system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
I babysit for a family that uses cloth and you're absolutely right about the flooding. However she washes them, though, they never smell badly. They also use a lot of wet bags so the stink is contained, at least, for preschool. I come and go from their house two to three times weekly, so I would imagine I'd smell something if it were there to smell. To be fair, mom is a knitter and a sewwer so she knows a lot about how to clean what fibers properly. I'm sure she uses some sort of special soap that won't hurt his sensitive skin but is also hard enough to clean a very poopy mess. Is it disgusting and extra? Yeah. Is every cloth baby smelly? Nah. Definitely not... until their next flood


It's definitely good for the environment, so there's that. I'm sure that's why this family does it. They also compost and the compost bin never smells, either, unless you open it.
gpt
We used cloth diapers for our first kid.  They were surprisingly absorbent if you got the right kind, but slower than disposable.  We had diaper covers that were lined and had pretty colors and patterns that went over the cloth diaper to contain things till they soaked up.  We did it for cost savings, probably saved a few thousand dollars doing that.

For next kid I was making a bit more money then and it was worth the extra expense of disposable to just not deal with the hassle.   Still have those cloth diapers years later though and still use them for a lot of things, dusting, cleaning wood furniture, waxing and polishing cars and motorcycles, saddle soap cleaning boots and water proofing an hour ago. Things are handy, but yeah totally a pain used for intended purpose.