close

Your Cart

Your Cart is Empty
  • Subtotal
    $0.00
    Shipping
    Free
  • Total (before taxes)
    $0.00
How to Use a bumGenius Refresher Kit
February 18, 2012 4:34 pm | by
Cloth Diaper Creams

A few months ago, my son’s bumGenius one-size pocket diaper started to leak around the legs. When I took his pants down to change his diaper, I found there was a gap between his legs and the diaper. Then he started coming to me pointing to his diaper and asking for help – the hook and loop holding the diaper closed had let go! Our diapers were all well over 2 years old and are now servicing two children simultaneously. I tried to ignore the signs for a while, but it was clear: we would need to repair the diapers using bumGenius Refresher kits. These kits are sold on CottonBabies.com and contain brand new hook and look closure tabs, laundry tabs, and new leg and back-of-diaper elastic. Definitely the solution to our saggy, baggy diaper problem!

I’m not going to lie, I put it off at first because it was intimidating. Almost our entire stash is composed of bumGenius all-in-one one-size pocket diapers – either 3.0 or 4.0’s (5.0s available now!). I was a little overwhelmed at the thought of sewing new velcro and replacing the elastic in 25+ diapers. But I am here to tell you: it IS possible, and it’s not as difficult as you might think. I also have a few handy tips to make your efforts easier – learn from my mistakes!

Refresher Kits Include What’s Needed

Which velcro does the kit replace? All of it! Here’s a quick picture:

In the first frame, you can see the worn velcro. The first step in the process is to remove the old velcro tab with a ripping tool, as seen in the middle frame. Good news: you don’t have to remove the old laundry tab! Sew the new one right on top of the old one, as shown in the last frame.

Velcro tab removal tip:

Be very careful not to rip the body of the diaper when you’re removing the old tab! I got a little crazy and tried to do it super fast, but that was a mistake. If you rip a hole in the diaper, the new velcro tab you sew onto the hole will have nothing to grab onto. I actually completely ruined a few diapers this way. Ouch!

The hook and loop replacement is really very fast once you understand what you’re doing. The time stamp on the first frame in the picture above and the timestamp on the last frame was only 13 minutes apart. That means it took me only 13 minutes to rip off the old tab and sew on the new one and the new laundry tab.

Learn from my mistakes:

Only work on 1-2 diapers at a time, otherwise, you’ll reduce your available stash of diapers.

My initial idea was to sit down and rip the old tabs off a huge batch of diapers all at once while watching TV, and then go and sew the new tabs on. All in one night. I did get the old tabs removed, but that rendered my diapers unusable and removed them from rotation in my stash until I had time to sew new the new tabs on. It ended up taking me about a week to have the time to sit down and sew all the new tabs onto the diapers. I had to do twice as much laundry and my kids were running out of diapers all the time.

Leg elastic replacement

I was actually more intimidated by this process than the velcro because about half my stash are bumGenius 3.0’s. Here is a picture of the difference between 3.0’s and 4.0’s/5.0s when it comes to accessing the leg elastic:

As you can see, the 4.0s and 5.0s have easy, convenient access to the leg elastic – you just put your finger in and pull out the elastic! The casing of the elastic in the 3.0’s is completely enclosed. To access the leg elastic in a bumGenius 3.0, you will have to make a tiny cut in the casing from the outside and pull it out, like this:

Either way, once you get the elastic out, it’s really not that difficult to sew the new elastic onto the old, pull it through, and sew the other end. When you’re finished, clip off the old elastic. Each diaper takes me around 30 minutes. More good news: this is definitely something you can do while watching TV in the evenings. I replace my elastic while watching Downton Abbey.

I actually did not have to replace the elastic on the back of my diapers, but I have saved the remainder of the elastic in the kits in my sewing basket for the time that I will. It should work almost exactly like replacing the leg elastics, only half the time commitment.

In the end, I was very pleased with what a big difference the refresher kits made. It was like having brand new diapers. No more leaks for my son, and I only spent around $30! Have you ever used a bumGenius refresher kit? Do you have any other tips to share?

About the Author

Jenny Bradford lives in the Dallas, TX area and blogs at Living Consciously.com (formerly Conscientious Confusion). This includes everything from green living, natural health, conscientious consumerism, cloth diapering, and living frugally. She is a wife to Christian and mom to Little Sir born Oct. 2009, and Little Lady, born Feb. 2011.

Comments

21 Comments

  • Anonymous said...
    March 19, 2013 at 10:31 pm

    Anyone replace the front landing strip on BG 4.0’s? I need to tackle this and can’t even find the correct sized velcro… let alone figure out how to replace it!

  • Ginger said...
    August 11, 2012 at 10:15 am

    The elastic in the 3.0’s that I just bought used was so shot that I couldn’t attach the new elastic to it because I was afraid the old would break. My solution was to cut out the old elastic and sew the new directly to the inside part of the diaper (I couldn’t find where the elastic was originally seamed to the diaper). I also used safety pins to prevent the elastic from slipping back into the casing while I was sewing. The laundry tabs were worn down to nothing, but the front velcro and the tabs stick to each other very well, but for some reason the tabs don’t stick well to the newly replaced laundry tabs. This isn’t a huge deal and the laundry tabs were easy to sew on with my machine, just interesting that they won’t stick to the new.

  • R Turner said...
    May 27, 2012 at 1:41 pm

    How long is the elastic for the legs? I just bought some elastic to cut myself but can’t seem to find the correct length to use. Some sites have said 6 inches while others say 4.5! Quite a difference! Can anyone help me out? Thanks!

    • Ginger said...
      August 11, 2012 at 10:07 am

      About 4.5 inches unstretched,and 12 inches stretched as much as I reasonably could.

  • Baby Momma Andrea said...
    March 1, 2012 at 10:45 pm

    I have found the new replacement laundry tabs are not as soft. Infact, they scratched my son up pretty badly. Anyone else have this problem?

  • SquishyCuteStuff said...
    February 20, 2012 at 3:17 pm

    I am in the process of refreshing 34 BF 3.0s! I am working on #9 with 11 weeks until LO gets here 🙂

  • Kim said...
    February 20, 2012 at 2:26 am

    Thanks for posting. Although I was a little discouraged when I saw what is actually in the kit. I have the BG 3.0 aio diapers from clearance. I have a lot of them and love them. Because I bought them on clearance no warrenty but almost immeiately in my small size the I had trouble with the velcro (not the tabs but the part on the front of the diaper). Somehow it seems that the stitching is not correct and on about 15 of them it has come completely off on one of the 4 sides. I figured a refresher kit would resolve the issue but apparently it does not even address that area =( I wonder if you have any advice about this?

    • Heather said...
      February 20, 2012 at 3:52 pm

      Hi Kim, it’s a little bit more complicated, so if you can give us a call at 1-888-332-2243 we can give you more details about how to fix the front landing strip.

  • Jessica said...
    February 19, 2012 at 2:49 pm

    I need to bookmark this for the future! The Velcro on my 3.0’s is wearing out and my daughter can now rip them off through her clothes. I still use them occasionally, but I think a replacement would really help with that. Thanks for the great tips!

  • Monica said...
    February 18, 2012 at 6:09 pm

    When I replaced the elastic I did not cut it it out, I used a seam ripper and then replaced it that way, no holes once you finish! Bare with me this is going to be hard to explain without a pictures, but it made replacing the tabs MUCH easier. On the tabs (furthest away from the diaper, they curve and then go straight. On that straight part I sewed the the velcro (wrong sides together) right across. This allowed me to just slip the velcro tab onto the diaper and sew my square without having to worry about keeping the two velcro tabs perfectly aligned. It took about 2 minutes to sew 30 straight lines across and reduced my tab replacement time by several minutes per diaper. Trying to pin it was too much of a hassle and I found this to be very helful!

  • Anonymous said...
    February 18, 2012 at 5:41 pm

    Instead of cutting the fabric to replace the elastic you can undo the seam with a seam ripper and them just resew the seam after you have replaced the elastic.

    • Jenny Bradford said...
      February 19, 2012 at 4:40 pm

      I think I might have actually done that on my first one but I was too lazy to go back and re-sew the casing, which caused it to unravel. DOH! Undoing the seam would definitely be must smoother and more professional 🙂

  • French Valley K-Prep Preschool said...
    February 18, 2012 at 5:20 pm

    I added new tabs. It’s like I had new diapers again!

  • Anonymous said...
    February 18, 2012 at 5:20 pm

    I just finished replacing all the leg elastics in my stash of 32 3.0 bumgenius one size all in ones. Took several evenings to complete it, but well worth it. Ironically I too watched downton Abby while doing the chore. I replaced the laundry tabs a year ago, so next thing to tackle is the Velcro tabs.

    • Jenny Bradford said...
      February 19, 2012 at 4:38 pm

      LOL Downton Abbey FTW!!

  • Anonymous said...
    February 18, 2012 at 5:11 pm

    Can I use this re-fresher kit on my flip covers? The leg elastic is almost shot but everything else is doing great.

    • Heather said...
      February 20, 2012 at 3:50 pm

      You should be able to use this on your Flip covers as well, just be very cautious as you open the casing around the elastic, and be sure to stitch it back up when finished. If you have further questions, give us a call at 1-888-332-2243.

  • Monica said...
    February 18, 2012 at 5:02 pm

    Thanks for the tips! I’ve refreshed the aplix, but haven’t tackled the elastic yet, as it’s still in pretty good condition. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get the aplix tabs off completely though, without tearing up my diapers, so I cut what I could off and sewed over what was left and it has worked splendidly. I’ll have to refer back to this when I need to do elastic, a handful of mine are 3.0s. Thanks!

    • Jenny Bradford said...
      February 19, 2012 at 4:38 pm

      I found that using safety pins to stop the elastic from retreating back into the casing when I was working on it helped tremendously!

  • Marie said...
    February 18, 2012 at 4:45 pm

    Thanks for the tips! Any ideas on how to re-waterproof them? Even some of my newer BGs have cracking (and therefore, leaking) plastic on the inside. It’s not a buildup problem, and I’ve hot washed and dried them, but nothing has helped. Thanks! 🙂

    • Heather said...
      February 20, 2012 at 3:48 pm

      Hi Marie, you might want to consider our Atsko Permanent Water Guard if your diapers have lost some of their waterproof (PUL) layer. You can read more about it here: http://www.cottonbabies.com/product_info.php?products_id=1011 If you have further questions, give us a call at 1-888-332-2243 and we can explain more.