Wear and Tear

 I have been using my cloth diapers for over two and a half years, and for ten months I have been using them on two kiddos.  So this is 3 years of constant use, washing every few days, lots of pee and poop touching the diapers.  And although I love cloth diapers, all this use is hard on them.  If you had a shirt that you wore once every 3 days, and washed every time you wore it, it probably wouldn't stand up for 3 years.

So then why do I get so sad when my diapers start to wear out?  Plus, I can't forget that half of them were bought used.  When I think about all this it's actually amazing that they haven't completely fallen apart.

The diapers that I bought used, which the above two were part of, had the elastics replaced when I bought them.  Well those elastics have stretched out a bit over time.  They really needed replaced awhile ago again, but although it's not a difficult process, it's a time consuming one.  And ain't nobody got time for that.  Well now I'm trying to find the time.  The diaper on the left is before I changed the elastics and the diaper on the right is afterwards.  Look at the difference!  It makes me so happy when the legs are tight again and poor little Parker's pee won't run down his leg anymore!  (Cooper doesn't have this problem cause he has thunder thighs.)

So the process is just starting but I'm really hoping that over time I can get all of these elastics replaced.  The photo below (although blurry) is an elastic that I pulled out of the diaper, and a new elastic that I cut to the right size to put into the diaper.  What a difference!

So here's hoping that this prolongs the life of my diapers!