Arctic Baby Bottoms offers cloth diapers to Valley parents

WASILLA — Though she’s embarked on a career outfitting like-minded parents, Jessica McDonnell wouldn’t say she’s an evangelist.

“I don’t want to be a cloth-diaper pusher,” she said and she held her toddler Kian in her arms at her storefront in the MetaRose Square shopping center. “Every family has to make their own decisions.”

McDonnell started her business online last summer and opened up her store in November. The store, Arctic Baby Bottoms, is open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, though she doesn’t mind coming in on her off hours if someone needs her and she doesn’t have something else going on.

If you’re thinking about making the switch from disposable to reusable, there are a number of reasons it might be a better option, some of them somewhat counter-intuitive.

First there’s the cost. McDonnell said that a parent can save $1,500 to $2,000 during a child’s diapering phase just by using cloth diapers. And that’s just on diapers. There are other cost savings as well.

“Every time you go to the grocery store to buy diapers, how much other stuff do you buy?” And how much of that is things you don’t need or didn’t really want when you left the house?

Then there’s the environment. Reusing cloth diapers keeps mountains of dirty disposable diapers out of the landfill.

There’s also a health angle here.

“There’s a lot of harsh chemicals in disposable diapers,” McDonnell said. Some parents want to keep those chemicals away from their babies’ skin.

Somewhat surprisingly, McDonnell said there’s also a certain kind of convenience to cloth diapering. Having a store of reusables on hand at home means no more 2 a.m. trips to the all-night grocery store. If you run out, you only need to fire up the washing machine to get more.

But she said she also understands the downsides and why a person might not want to go this route. Her store sells diapers, but isn’t a diaper service. They don’t clean dirty diapers, which means her customers are committing to a relatively involved and pretty constant chore.

“It’s hard when both people are working,” she said.

Since she doesn’t play the role of diaper evangelist, McDonnell said she doesn’t think she’s done any converting.

“I’ve sparked some interest in some people that were maybe leaning that way,” she said.

She said she came into the cloth diaper fold with her second child. She’d wanted to cloth-diaper her first but didn’t have the time. She was in a better spot when child two came along, so she started cloth diapering and hasn’t looked back.

“I just really, really liked it,” she said.

Looking around her store, there is a surprising variety of colors and prints available to cover a baby’s backside. Most of them are cut to look like diapers, with buttons and snaps to hold them in place.

“It’s come a long way,” McDonnell said. “There’s cute colors and options. You don’t just have to use flats and prefolds anymore.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.