Today was a nice quiet day. We got up and made our usual crepe buffet, hung out around the house for a bit, and then bundled up and walked to Home Depot to get the materials to make a diaper sprayer to hook up to the toilet.
Matt used these directions and it worked flawlessly. It cost us $27 and took Matt about 20 minutes to do, as opposed to $39.95 plus shipping for a prefab one. We've switched back to cloth toilet wipes (by popular demand--while it was originally my idea to do it, Matt requested to bring them back after I did away with them during my first-trimester nausea and vomiting; he volunteered to do all of the toilet wipe maintenance--and he has) and so until the baby comes and we have diapers to rinse, we can always use it for rinsing out those.
Our system for toilet wipes these days, in case anyone is interested, involves homemade flannel wipes (thanks, Matt!) and a Diaper Champ we got off Freecycle. It sits next to the toilet and has a few inches of water and homemade laundry detergent in it. It works great and there's absolutely no odor involved. Used wipes go easily in there; when we start to get low on cloth wipes, we dump them out, spray them off, and boil them (in a giant aluminum wok we've designated solely for this purpose) along with some vinegar and washing soda. We boil them for 20-30 minutes to take care of any germs, then we run them through a regular wash and dry cycle. They always come out fresh as can be. I'm imagining once our baby comes along, we'll do something similar with the diapers.
In terms of diapers, I'm guessing we'll wind up going with a mixture of inexpensive/homemade prefolds and pricier fitted all-in-one diapers. Prefolds are what you think of as a typical "cloth diaper" like you might also use as a dusting cloth or general cleaning rag. (At least my mom always did.) You can make your own from flannel receiving blankets, and we've already tried that out with decent success. In terms of fitted cloth diapers (which are basically shaped like a disposable), BumGenius seems infinitely popular because it's all-in-one (doesn't require wool or plastic pants over the diaper) and one-size-fits-all (while many other fitted diapers require buying multiple sizes as the baby gets bigger, and so to us that seems like a great diaper to start out with. Prefolds will also fit all different sizes of baby, but do require a cover (or "soaker" as they're sometimes known) to prevent leaks.
A lot of people have mentioned the "ew" factor of dealing with baby poop when you cloth diaper, but honestly, you deal with it no matter what kind of diapers you use, so I would rather roll up my sleeves and get comfortable than dip my toes in halfway with disposables. And I'm pretty sure that breastfed baby poop is pretty darn tame compared with what I dealt with day in and day out working for seven years at a nursing home. Not to mention the fact that we're currently cloth-wiping ourselves without any problems to speak of.
I know lots of people also like to argue that cloth isn't any better for the environment because of the water it takes to wash it, but studies arguing that have inevitably been funded by--guess who?--THE DISPOSABLE DIAPER INDUSTRY. And as this comprehensive article notes, if that argument held water, shouldn't we ALL be wearing nothing but disposable clothes? It also points out that washing cloth diapers at home (as opposed to through a commercial diaper service) uses the equivalent amount of water as flushing the toilet five or six times a day--basically, what a toilet-trained child or adult would use. Disposable diapers, on the other hand, take a ridiculous amount of water and a dangerous amount of dioxin and other chemicals to manufacture, and several of their ingredients are suspected carcinogens. Not to mention the fact that they hang around in landfills for several thousand years--something cloth diapers don't do. Disposable diapers also put human waste into landfills, rather than through sewage treatment, which is an environmental hazard in and of itself.
Given all that, and our general pioneer spirits, we're pretty excited to cloth diaper our baby.
Matt used these directions and it worked flawlessly. It cost us $27 and took Matt about 20 minutes to do, as opposed to $39.95 plus shipping for a prefab one. We've switched back to cloth toilet wipes (by popular demand--while it was originally my idea to do it, Matt requested to bring them back after I did away with them during my first-trimester nausea and vomiting; he volunteered to do all of the toilet wipe maintenance--and he has) and so until the baby comes and we have diapers to rinse, we can always use it for rinsing out those.
Our system for toilet wipes these days, in case anyone is interested, involves homemade flannel wipes (thanks, Matt!) and a Diaper Champ we got off Freecycle. It sits next to the toilet and has a few inches of water and homemade laundry detergent in it. It works great and there's absolutely no odor involved. Used wipes go easily in there; when we start to get low on cloth wipes, we dump them out, spray them off, and boil them (in a giant aluminum wok we've designated solely for this purpose) along with some vinegar and washing soda. We boil them for 20-30 minutes to take care of any germs, then we run them through a regular wash and dry cycle. They always come out fresh as can be. I'm imagining once our baby comes along, we'll do something similar with the diapers.
In terms of diapers, I'm guessing we'll wind up going with a mixture of inexpensive/homemade prefolds and pricier fitted all-in-one diapers. Prefolds are what you think of as a typical "cloth diaper" like you might also use as a dusting cloth or general cleaning rag. (At least my mom always did.) You can make your own from flannel receiving blankets, and we've already tried that out with decent success. In terms of fitted cloth diapers (which are basically shaped like a disposable), BumGenius seems infinitely popular because it's all-in-one (doesn't require wool or plastic pants over the diaper) and one-size-fits-all (while many other fitted diapers require buying multiple sizes as the baby gets bigger, and so to us that seems like a great diaper to start out with. Prefolds will also fit all different sizes of baby, but do require a cover (or "soaker" as they're sometimes known) to prevent leaks.
A lot of people have mentioned the "ew" factor of dealing with baby poop when you cloth diaper, but honestly, you deal with it no matter what kind of diapers you use, so I would rather roll up my sleeves and get comfortable than dip my toes in halfway with disposables. And I'm pretty sure that breastfed baby poop is pretty darn tame compared with what I dealt with day in and day out working for seven years at a nursing home. Not to mention the fact that we're currently cloth-wiping ourselves without any problems to speak of.
I know lots of people also like to argue that cloth isn't any better for the environment because of the water it takes to wash it, but studies arguing that have inevitably been funded by--guess who?--THE DISPOSABLE DIAPER INDUSTRY. And as this comprehensive article notes, if that argument held water, shouldn't we ALL be wearing nothing but disposable clothes? It also points out that washing cloth diapers at home (as opposed to through a commercial diaper service) uses the equivalent amount of water as flushing the toilet five or six times a day--basically, what a toilet-trained child or adult would use. Disposable diapers, on the other hand, take a ridiculous amount of water and a dangerous amount of dioxin and other chemicals to manufacture, and several of their ingredients are suspected carcinogens. Not to mention the fact that they hang around in landfills for several thousand years--something cloth diapers don't do. Disposable diapers also put human waste into landfills, rather than through sewage treatment, which is an environmental hazard in and of itself.
Given all that, and our general pioneer spirits, we're pretty excited to cloth diaper our baby.
2 comments:
Save Trees? Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Get serious and add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: "if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn't wipe it off with paper, would you? You'd wash it off” Available at www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won't even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without felling guilty. It's cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You'll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. And after using one of these you won't know how you lasted all those years with wadded up handfuls of toilet paper. Now we're talking green and helping the environment without any pain.
Do you sing "Cheer Up, Charlie" while you stir your pot of laundry?
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