Oh dear what has it come to. I’m writing posts that are specifically “reviews” of baby products. What have I become?
In justification, let me give the back story.
About this time last year I posted my experiences of reusable nappies. I bigged up the “bumGenius” brand as that’s what I had experience of. It seemed a little unfair to other cloth nappy companies, and the nice folk at Bambino Mio kindly sent some miosolo All-in-One nappies to use (along with some other handy cloth-nappy accessories), on the basis that I post about my experiences.
Arguably, waiting was good – I now have a year’s experience of using the miosolo’s. But even so, with apologies to Bambino Mio for being a little late (it’s been a busy year), here are my thoughts.
The good stuff
Things I like about the miosolo:
Generally, in terms of quality and use these are definitely on a par with bumGenius, and they share many of the pros and cons of high-quality, all-in-one (or all-in-two) cloth nappies. The following represent where they are different from the bumGenius nappies that we have and love.
- The inner part is attached to the outer part so they don’t get separated. As someone who pairs my socks and spends hours tracking down the missing parts of toys that come in sets, this is very pleasing as you don’t end up having outers with no inners.
- The Velcro waist fastening is good because it gives you more ‘granularity’ in the waist size. However, I prefer poppers still (see the related not-so-good thing below)!
- They have some fancy features that, once you know how to use them make the washing and stuffing process slightly easier. There’s a little handle for pulling the dirty inner out, and a thing to aid re-stuffing. But…again, see the downsides of these below.
The not-so-good stuff
- The Velcro waist fastening, while giving more flexibility with sizing, has some downsides. We find that they are much easier for a curious child to undo than poppers, and they can stick to other things in the wash. The popper/Velcro thing is probably a matter of personal taste, one isn’t better than the other, they’re just different.
- The extra bits for stuffing and washing are confusing. To be honest I was baffled by them at first as there aren’t instructions that say what they are for (the website user guides are helpful). But even once you know what they do they don’t help an awful lot. The bumGenius nappies come apart in the wash so you don’t need to pull the inner out, so the miosolo’s special loop seems to just compensate for that fact that you do need to pull the inner out before washing. The stuffing aid was quite a help once I knew what to do with it.
- The inner is one-size which is quite restrictive. bumGenius comes with two different sizes of inner pad, one of which has poppers to vary its length. Plus you can ‘double up’ if you want to. The miosolo’s only have one inner pad and it’s a fixed length, which means sometimes your pad is too big and the nappy curls up to try to accommodate it, but this isn’t a big deal and is made up for by the fact that inners and outers are joined and don’t get separated and lost.
Summing up
The bumGenius and the miosolo are both good, high quality, well-designed nappies that will save you money, reduce landfill waste and are actually very easy to use. I’m sure that had we started out with miosolo’s we’d have been just as happy as we are with our bumGenius.
The one thing that really stood out was the friendly and generous nature of the Bambino Mio people. They really are there to help and they’re full of handy hints and tips. Oh, and, unlike bumGenius, they’re a UK based company – that alone may make them worth supporting!
Ultimately there’s not much in it. Take your pick and enjoy the many benefits of reusable, cloth nappies.