QUESTING:boston: Bum Genius Elemental All-In-One Diaper

The diaper I most wanted to love was the Bum Genius Elemental All-in-One Diaper. Sherry and John over at Young House Love gave it a great review, the all-in-one-ness would have been a breeze for daycare and home alike, and they come in cute prints like the one shown below (called Lovelace).

The peanut clearly felt powerful in the Elemental, thus the HI-YA pose:

It's crazy how much she's changed since this photo was taken!

Unlike the Swaddlebees diaper, the Elemental does not have a "tongue." Instead, there is a loop of fabric attached to the diaper in the front and in the back, which makes drying time shorter and ensures that water (and soap) can flow around the parts of the diaper that do the heavy lifting. Though the middle part of the loop dried quickly the parts sewn to the body of the diaper took forever to dry, longer than any of the other diapers (other than the Eco Posh).

The diaper fit well but it didn't wash well. The below photo shows some of the sad, sad staining that occurred after two weeks of use. Cloth diaper aficionados swear by "sunning" (putting your diapers in the sun) to bleach out stains. Others suggest that you shouldn't care about stains on something that is only going to get pooped on again (and again...). The thing is, though, stains bother me. Even if the diaper has been through the wash a thousand times, SOMETHING must be living in the fibers to cause the stain, which means it's not totally clean. I don't know if laundry science backs that up, but stained diapers FEEL dirty. As for sunning, we live in a particularly un-sunny corner of the world. Apparently sunning works when it's cloudy, but there are a lot of trees on our property and a lot of tall buildings that cast long shadows. Any given spot is in the sun for such a short period of time each day that I'm not sure we could sun diapers to any great effect. Given all that, buying diapers that stain after two weeks of use seemed like a questionable decision.