Third time's the cloth

I'm going to step outside my normal pensive, nostalgic and sometimes ridiculous posts to make a confession: neither of my children ever wore cloth diapers. Iknow this is not as shocking a revelation as, say, admitting that I don't find Ryan Reynolds that attractive (I have garnered many a dramatic gasp with that one) or that Ieat my kids' Halloween candy after they go to bed (YOUALLDOITDON'TLIE), but now that I work with baby gear all the time and have seen how easy-peasy lemon squeezy they've made those suckers since my parents were fumbling around with them, well, it seems kind of silly that I never gave it a go. However, all that's about to change. Cloth diapering, here we come. Tally-ho and geronimo.

Wee baby Noah back in the day, rockin' the changing table like a champ.

I'm not so much worried about the actual diapering a baby part of things—we've had puh-lennnnty of practice with all of that thankyouverymuch, and I've done a good once- or twiceover of the cloth stack we have on hand ready for our May baby and have happily concluded that they look user friendly slash idiot-proof. But where my confusion and trepidation come in is when I think about all the other parts—the storing, cleaning, the having enough on hand, etc., etc. etc. Also, I wonder if taking on cloth diapering with a full-time job is do-able. Fortunately, I think (uh, mental note:double check on this crucial piece of info) that the daycare we have lined up allows cloth diapering, so we won't have to pay for disposables on top of maintaining an adequate non-disposable stash at home. But obviously, when it comes to washing out the … remains of the day, that's on us. Right now, the thought of adding a nightly load of laundry on top of all the other tasks I have to do just to keep everyone clothed/washed/fed/alive seems kind of daunting.

Rosie-of-yesteryear, stoically enduring another postbath diapering session.

So basically what I'm asking is for all you cloth diapering veterans (and you qualify for this if you've been doing it for three years or three weeks) to lay it on me:What's your best advice? What accessories are worth having on hand (like the attaches-to-the toilet poop-sprayer—anyone have that thingamajig?) and what's your routine for making sure you don't run out of any possible clean, dry bottom cover at 3 a.m.? Do you send your baby to daycare in cloth? Do the caregivers give you the stinkeye for it?Is it a non-issue?Is life rainbows and unicorns since you jumped on the cloth bandwagon? Because that's what I'm hoping for here, really. Nirvana in the form of a cotton excrement-catcher. Tell me my dreams are about to come true.