What I'm Up To

Hello! It has been way too long (again) since my last post but I'm back! Thankfully my baby has been sleeping for the past few weeks and I'm getting back into the swing of normal life. I have several goals for this month, which are as follows:

Work out regularly. So far so good on this one. I'm still struggling a bit with getting back into my running routine but hopefully I can figure that part out too.

Participate in the 4th Annual Flats Challenge. The challenge starts one week from today and I'm excited to participate for the second time. I did it in 2012 and enjoyed it. Last year, we were getting ready to move and I was 7 months pregnant so I sat that one out. The flats challenge requires that you use flats throughout the day and try to use them at night as well, and that you hand wash all diapers that are used for a week. I adore our Blueberry bamboo flats and use them most of the time on my baby although I tend to use different diapers for overnight. So our night diapers will be a little different than our usual routine. And handwashing will obviously be a little different from our usual routine too. I am excited to participate again, though, as my first experience was very eye-opening! First of all, I was reminded just how versatile flats are for any cloth diapering mama. Second, I discovered that handwashing wasn't nearly as tedious or awful as I somehow imagined. I have no doubt that I will learn new things with this challenge as I will have 1.25 kids in diapers (my oldest is nearly potty trained but he still wears cloth trainers or diapers at nap and nighttime). I will be doing several posts next week on this topic so you will be able to see how it is going :-)

Continue to clean up my diet. I have been working on my diet and tracking calories in an effort to lose weight. I was doing great until I got sick a couple weeks ago. I had even dropped a few pounds and fit into my skinny jeans - woo hoo!! Anyway, the scale has crept a little in the other direction in the past few days but I have continued to watch my calories. What I have discovered is that my diet/calories are great through the week but I just wreck it every weekend. I plan to rectify that going forward. A little cheat/wiggle room here and there is fine, but I am focused on eating better through my weekends as well going forward. I'm hopeful this will help me reach my fitness and size goals.

Finally, I'm thrilled that it is FINALLY spring! I'm excited to get outside more with my kids. We have been taking lots of walks and going to the park but I'm looking forward to doing lots more in the coming weeks as well.

Flats Challenge: Day 4

We're 4* days into the Flats Challenge and going strong! Truthfully, it's going significantly better than I ever expected.  We've still had just one leak (we're still not using flats overnight, either).  I've been pleasantly surprised at how well they are working for us. And I am thinking I just may leave them out and continue using them, for around the house if nothing else. Also, the hand-washing isn't nearly as bad as I'd expected it would be.  Sure, it's time-consuming and I'm doing it every day, but it really isn't bad. I have plenty of diapers but washing a day's worth of diapers and covers takes about 20 or so minutes. And washing and rinsing IS work. I definitely feel like I'm getting a good workout for my arms.  But it is all manageable.  I've been fortunate that I've been able to put everything outside to dry the past few days, too.  I have a clothesline in my laundry room for indoor drying too, but I really love to dry diapers outside.  The sun bleaches stains and UV rays work to help sanitize them - both of these things amaze me.  A clothesline is a cloth diapering mama's best friend! I've been shocked at how quickly the flats dry, too. They are completely dry after a couple hours in the sun on these breezy days. The covers dry very quickly as well.

I have discovered that not everything is rosy about hand-washing. Namely, pocket diapers are definitely harder to get clean than flats and covers. But they have still come cleaner than I expected they would. I may have a couple more stains than I would normally have they look pretty darn good.  I also have to work on them a little more, though. I'm also finding that it takes our overnight diapers a long time to dry (we use a Flip organic insert and a Flip stay-dry insert).  They seem heavier than normal when I hang them up to dry, so I assume I'm just not getting the extra water out of them like my washer does. If I were doing this long-term, I'd probably try rolling these in a clean, dry towel to get the extra water out. But I'm too lazy to do anything else at this point...they're just taking a couple hours longer to dry than they usually would.

All in all, I'm feeling much more confident about recommending and using flats. We'll see how I feel after another couple days ;-)

*If you've read the official challenge information, you've seen that it just started yesterday and goes through next Sunday. Since we have plans for the long weekend, I opted to start two days earlier and will stop the  challenge this Friday. I'm still getting my full week in, but didn't want to mess with the project while traveling and enjoying the holiday.

Flats Challenge: Day 2, Laundry

Today's the day that I've been anxious about - laundry day.  In general, laundry has always been the scariest part of cloth diapering.  Buying cute little diapers and putting them on my baby is easy! Most people who have never tried them are terrified of the poop, but even that isn't bad. (Really, cleaning it off the baby is almost always the worst part.) Anyway, I digress. The host blog for the Flats Challenge is Dirty Diaper Laundry. This is the second time they hosted this event and they have several resources posted on their blog, including a tutorial for building a camp style washer. After watching their YouTube tutorial, I was convinced that the bucket washer was definitely worth the $12 or so it would cost me.  So off I went to buy a 5-gallon bucket with a lid and a toilet plunger. Basically, you drill a hole in the lid of your bucket which will allow the handle of the plunger to fit through it. Then, you can drill holes in the plunger itself but this is considered optional (from everything I've read, this is well worth the time and energy it takes). Apparently, if you don't drill holes in the plunger, it will suction to the bottom of the bucket pretty strongly.  Since I've used a plunger for its intended purpose, I decided to trust the online recommendations to drill the holes.  Here are a few pictures of my finished product:

I think the bucket is pretty self-explanatory - you put the diapers (or whatever you're washing) in it with some soap and water and seal the lid, then plunge away!  I have been taking them out and hand-rinsing once they've agitated and soaked in the soapy water (I'm using our rarely-used, extra bathtub for this project.) . All in all, I've been pretty pleased with how clean the diapers appear to be getting from hand-washing.  Here's an example of a once-poopy pocket diaper after it was cleaned in the bucket washer:

There's a slight stain, but as any mama, cloth diapering or not, would tell you, poop frequently stains.  After they're all washed and rinsed, I hang the diapers on the line outside to dry (please ignore my ugly propane tank in this photo - there are a few things about country living that aren't beautiful and serene and this is one of them).

In my next post, I'll update you all on how this challenge is going, from diapering to the hand-washing.

Flats Challenge: Day 1

Flats Challenge Rules (summarized):

• Use flats for one week
• Doublers or additional inserts can be added
• They can be used in pockets
• The flats and everything used to diaper baby must be hand-washed

Well, we survived our first day of the Flats Challenge! I was sick with allergy issues yesterday, so that made this experiment extra "challenging".  I bought flats and tried them a few months back. They are so economical and easy to care for that I really wanted to love them, but they weren't the right tool for us. Still, they are so cheap and versatile, I hung onto them. They are great for cleaning (mopping, cleaning glass, soaking up messes, etc). They are also much easier to get clean since they're so thin, and they line-dry quickly. And they're cheap! You could, theoretically, diaper a baby from birth to potty-training for less than $200 using these and some basic covers like the Thirsties Duos. These virtues make them ideal for many budget-minded mamas. And many other mamas get them for camping or mission work, where resources are scarce.

Typically, "flats" are simply one big piece of birdseye cotton or flannel. We have a couple dozen Diaper Rite large flats which I'm using this week, which are birdseye cotton. We also have a couple dozen small flats which I have kept for diapering a future baby as a newborn.  I bought ours at Diaper Junction for $22 per dozen (the small flats are cheaper). I originally purchased flats thinking I could stuff our pocket diapers with them but they can be used folded in a variety of ways too.  Since they are just cotton, a cover must always be used to create a waterproof barrier.

Here is a picture of a flat and some covers we like:

This is a large flat, completely unfolded and two of our covers. We use Blueberry Coveralls, Flips and Swaddlebees Capri covers but we usually use Flip organic inserts in them. We also use pocket diapers for daycare, grandparents, sitters, etc. I also greatly prefer the pockets when A is having tummy issues...they're much easier to clean poo out of. I like the simplicity of pad-folding the flats and using them in the covers.  So, for this project, we really are just substituting a flat for a Flip organic insert...pretty easy!

Here is a picture of the pad-folded flat in the cover, ready for A to use:

Again, we use these covers with a similar system on a daily basis. I greatly prefer covers with the flaps built into them (our Blueberry Coveralls do not have these but they are great for nighttime).  The flaps just hold the diaper in place nicely.

As I mentioned before, you can also fold flats in a variety of different ways and put them on the baby in that way. Here's an example of the flat folded into an origami fold:

This fold (and most others besides the pad-folded flat) require using pins or a snappi to attach the diaper to the baby. Truthfully, I don't have the time and patience to fold diapers like this all day, nor to master the skill of getting them on my squirmy, active baby. But I have to say that they look pretty cool!

Anyway, our first day was fairly uneventful.  Flats aren't as absorbent as our standby, the Flip organic inserts, so I have to change A every 2 hours or we're risking a leak.  A seems to pee more than the average kid, though and these really work great for many kiddos.  I'm finding that these work better now than they were a few months ago (likely b/c A is eating more solids and drinking less milk than he was).  We made it through with one little leak (mama pushed over the 2 hour mark). Otherwise, they worked better than I'd remembered from a few months back.  I also did not use them overnight (which I'm supposed to do). My plan was to use our usual Flip organic insert with a flat (we usually use a Flip Stay-Dry), all in a cover.  But the flat was bulkier than the Stay-Dry and I just couldn't get a good fit. I knew we were destined for a crying kid with wet sheets. And sleep is worth more to me than this project. So, he got his usual solution, but I'm hand-washing it with our flats and other daytime solutions.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about the scary part of this experiment - the whole hand-washing thing.