Stashing...

As my due date quickly approaches I find myself nesting, shopping, organizing, and stashing!  It's not a uniquely clever term, but with cloth diapering your collection of diapers and covers is called your stash.  I'm slowly collecting diapers two or so at a time when a deal comes around from one of my favorite online retailers.  I looked at what I had so far for our little girl and did some calculations to figure out what I will need to get a decent stash.

The general rule is you will need enough diapers to get you through two to three days of wear.  For our son who's just turned two, that can be roughly four to five diapers a day, so we can get away with having 15.  For a newborn, you can expect to change about 10-12 diapers a day.  That will mean eventually we should have about 30 diapers to fit her little bum.

My mom gave us a three month diaper service contract for our son, and the plan is to do the same for the next baby as well.  (Of course we used the service until our son was 18 months old, and we should have quit a lot earlier than that!)  Because our first few months are set, I'm not rushing out and buying all the prefolds I will eventually need.  But, we do need to supply our own covers.  Currently I'd say the ratio of diapers to covers is about three to one.  With a newborn it could be as bad as two to one.  So, I'm estimating I'll need about 15 or 16 covers to be prepared.

I've got a picture of my current stash below.  My diapers are on the left, and the covers are on the right.  from left to right, my stash (excluding diapers for the two year old) includes the following:

Top Row:
2 Sustainablebabyish fitteds - completely untested, will require Snappis as there is no applix or snaps
2 Bottombumpers - also untested
Package of disposable inserts (for poop disposal)
3 Gen-Y covers
4 Thirsties covers - one of my favorite covers I use now for our son
5 Bummis covers (3 Whisper Pant, 2 Super Whisper Wraps) - the whisper pant was the main cover we used for our son until I got "all fancy"

Bottom Row:
1 Ecobumz AIO - I have the larger size for our son and it is one of my favorite diapers at the moment
1 Bummis EasyFit - I also love this diaper, but it is the one that didn't make it through a night on it's own so it's more of a daytime diaper I'm guessing
1 Thirsties Fab Fitted - these are no longer being made.  Thirsties now makes them in "one-size" so I had to get the XS pink one while I still could
Snappi clips - a must have
Thirsties Fab Doublers - Use these in the boy colors currently, so the girl needed her own

All in all that means I have 12 covers as well as some AIOs I could fall back on if I had to.  Today I bought a couple more Ecobumz on Baby Half Off cause they were just $12 and I love them so much.  And like I said, our go to diaper is a standard prefold, so whatever I've accumulated through deals and gifts until the day we ditch the service will be supplemented by enough prefolds to make it between laundry nights.

By the way, I must say my stash looks pretty lame at the moment, but only because I have a strong will that is holding me back from going diaper crazy.  Check out some pictures I found on Flickr of some crazy collections of cloth diapers (it really can become an obsession easily):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/girlonthewire/2252120716/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bella_catalina/2539970830/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sophiaka/45721633/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dazed81/2676270674/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/biggrownupmommy/266356877/