Advice on used cloth diapers?

[Beriberi]

Then you didn't have a tight fitting lid.   Maggots come from fly eggs.  To grow maggots, you need a moist place where flies can lay their eggs. Then after a day, they hatch.  If you have flies in your home, and they are landing on your diapers and hanging around long enough to lay eggs, this is possible.  But I'd be more worried about the flies all over your baby. 

A few thoughts about cost  -- A diaper service doesn't  save you any money, probably. If you are proactive with plastic and buy from Costco and never from Walgreens, you can spend less money than you would with a service. I expect we spent about what an average American spends on diapers.

There are some people who believe that cloth diapered kids get out of diapers more quickly (they are more aware of being wet than plastic diapered kids).  If you can cut 3-6 months off of your diapering life, that is a significant cost savings, whether you are using disposible or cloth.  We switched to plastic for the last bit of time until my youngest was potty trained - and that dragged on forever. Who knows if it was related, but it was a much more difficult process than with the cloth diapered kids.

[tweezers]

If I may revive this thread rather than start a new one: I am considering doing cloth by using a diaper service. I don't have laundry in-house, so the only way I'll consider it is by having someone else take them away and clean them! But the services all only pick up once a week.
My question for anyone who has used a service: how does your whole house not smell like poo when you are storing up to 80 dirty diapers before the next pickup? I know newborn poo doesn't smell as bad as toddler's, but still.
Do we tie them up in smaller batches in plastic bags or an extra diaper pail and then leave them on the back porch?
My husband is convinced that if we do cloth our house will smell all the time. Again, we do NOT have laundry facilities. I schlep stuff over to the laundromat about once a week now.

We washed our dipes 1-2 times per week, and stored the soiled ones in a Home Depot 5-gallon utility bucket with a lid in a closet next to the bathroom.  I think it was $4, the lid fit tightly, and the only smell was when you put a new diaper in.  We weren't going through 10 diapers for very long either.  We washed twice per week when they were very newborns, but down to once a week by the time they were 4-6 weeks old (we had 50 prefolds).

[cats]

We have a 4-month old and have been using a trash can (with a nicely fitted lid), sprinkling in some baking soda every few diapers.  We wash ~2x/week (we have 44 diapers).  I have yet to notice a poo smell (we have also quizzed a few visitors and they claim not to have noticed either).  I do sometimes notice a pee smell but...the diaper pail is right next to the toilet and we do also practice a certain amount of "if it's yellow, let it mellow", so...maybe I should really be scrubbing our toilet more often.   I have heard from some friends that cloth gets a lot harder to do (and smellier) once they hit the 6-month mark and start on solids.  We'll see, I guess.

A service in our area is around $100/month.  I believe I've spent a little under $150 on diapers and accoutrements, plus we spent about $5 week on cleaning (we pay per load but the machine is in our building, also hoping this amount might go down slightly as we're now into the warmer summer months and air drying should be more feasible), so from an economic standpoint a service is a pretty bad deal.

[Nangirl17]

Ihave heard from some friends that cloth gets a lot harder to do (and smellier) once they hit the 6-month mark and start on solids.  We'll see, I guess.

I found this to be true. Before solids we used a "natural detergent" and sunned out stains, but after 6 months, they started to be stinky right out of the wash; the "natural detergent" wasn't getting all the bacteria out.  Only Tide worked after that!

[MrsDinero]

Ihave heard from some friends that cloth gets a lot harder to do (and smellier) once they hit the 6-month mark and start on solids.  We'll see, I guess.

I found this to be true. Before solids we used a "natural detergent" and sunned out stains, but after 6 months, they started to be stinky right out of the wash; the "natural detergent" wasn't getting all the bacteria out.  Only Tide worked after that!

My husband has always been a die hard Tide fan so we have always used it.  Out diapers have been used for almost 9 months and so far so good.  No smells or stains.  One of the prefolds ripped open at a seam but that has been the only problem.

[cats]

Ihave heard from some friends that cloth gets a lot harder to do (and smellier) once they hit the 6-month mark and start on solids.  We'll see, I guess.

I found this to be true. Before solids we used a "natural detergent" and sunned out stains, but after 6 months, they started to be stinky right out of the wash; the "natural detergent" wasn't getting all the bacteria out.  Only Tide worked after that!

Does the sunning trick still work for getting out poo stains once they have worked to solids?  Because I have been pretty impressed with just how effective it is at the moment--a few hours in the sun and the diapers look like new!

[abiteveryday]

Ihave heard from some friends that cloth gets a lot harder to do (and smellier) once they hit the 6-month mark and start on solids.  We'll see, I guess.

I found this to be true. Before solids we used a "natural detergent" and sunned out stains, but after 6 months, they started to be stinky right out of the wash; the "natural detergent" wasn't getting all the bacteria out.  Only Tide worked after that!

Does the sunning trick still work for getting out poo stains once they have worked to solids?  Because I have been pretty impressed with just how effective it is at the moment--a few hours in the sun and the diapers look like new!

It still helps, but it's not the magic that it is in the beginning.