First, I’ll start off by saying that I am extremely easy to convince of something if your argument is good. That being said feel free to redeem the Diaper Sprayer after I’m done 
Why after 4 years of cloth diapering have I never purchased a diaper sprayer?
- Installation always looked too cumbersome.
- The minute possibility of being splashed with poop makes me shudder.
- Never had a peanut-butter-poo child.
- The minute possibility of being splashed with poop makes me shudder.
- Is there really a need? Does it make things easier?
- The minute possibility of being splashed with poop makes me shudder.
I think that about covers it. Are you clear on what my big issue is? Well, if I wasn’t already grossed out by the thought of splashage, this video made it more of a nightmare…
Now I’ll cut the guy some slack for 2 reasons:
- The description says they just got the sprayer so this might have been the 1st or 2nd time to use it. No one does something that great the first many times.
- He’s a guy! Amazing. My husband is a fully participating dad but I honestly don’t think he’d go for spraying poop.
Let me have it. Convince me that a diaper sprayer is the best thing to happen in cloth diapering since the Snappi. I want to feel like I’m missing out 
And if you’re really passionate about the diaper sprayer make me a video and I’ll post the best one I get.
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I haven’t read all the comments, but let me just say that the video makes me want to vomit! I, too, have never used a diaper sprayer, and never even had the desire to think about wanting one. I don’t see how you can keep things cleaner by using that. Even if you are very careful with it, just because you can’t SEE the microscopic poo flying around while using that, it most likely IS. Also, like the lady in the video, you must have a diaper pail literally right next to the toilet or you are bound to get poo/pee water dripped everwhere. And finally, I’ve never seen a need for one. When my kids have been in stage where the poo doesn’t fall into the toilet, I simply take a couple squares of toilet paper and take the poo out of he diaper, drop it in the toilet, and flush. No mess, no poo getting on anything, etc. Call me crazy, but I also can’t imagine the diapers touching the toilet or toilet water. I clean our toilets A LOT, but I wouldn’t dunk my underwear in the toilet everytime they needed to be washed, and can’t imagine doing that with my kid’s diapers, either.
Actually, I really like having a toilet sprayer. I didn’t watch the video, so I can’t comment on that, but I haven’t had too much problem having stuff spray outside the range of the toilet. But it’s also an advantage that these things are *much* cheaper in India, and you can have a plumber install it for you for next to nothing. People here don’t use toilet paper; they either install a bidet-type sprayer, a hand sprayer (similar to the diaper sprayers), or just use a plastic measure cup to clean their privates. Personally, I still like having toilet paper to dry myself, as I don’t enjoy spending the day with wet underwear, but it’s easy to get used to rinsing yourself off regularly and feeling cleaner.
I’ll also add that Indian bathrooms are different than American ones. Most don’t have separate bathtubs or shower stalls (you sit on a short plastic stool and pour water on you from a bucket), so they all have drains in the floor. Therefore, it’s easy to rinse the floor down (though I don’t enjoy the many leaky faucets people have here–every bathroom inevitably has at least one).
Before we had the sprayer installed, I scraped the poop off the diaper with a plastic scoop purchased for that purpose, and rinsed the rest off in the sink. I didn’t think it was hygienic to rinse them in the sink, and I disliked dunking them into the toilet water, so I was happy to get the sprayer. Also, the scraper rubbed the poop into the fabric some, so they didn’t rinse as well.
If someone is willing to spend a good amount of $$$, I did see online somewhere a diaper sprayer sold with a bucket-like thing that attaches to the toilet to reduce splashing.
I think diaper sprayers are great. They keep poop out of the washing machine and put it in the toilet where it belongs. The guy in the video was waving the sprayer head around too much and not holding it close enough to the diaper to prevent splatter. And yes, you do have to have a pail near the toilet but so what?
Okay, y’all are going to think I’m disgusting. But I have a claw foot bathtub with a shower sprayer and I do use that when my son has a horrible peanut butter poo or diarreah just because I think it’s disgusting to let that sit in a pail all night. I just dump what I can into the toilet and then rinse out the excess and then spray my BacOut on the diaper. Now, I will say that 1) I currently do NOT use my bathtub to wash my body because I am pregnant so baths are a bit of a no no and 2) I sanitize my bathtub every couple of days with Comet and a bristle sponge strictly for my tub. I know, that just sounds gross. But it really works out nicely. I just never felt the need for a toilet sprayer when I have a perfectly good sprayer in my bathtub and it all goes to the Septic tank anyhow!!
Thanks for all the info! DD has just started solids and I have been scraping off poo with toilet paper….ick! The idea of dunking and swishing is just too gross for me and I have been debating whether it is worth $50 for a diaper sprayer. Now I just have to wait 2 weeks for my local cloth diaper store to get them back in stock…..
I went from part time cloth diapering to full time once I discovered the sprayer! I have had some trials and errors, but I do love it for poo that doesn’t roll off. I had a fear of the older kids “playing” with the sprayer and visions of a soggy mess, but thankfully that hasn’t happened.
I think it is great the way God created us as individuals.
He is so Magnificent, and it just makes me smile! It’s odd that I’m reading your blog today, b/c I came home w/a new diaper sprayer this afternoon! We CD for 3 or so months before saving up for one. After using it, I thought, “This is worth every penny!”. Now, almost 2 years later, having two kids in cloth for about a year, our button broke! Needless to say, we’ve used it a LOT. And now 48 hrs w/o one, I have to say I have 4 poopies on my laundry room floor waiting until my hubby gets the new one installed!
I do admit when I first tried it out, I had never thought through the process of putting a high-pressured water device next to a pooey diaper…I did get splashed a little. It didn’t take too long to learn the ‘how-tos’. After keeping the water pressure down with the valve that comes w/it, and learning how to stand back, knowing to hold the diaper low in the toliet, it’s much easier. And yes, it does drip at times, but not with prefolds (or fitteds) b/c the waterproof cover catches it really well. My pockets do drip on occasion…I just run really fast to our 1st floor laundry room, or put my hand under it. To me, it is a huge time saver as my kids rarely have solid poos. I used to spend about 3-4 min. dunking, to find that it still wasn’t coming off…then I’d find myself picking out the chunks from my washer on wash day.
So, yes, it does have it’s downfalls, and it is a luxury item (nothing you have to have), but I love the time it saves. AND I love to use it for cleaning out the bathtub!! My husband thinks it’s great, too.
I dont have a diaper sprayer but have seen a do it yourself version that my handy husband could easily put together.. That said, I dont think that I would have him make it because our system works.. I shake off solids in the toilet then switch over to the tub and hand wash off all solids or semi-solids since I dont like them sitting in the pail… Then into teh diaper pail it goes.. Works for us!
I’d like to update my pp now that I’ve tried out my new sprayer. The old sprayer was a Mini-Shower. The new is “The Diaper Sprayer”, that we sell at circle ME. I have to say that there are things I liked better about the old sprayer, but there are things I like better about my new one. One of them is the way it sprays. The openings in the sprayer have bigger holes, so the water doesn’t ricochet nearly as much. The diaper sprayer sprays more like a bidet, so it’s gentler.
So, now I know that our experiences may depend on the brand of the sprayer
Before today, I’d actually never knew of anyone who didn’t like the sprayer, or even not want one. I’m glad to have others’ perspectives.
I had to laugh a little because if you listen closely, it’s actually the wife doing the spraying and the husband is running the camera, and joking around about how she maybe thought he wouldn’t be able to handle the sprayer so she had to demonstrate it. And then the diaper pail wasn’t even there, and he laughed that she had to carry the soaking diaper all the way downstairs. That would be something my husband would do, laugh and criticize me for trying to make things easier, and actually making them more difficult for myself!
I have never found a diaper sprayer necessary, but I don’t have anything against them, either.
I just had my husband install a homemade diaper sprayer because I was tired of squishing the dirty diaper in the toilet. Gross! While I love how the sprayer easily removes the poop from the diaper, I don’t like the splatter you talk about. I always clean the top of the toilet after I wash a dirty dipe. I was doing a search to see if people had a suggestion how to use it so you don’t get splatter. So I will try Erica’s suggestion of lowering the valve and keeping the diaper low in the toilet.
As for the drip, we keep a container by the toilet to carry the wet dipe to the diaper pale. This way we don’t have drips to worry about. I have considered having a small pale right next the toilet just for the those dipes that I had to spray.
We have a diaper sprayer and in our 10mos of using cloth have only used it a couple of times. My husband installed it with no problems. He was the first to use it and asked me if he was doing it wrong because it didn’t remove the poo at all. I came to the conclusion that if he was doing it incorrectly, so was I because it never works for me either. If the poo doesn’t knock off into the toilet it gets left in the diaper pail. I ALWAYS do a pre rinse on my diaper loads and everything has come out clean. So I say the sprayer is not only not necessary but it’s a waste.
I bought the Potty Pail while I was still pregnant, and a cheap dog washer hose for the utility sink in the laundry room. I set up the diaper station in the laundry room also, and use the sink to rinse the diapers for now. When my 2 month old gets too big – and his BMs change when we start him on solid food – then I plan to use the Potty Pail in the guest bathroom (when I don’t have guests) to rinse any stubborn BMs out of the diaper. The pail has hang dry hooks and a rubber stopper. Seems pretty ideal to me and the expense is offset by eliminated need to mop the floor if it splashes
Sprayers are a must-have, IMO. Repeating others in that it took all of 5 minutes to install, and ours has an on/off lever that will hopefully discourage toddler mishaps in the future.
Also, with pocket dipes our trick is to unstuff and then spray from the inside out – I stick the nozzle in the pocket and spray out. No mess as long as the diaper is low enough in the bowl.
As far as procedure, mostly we are spraying pockets that come home from daycare in a wetbag, so they get unstuffed and sprayed all at once at the end of the day. We have a small plastic tub that we use to transport the sprayed diapers back to the Diaper Champ.
An added bonus is that the sprayer can also be used to clean out potty chairs later on.
it convinced dh that it wasn’t all that bad to cd! plus we had a low flow toilet so by the time i get the diaper in the toilet i get poo EVERYWHERE except off the diaper…LOVE MINE!
I love the diaper sprayer, I made one myself and installed it myself, it took 5 minutes all together to install. I don’t soak the diaper so much so that when I’m done it drips to the diaper pail. If I had to dunk it it would be just as soaking wet…I’d rather have a semi dry diaper sitting for a few days to wash it. Do you dunk the diaper now?
no, I don’t dunk right now. And when the time arrives to dunk it isn’t a real “dunk”. I shake it off, then use toilet paper if necessary. All else gets washed off in the pre-wash.
So funny reading the blog today. I also just came home with a diaper sprayer today. I hummed and hawed for 17 months and finally gave in as all we get is peanut butter poo and with a low flush toilet, I was getting it everywhere anyway. And drip, drip, drip to the diaper pail cause our bathroom is too small to have one in there. I do keep a small pail under the sink now to pop the diaper in to transport to reduce the drips.
I think it will take getting used to and installing took 6 easy minutes. I agree, if it is too annoying for the diaps, at least it will be great for rinsing the tub and cleaning out the potty when the time comes.
Love your blogs! It keep me going with cloth!!
I swear by my diaper sprayer! It’s not hard to install, I did it myself in 5 minutes. The poo that doesn’t fall into the toilet gets sprayed off and if you hold the diaper right there is no mess on the sides of the toilet. LOVE IT and couldn’t live without it.
I just have to say that I LOVE my diaper sprayer!
We got it not for the CD’s but for potty training. My son is 22 months and in the middle of training. It is fabulous for rinsing out a poopy potty without having to touch any poo – a very big deal for daddy:)
It’s great on our cloth diapers too, but REALLY great for the potty…
I am all for the diaper sprayer. I have found a way to use it that when it splashes, it splashes into the toilet. I also clean my bathroom (usually) daily, and would even if I did not have a diaper sprayer. My son has had the “peanut butter poo” for months now, and there are times that NOTHING gets it off except spraying it. I am talking when I clean my son, I have to either sit there and scrub his bottom until he cries or give him a bath. That stuff is impossible to wipe out of the diaper, impossible to swish out of the diaper (which I think is actually far more disgusting then spraying it… even though I keep my toilet pretty clean, I don’t like the idea of dipping his diaper in it), and impossible to shake off. I truly wish this was not the case and I could just shake the diaper off, but that is not the case. The diaper sprayer is the ONLY reason I have been able to continue CD through the last several months. I personally think the $50 I spend of the sprayer was better then the $400+ I would have spent on disposables, especially since he started having these horrible bowl movements within a month of me spending around $300 on CD.
I just installed my diaper sprayer three days ago (by myself and it took about 10 minutes – I am no handy-woman either. The time was mostly taken up by my indecision on cutting the hose to length). The first time I turned it on was hilarious. I had the sprayer pointing up (duh) and “washed” the whole bathroom. I adjusted the spray power and pointed it in the toilet. I have loved it ever since. My daughter is 5 months old and new on solids. Her diapers are a mess. I took an old kitty litter pail and placed next to the toilet to hold the wet diapers after they have been sprayed off. This is the best solution I have found to work with my front loader. Poopy diapers are a mess. The diaper spayer has been very helpful once I figured a system out.
Very interesting and amusing subject. I read with great pleasure.
We love our homemade sprayer! I googles directions for a DIY diaper sprayer, printed out the instructions, made a Home Depot run for less than $20, and DH had it installed in less than 10 minutes. The only issue we have had is my 3 1/2 yo ds thinks it is fun to spray it into the tub next to the toilet!
We had one with my first, and I liked it until it started leaking where it connected to the plumbing, leaving water puddled on the bathroom floor. We tossed it after that. Now I’m expecting my second, and wondering if it’s worth trying again – perhaps we had a faulty one?
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