Product Review: Simplee by Nuggles

Every once in a while on the blog I like to feature products that I really love.  My focus for them is that they are eco friendly, ethical, and I especially love it when they are made by Canadian companies.  In this case I am even happier to share a product from a company in my own town!  

Nuggles is a cloth diapering company based in Kamloops, BC.  The diapers are designed by moms, and they create all their own prints (I especially like the "Outdoorable", "Up and Away", and "Isbjorn" prints), and the solid colours they choose are really beautiful as well.  The diaper I am reviewing here is called the Simplee.  It's a one size, "all in two" that can also function as a pocket diaper, and it is made from bamboo, micro fleece, and TPU.  

There are lots of features in this diaper that make it extremely user friendly.  You can either layer the bamboo inserts on top of the diaper and change them out for new ones when you need to, or you can stuff them underneath the micro fleece and use it more as a pocket diaper.  If you do the former, it's much cheaper as you don't need to buy as many covers.  Nuggles sells the liners separately.  If you do the latter it's a simplified process, and typically easier for babysitters, daycare workers, or other family members who are not quite as into cloth diapers.  It's totally up to you how you use them, but having all the options is really great.

The pictures below show a few of the other features that make these diapers so user friendly.  The liners/boosters have a convenient hidden snap to keep them in place but they also come apart fairly easily in the washing machine so you don't have to worry about getting messy.  

The rise snaps and waist snaps have so many different options to fit all sizes of babies.  This one diaper goes from most 8 - 40 lbs babies!  Buying a one size fit diaper saves so much money since you're only buying one size of diaper for the entire time your child needs diapers.  We still aren't on the largest setting and Little Forager is almost two!

The other feature that I am most happy about are the hip snaps.  There are these extra snaps at the hips of the diaper that help hold the wings up.  We've had some trouble with other diapers in that way and it's so nice not to worry about it!  I hope that this is something Nuggles might consider including on their Tuck-Wrap-Go covers as well.  

Our other favourite thing about the Simplee is how easy it is to take on the go.  Most cloth diapers are much less scary to take on trips and outings than you would think (read my previous post about cloth diapering on a road trip for more information about that), but this one makes it all even easier.  We took Little Forager to the beach and changed him while he was standing up in the sand and it only took a few seconds.  

The other great thing about all of this is that I have a discount I get to share with all my readers for your purchases at Nuggles.  Click this link to get your discount!

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Nuggles provided me with some of the items in my review free of charge, but all opinions in this article are my own.  This post contains affiliate links, for which I may receive compensation.

Road Tripping and Cloth Diapering

This is not my usual topic for this blog, but today I wanted to talk a little bit about cloth diapers.  Yup.  If you think about it, this is not as off topic as it might seem.  I care about the earth and care to continue my foraging, and gardening for many more years so I feel being as close to zero-waste as I can is important.  Vital, even.  Let's just say that all the disposable diapers you wore as a baby are still sitting in a landfill somewhere.  Just hanging out.  Basically completely intact.  No matter how old you are.  That grosses me out way more than washing a soiled diaper ever could especially with how hassle free cloth diapering companies make their products.

If you've seen my Instagram, you are probably aware that we love using cloth instead of conventional diapers.  This is a huge way we can reduce the garbage that comes along with raising Little Forager, and it is also a major help financially since we are not always buying diapers.  I don't want to spend all my time here talking about why cloth diapering is the way to go - there are many other resources you can find on that topic via a quick google - rather I wanted to talk about whether or not it is practical to use cloth diapers when travelling

As enthusiastic as we are, we are not cloth diapering purists by any means.  There are often times we decide that a disposable diaper is needed.  If we know we are going to be visiting somewhere that doing laundry is going to be really inconvenient for us or our hosts we leave the cloth at home and buy as eco-friendly an option as possible.  This time we knew we knew the laundry wouldn't be a problem, so we decided to pack up the cloth and try them out on a really long road trip and blog about how it went.

This is basically all of my stash.  For the most part we use a combination of Mother Ease and Nuggles diapers.  The Mother Ease diapers (one size fitted diapers with their "air flow" covers) we bought used at a very reasonable price.  These are not the fanciest diapers - there are other styles offered that are, however - and they don't have the trimmest fit, but they are so durable.  We are the second to use them and after two years of our use you can barely tell they are getting on a bit.  Most of our Nuggles products are accessories (Tuck-Wrap-Go covers, wet bags, wallet), although we do have one of their Simplee diapers and it is amazing.  We are seriously considering adding more of them to our collection.  We also have a couple reusable swim diapers, use basic washcloths for wipes, Delish Naturals Therapeutic Yum Bum Butter, and Bummis flushable liners (indispensable now that we have a toddler eating solids), and that basically sums up everything we use for diapering.

The biggest challenge I figured we would have is changing Little Forager during the driving.  Thankfully the travel sized wet bag (pictured above) makes this just as convenient as it would have been using conventional diapers - if changing a wriggling toddler in a public place is ever truly convenient.  The only thing that I had to remember is that since we just use regular baby washcloths for wipes, I had to get them wet first at a sink before I started the whole process.  I could have planned ahead and carried pre-moistened washcloths in a container, or there are even plenty of DIY wipe solution recipes people have made available on the internet.  These wet bags are awesome, because there is a front pocket where you can keep clean diapers, and the back pocket is made of waterproofed fabric (the same kind of thing as the diaper covers) where you can throw the dirty stuff and leave it there until you get a chance to do a load of laundry.  The best part is how well they contain the smell!  I'll be honest that it's not completely 100% smell-proof if you get up close, and if you have dirty stuff and clean stuff in at the same time for a while you're going to want to air out the clean stuff a bit before using it.  Despite those minor concerns we drove all the way from Kamloops, British Columbia to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and you couldn't tell there were dirty diapers in there.

There were a few times we went to the park, or stopped at a water park, and that was all super easy as well thanks to the Nuggles Reusable Swim Diaper and their Simplee diaper which are both really easy to use on the go.  Thanks again to the travel sized wet bag no one knew we were packing dirty diapers along with us!  

Well, thanks for bearing with me through all my gushing about cloth diapers.  It really was easy to use them even on a long road trip, and I really think it's important to do as much as we can to reduce our garbage.

For those of you who are interested, Nuggles has given me a link to share with my readers to shop their site at a discount!  Click here and happy shopping!

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Nuggles Diapers and Mother Ease have provided me some of their products free of charge, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.