I was surprised at how much I actually liked my flats. My son pees a lot when he goes and they certainly aren't our best option as I ended up with a couple leaks during the week. I have to change A every two hours on the dot when using a single large flat or I am tempting fate and risking leaks. Still, I am convinced that my son is a heavy wetter (the term cloth diapering mamas give to kids who pee more than average). We use heavier duty diapers for day-to-day which work great but I believe that flats would work well for most babies, including mine, if I didn't have the resources to buy other diapers. If I used flats daily, I would definitely use something else as a doubler for him, such as small flats, flour sack towels, preemie or newborn prefolds, etc. As I've mentioned before, flats are extremely economical so I was very pleased to discover how versatile and easy they are to use. It excites me to think that many mamas truly could diaper their baby from birth to potty training on a very limited budget!
I was also very surprised that hand washing wasn't that bad. Don't get me wrong, I still use my fancy washing machine and I have a whole new appreciation for it. (I know I'm a spoiled mama!) But hand washing in my camp bucket was very doable. I think it could be done long-term but one would really have to be dedicated. And it did take me 20-30 minutes a day to hand-wash the diapers and covers and hang them to dry. Finding the time for hand washing was certainly the toughest part of the challenge. It also was physical work to wash the diapers. If I did this all the time, I would definitely have some buff arms! I frequently hang my machine-washed diapers to dry, inside or out so the time spent hanging them and taking them down didn't faze me. Line-drying is a great way to decrease your utility bill and, when dried outside, the sun keeps your diapers fresher, helps sanitize them and gets rid of many stains.
There were several things I learned from hand-washing, which included the following:
- Flats truly are the easiest diapers to wash by hand. They are very thin and you can really move water through them, which is important for getting a diaper clean. They will also dry very quickly since they're thin. Thicker diapers can also be hand-washed and it isn't the end of the world (I hand washed Flip organic inserts during the challenge without any issue). Sure they require a little more work (which would, admittedly, get old if I were doing this every day with no known respite). Yet, it wasn't a big deal for just one overnight diaper a day. If I were hand washing every day, flats would certainly be my diaper of choice, though. They're so thin that it's easy to move water through them and really get them clean. Plus, they dry super-fast! I definitely can't argue the drying point with my Flip organics, which took 3-4 times as long to dry.
- The camp-style washer was/is worth it's weight in gold. It got the diapers so much cleaner than I expected and I didn't have to touch them while washing! The fact I didn't literally wash them by hand meant that I could use our hottest water too, which I prefer to do when washing diapers.
- I only needed a teeny bit of detergent to wash. I used my regular detergent (original liquid Tide) and I quickly learned that I was using way too much. Rinse, rinse, rinse. We also have soft water, so I really should have known better. Still, lesson learned.
- Again, it really wasn't that bad! If I didn't have power or my washer was out of commission for a few days, I wouldn't hesitate to grab my flats and use this system for diapering.
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