Cloth Query

[Kanji]

Times being as tough as they are, its good to know that we live in a capitalistic society in which greedy individuals compete with each other by slashing prices and upping the quality of their products in order to keep customers buying from them directly. Where the ideas of free world trade and monetary synchronization reign as not far off ideals in the world market. Though times may be tough now we look to the future and hope and work toward making our system of trade as great as it once was, once again becoming consumers, producers, and workers in the market. With that in mind its important for all of us, not just me to pull our resources at the moment, save as much money as possible, so when the market does once again hit its rise we have the capital to make it soar.

So for those of you that are old enough or totally awesome enough to know about cloth diapers, I have a couple of intricate questions for you. See I've been shopping around, as a recent casualty of the job market, it has become painfully obvious that I'm not going to have the money to fritter away toward such things as disposable amenities, everything unfortunately costs money, the moment we're born we're already costing money to someone. Food, drink, clothes, medical expenses, travel expenses, even our trash costs us money to manage. Unemployment aside it seems more economical for me to buy a stock of cloth diapers and just use my own washing machine and water that I'm already managing to consolidate the cost of my dastardly fetish.

So here's a couple of my concerns:

1) Material? Really I want to know what to get, I think I've narrowed the field down to three points of interest.
-I'm looking for absorbency at the top, its important that it does its main job, as I will be using it for its intended purposes.
-Softness, honestly we're dealing with probably the third or fourth most sensitive part of the body here. If it feels like sandpaper against my crotch then I'm not going to enjoy the experience very much, so whats soft?
-Cleaning, this is kinda the anti-point to absorbency. Lets face it, there's going to be stains, they happen, but the material should at least be forgiving as long as you clean and care for it properly? Right?

2) Cost? So if I properly care for these, is it going to take a whole bunch of extra steps? I mean, lets face it, these aren't going to just go in the washing machine with my socks, there has to be a little extra care involved, I'm not going to have to boil these or anything am I? I remember when I was little and seeing cloth diaper soup, so I don't know if that's really the case anymore.

3) Care? I'm not the most household inclined person in the world, I'd much rather have a maid do my crap for me. I mean I know how to run the various household cleaning items. But honestly I can't fold to save my life, making my bed becomes a feat in and of itself, and forget hanging up towels in the bathroom. I mean just what is involved in the care of these things?

4) Discreteness? So being that I'm a young college student without a job and devoting most my resources to school I'd like to point out that I do in fact have room mates. However, there is about a four hour point in the day about two days out of the week in which I am home and they are not. My room is my sanctuary, nobody comes in but me, I can store them in here, however I don't know about smell, I'm obviously not doing number 2 in my housing situation, but I do know that urine does in fact smell after a while. There's about two points of interest here.
-Smell? How would I go about making sure I don't create a noxious death cloud emanating outside my room? Would air freshers work, I mean these two days are pretty separate? Is there anything I could put in a diaper pail that would neutralize the smell for a long while?
-Time frame? As I said I only have about 4 hours to do my thing. The washing machine only takes about 30 minutes, however the dryer can take a little while. I'm not really much for folding, plus I can do it in my room rather than out in the open so that's a non-issue.

These questions apply to diaper covers as well, plastic pants and the like.

[shadow king]

1. The common material for cloth diapers, that is said to be soft and absorbent depending upon the number of layers applied would be flannel. This can by bought at any of your average fabric shops by the yard, however, then the sewing of said diapers is your responsibility unless you find someone near by who is into sewing and DLism.

Generally this material should clean easily within a washer and dryer, though to be sure you can always look up the various instructions for fabric care on the internet or ask anyone who knows a thing or two about fabric.

Having not owned any of my own, I would say that it would probably take washing them within a few days of use, perhaps some soaking to drain some if not most of the urine out of them. As I stated above, you could also look up steps to care for cloth diapers.

I find that if you have a diaper pale and keep the lid on it everything will be fine. If it has no lid then you could put said diaper in a plastic bag and spray air freshener in the general area in certain time increments such as I do. (This tends to work well if in an enclosed space such as a closed closet.)

I hope that this helps at least a small bit, though it is probably a bit vague, not having owned any of my own. I am going off of the little bit of research I did on the materials necessary.

As for plastic pants, the care is simple, after you have removed the diaper, a simple soap and water scrubbing should suffice.