A Fluffy Vacation

With some trepidation, we decided to attempt cloth diapering away from home on our Florida vacation this week. I looked up everything I could about successfully using cloth diapers on vacation and gave it a go. Here are some steps I found to making it work.
1. It is important to remember you do not want dirty diapers sitting in the diaper pail waiting to be washed for a week while you are gone. Gathering tips from other blogs, I decided to put Mina to bed in disposables so I could quickly wash the last load of diapers before we left. Since we were leaving the house at 4:30 am and it was already midnight when the wash was done, I took a nap while the diapers were in the dryer then got up to finish packing them. I used disposables until we got through airport security.
2. I didn't have room to pack all of Mina's diapers but needed most of them so I wouldn't have to wash every day. I ended up bringing about 15 prefolds with 7 covers, 3 pockets with 6 inserts, one fitted and a wool cover. This was enough to allow me to wash every other day, I also brought several wipes, fleece liners, a wetbag and my pail liner which works as a stand-alone wetbag.
3. When we got to Ben's parents house, I turned a short bookshelf into a changing station by placing a folded towel on top and rolling the side in to help keep Mina from rolling off. I arranged the various diapers on the top shelf. Instant changing table!
4. We thought cloth diapering on our trip would be manageable since we had easy access to a washer and dryer. I brought a sample pack of Ecosprout soap (very happy with it) as well as some soap nuts which are what we usually use. I missed having my clothesline but doing laundry every other day actually wasn't too inconvenient. I tried to plan the vacation so Mina would have "recovery days" in between our adventures so this made it easy to do laundry while she was relaxing.
5. Show off that cute fluffy bum. Mina wore a lot of adorable dresses this trip and it is always fun to talk about her diapers, especially if I made them.

Did I mention we got an adorable My Swim Baby swim diaper and matching rash guard and sun hat in Wilma the Whale?