Hey all,
I'm wondering if the moms (or dads) who have used cloth for multiple kids at different times can give me some ideas about life span and replacement. Stuff is wearing out and I'm wondering what to do about replacement and planning a stash that I can keep using while this one potty trains and we possibly have another baby.

My DS is now 20 mos old (so potty training and being done with diapers could easily be another year away, longer for overnight). We've done cloth since the beginning and I have been dutiful about trying to stick with manufacturer instructions when I washed and dried so I could maximize the life of my stash. Stash is a mix of a little bit of everything under the sun: prefolds and fitteds, PUL and wool covers, pockets, AI2, and AIOs. It's also a mix of all sorts of different materials: cotton, hemp, bamboo, microfiber. We used to wash with RnG, but switched to Vaska unscented because I could buy it by the case and use it for all our laundry (so it was WAY cheaper). I do use oxyclean free periodically to clean up stubborn stains, but only if it is within manufacturers instructions. Bottomline: I am really careful and have taken good care of this stuff with the expectation that we would hopefully have another kiddo and be able to reuse this stuff.

But now I'm looking at it up close. My prefolds are getting thready looking at the edges. My hook and loop covers are not holding well and the elastic at the legs is basically shot. I already threw a couple of snap covers away, but the others seem to be doing alright (these were not original when DS was born). With some of my AIOs, the PUL layer is starting to look stripped down and cracked, the elastic is also not as tight as it once was. Snaps on some of the pocket diaps are also getting loose. All in all, the stuff is just worn. This makes sense since it has been in continuous use for more than a year and a half, some of it anyway.

So my question, now that I just wrote a whole book, is what do I do? Do I try to stick it out with the old stuff for DS and just plan to toss most of it and replace with a new baby? Or, do I replace stuff sooner with DS and buy new stuff that will hopefully last into the new baby? I should say that DS is a very big kid, so many OS covers and diaps generally don't work for us at this point. I pretty much had to move him up to the sized versions of things in larges and XLs.

Thoughts and suggestions very much appreciated!