the switch, and good luck to all who enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway