No butts about it: Last diaper service in Twin Cities closing

It's the end of a parenting era in the Twin Cities.

The last cloth diaper home-delivery business in the metro area is closing and is in the midst of its final rounds.

Cheek to Cheek, which opened in 1989, "must unplug the washing machines and park the van," the north Minneapolis business says on its website.

Owner Sandy Lundgren said this afternoon that her customer base has plummeted from a high of 500 about four years ago to 125 now.

"All the customers I do have can't believe it," Lundgren said, adding that they going to stick with cloth -- rather than disposables -- and wash their own.

Lundgren said her business was doomed because "Minnesotans are not as environmentally conscious as they pretend to be. Cloth is just as easy to use as disposable."

She refused to put any of the blame on higher fuel costs for her delivery business. "If you have enough demand, you can compensate for that."

Lundgren, 54, said her St. Louis Park home was "mortgaged to the hilt" in an effort to keep the business afloat. "Now I have to turn that over to the bank."

Missy Montgomery, a mother of a newborn in Lexington and a Cheek to Cheek customer, said, "It drives me crazy that people are choosing convenience over the environment. I'm not your Earth nut; I'm cheap."

Montgomery said she found Lundgren's rates, 70 diapers for $21.90, less expensive that disposables.

Minneapolis customer Joel O'Malley said word came to his family on a bill late last month.

"Going out of business," the handwritten note started. "Last delivery 8/11. Pick up everything 8/18. If you want to keep diapers, pail, free. Don't put out."

O'Malley said that he and his wife will keep the service's diapers and wash them themselves for their two girls, ages 6 months and 2 years.

Cheek to cheek's demise apparently leaves only two diaper services in Minnesota.

In the southeastern Minnesota town of La Crescent, Small Change reports that its client base has doubled, from 13 to 26, since the first of the year.

"I think it's because of the big 'go green' push," said Small Change operator Carmen Barthel, who has been providing the service to families in the La Cresecent-La Crosse, Wis., area since 1991.

Barthel said she even gets calls from all over the state -- Alexandria, Rochester and in the Twin Cities, for example -- seeking her services, but she said she has to limit the company's range to about 50 miles in any direction.

Small Change also does other laundry work, which helps keep the diaper service afloat. One of its biggest clients, Barthel said, is the La Crosse School District. Also, Small Change is part of a larger business that provides work to adults with disabilities.

"If we had to survive on diapers alone, we would've been gone a long time ago," she said.

In northern Minnesota, Happy Tushies Diaper Service has been serving homes since January, has 12 customers so far and is expecting that number to rise in the coming months, said owner Hope Wilson.

Her website says it is setting up delivery routes in the Duluth area, along with Virginia, Eveleth, Gilbert and surrounding areas. Her company also sells cloth diapers and other baby accessories.

More than 50 years ago, there were eight diaper services in the Twin Cities, according to phone directories of the time. But in 1961, disposables came on the market and grew into a multibillion-dollar market.

Cloth made a comeback in the late '80s, when environmental concerns took root. During that time, a half-dozen new diaper services opened in the Twin Cities.

But then came two widely publicized studies -- conducted by reputable researchers but funded by Procter & Gamble and the paper industry -- claimed that cloth diapers posed their own environmental hazards.

After factoring in the gasoline used by diaper-delivery trucks, the detergent used to wash diapers and so forth, the studies declared cloth vs. disposable a environmental tossup.

Environmentally conscious consumers suddenly felt it was fine to switch to disposables.

--Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482