About

What is Cloth Diapers for Beginners About?

Cloth Diapers for Beginners is about making cloth diapering easy and accessible for parents and caregivers who don’t know where to start.

Back Then

Back when cloth diapers were the only option, the trope “it takes a village to raise a child” was taking hold. Every baby had a community of grandmothers, aunts, sisters, church members, neighbours, and others around them, showing their parents the ropes as they went. Cloth diaper basics were passed down as a matter of course, and questions could be quickly answered by the nearest helper. 

Today

In general, our parenting villages are much smaller than they used to be. When considering new options, like cloth diapers, most of us turn online for answers. There are a thousand questions that come up when researching cloth diapers for the first time. For each one of those questions, you’re going to find a dozen different answers online, which is confusing and misleading. 

Right Now

Over the past seven years Cloth Diapers for Beginners has grown, filling the knowledge and support gap for those of us who don’t have an in-person cloth diapering community around them. 

This website, its accompanying YouTube channel, the Cloth Diapers for Beginners Wash & Care Handbook, and The Cloth Diapers for Beginners community of over 75,000 cloth diaper parents (and growing, fast) is there when you just need simple, reliable answers when questions and problems come up, as they always do. 

Our combined experience and commitment to only passing along truthful and sourced information is here to help you figure this whole cloth diaper thing out and make the whole experience a meaningful one for you and your baby.

How Did Cloth Diapers for Beginners Start?

April Duffy, Founder

Cloth Diapers for Beginners is a resource run by me, April Duffy (also known online as thewriteDuffy). 

When pregnant with my daughter in 2015, I knew I wanted the cost savings and environmental benefits of cloth diapers. I didn’t know anyone who had cloth diapered their own baby, but figured I would just buy some and follow the instructions, like every product you buy, right?

Nope! 

After looking in the big-box and baby stores in my neighborhood and finding nothing, I went online, typed in ‘best cloth diaper’ and within a few minutes I was completely lost and overwhelmed. There were a million options, many that didn’t really even look like diapers. Worse, practically none of the options were available offline; it was scary to think I would have to plop down a significant amount of cash (new cloth diapers are not cheap of course) and might not even get the right kind of diaper.

Then, I began reading the reams of articles about washing problems, all the products you can’t use with cloth diapers, leak problems, etc., and suddenly cloth diapering went from easy to downright exhausting!

Thankfully, being a journalist and publishing graduate, I began my research long before giving birth and had a head start on the long task of calculating costs and reviewing options.

Not only did I stick to my plan of using cloth diapers but I made an even bigger goal: to share what I was learning–the basics of cloth diapering–to others in a way that was simple, easy to understand, and also factual.

CDfB is Born!

April Duffy and Daughter

Fast forward seven years, through many diaper changes, potty training issues, and what must now be hundreds of thousands of conversations about the concerns of other newbies, and that goal is being realized.

Through this website, the YouTube Channel, the Cloth Diapers for Beginners Wash & Care Handbook, and the Cloth Diapers for Beginners Community, I now get to use what I’ve learned to help others.

I love what I do!

By experiencing first-hand how easy (and fun) cloth diapers can be, I developed a love for cloth diapers but that love is nothing compared to seeing others succeed with their cloth diaper journey in the community.

I enjoy watching the love and commitment of those thousands of parents, grandparents, and guardians to the health and well-being of their babies even when it goes against the grain.

The love and respect the community shows each other is also a joy. You can feel it as you watch them help each other as they go through their cloth diaper journeys together. It fills my heart daily to watch that love grow, and I hope it will for you too if you choose to join us.

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