On A Budget Hybrid Cloth Diapering

Many people who choose to cloth diaper, do so in hopes of saving some money. I had hopes of doing that when I first began and that's what attracted my attention to hybrid diapers. The idea was that I would save money by only having to get a certain amount of shells because I only had to change out the inserts and could reuse the shells.

I decided to purchase 7 GroVia shells with snap-in inserts and 7 Best Bottom covers with a few snap-in inserts.

They look like this:

GroVia Shell with Mesh interior and snaps for snap in inserts
The Shell is waterproof

GroVia Stay Dry Snap in insert and Booster pad
The insert is waterproofed on the backside.

Best Bottom Cover with PUL interior  and snaps for snap in inserts

Best Bottom medium and large snap-in inserts

I found that I wasn't very impressed by the cloth inserts, but really liked the GroVia disposable insert.

It looks like this:

GroVia Disposable Insert

The GroVia Shell with it's mesh interior and fleece top on it's Stay Dry cloth inserts wash out pretty nicely after getting dirty, but I found that I had to change the shell often enough that I didn't feel it was worth it. If I had to change the whole diaper anyways, therefore needing to buy more of shells, then my hope for saving money wasn't really being met.

Now, The Best Bottom shell is great. I can wipe it out and use it again, because of it having the PUL (waterproof) interior.  Occasionally, it gets dirty on the trim when my baby poops (so I like the ones with dark Trim, though the lighter trim wash out fine). Therefore, the Best Bottom shells met my hope for saving money because the shells could be used over again, and I could get by with 7 or less. [note: I do my laundry Mon, Weds, and then Fri or Sat, unless I have a messy diaper that needs to soak right away-rarely a Best Bottom, if ever.] The Stay dry inserts wash out fine also. I feel like they are a bit bulky though, and I didn't notice a huge advantage to having it snap-in, so I have used alternative inserts, such as:

Charcoal Bamboo Insert

Charcoal Bamboo Insert with gussets 

Kawaii Baby Bamboo Insert

Pre-fold 

Flats

I've used two hair nets or a hair net and a

Beard net around a folded flat or pre-fold diaper to make it in the shape of  other inserts.

These alternative combinations for inserts seem to work fine, especially for the money they can save a person.  

I also found that the much less expensive Kawaii Baby diaper Covers worked as pretty good alternatives for GroVia Shells and Best Bottom Covers. They are less fancy, but if you are on a budget and want to try hybrid diapering it's not a bad route. 

The Diaper Covers with white trim have a waterproof interior that is a little less wipeable but it washes out well, and it works great with the GroVia Disposable inserts. They look like this:

White Trimmed Kawaii Baby Diaper Cover

The Minky Kawaii Baby Diaper Covers with dark trim wipe out well and I like the dark trim.

Minky Exterior and Dark Trimmed, wipeable interior Kawaii Baby Diaper Cover

If you are wanting to save money, the Kawaii Baby Diaper Covers are really inexpensive, can be used with lots of different inserts, and are wipeable. I would suggest that you could get by with these alone, if you were really tight on money. However, you could also save money by simply using them to supplement your hybrid diaper stash.  

Another diaper cover, I recently used with a GroVia disposable insert is shown below.  It has a fleece interior which worked really well with the insert and I liked that it was soft. From what I have experienced fleece seems to wash out well also. This diaper cover was less expensive, and I noticed it has wing droop-age because of how the snaps are, but I like the gussets on the legs.

  

WeeGro Diaper Cover with fleece interior

Last of all, I tried recently a diaper similar to the gdiaper. It looks like this:

Shell similar to a Gdiaper shell with cotton interior and snaps to snap in a pouch

and is used with a pouch, like this:

Snap-in pouch with PUL interior

The Shell to this diaper also can be used with the GroVia Disposable insert or when used with the pouch can be used with the Flip or Gdiaper disposable insert. 

Innovative Idea (I have not tried this yet, but): Another way to save money, could be to use pouches like this with other diapers, such as pocket diapers -just put the pouch on top, then you should be able to reuse the pocket diaper shell over again.

On last Innovative Idea: A person can use pocket diapers that leak with Grovia Disposable inserts since the inserts have waterproofing on the back side.

Now what have you done to save money diapering?