Fluff Frenzy

Photo Credit: Love and Whimsy Photography

I didn't know it was possible to become addicted to diapers. Cloth diapers, that is. We are in love with them! Who knew that cute prints and fluffy little bottoms would be something I didn't get tired of?

We've been "CDing" it (cloth diapering) for 7 weeks now and I love it even more than I did when we first started. There are some that would be skeptical about starting to cloth diaper, but let me expel some myths for you about cloth diapering.

1. "I'll have to use pins and old Birdseye cloth diapers. What a hassle, not to mention unflattering."

Nope. Truth is there are so many options out there for cloth diapering mommies and daddies now that it can actually be like trying to find a prom dress. They're all so cute, but which ones do I choose? We have a variety of cloth diapers to choose from, which I like. I'm glad we aren't an "all one system" family. My husband has his favorites and I have mine. Surprisingly, my favorites are prefolds! (These are the ones that are most similar to the cloth diapers our grandparents used. But the upgrade is no pins and they have the most adorable diaper covers for them!) My husband prefers the pocket diapers. These are diapers you can use just like a disposable, except they're reusable! Each night after the diapers are clean and dry, I stuff microfiber inserts into the pocket liners and then they're ready to use the next morning. You put them on baby just like a regular diaper! Diaper changes are fast and easy!

2. "I'll have to spend so much money up front. We just can't afford it."

Well, this might be somewhat true but not completely. When you figure in the cost of buying newborn diapers for the first month or two, you've about covered your cost. The beauty of cloth diapering is you spend it once and don't have to spend money again! (Unless you get sucked into buying more diapers because they're so cute...not that I do that...) Cloth diapering can be done as little as around $100, upwards to $400-500. It just depends on the system you choose. As I mentioned, we chose a mixture of diapers including all-in-ones, pockets, prefolds, and fitteds. To date, I spent around $300 total. That included about 24 different diapers, diaper creams, detergent, snappies and a wet bag. I would have spent this on disposables within the first two or so months.

3. "They'll be so messy. Eww. Can't deal with all the poo."

Seriously? Have you ever used a disposable? They are notorious for blowouts and leaks! Another great thing about cloth diapers is that they fit around your child better to contain blowouts and leaks. Unlike a disposable, cloth diapers have elastic in the back, containing blowouts and leaks better. And washing them is a breeze. Because Dominic is strictly breastfed, his dirty diapers are totally water soluble. At night, I just toss the whole wet bag of diapers in and wash up! No mess, no hassle. When he starts solids, I'll have a nifty little device called a diaper sprayer that will just spray the poo off into the toilet. No dunking and swirling required. And really, if you're afraid of poo, you might rethink being a parent if you haven't had kids yet. Poo is inevitable, as is spit up, vomit, and getting peed on. Get used to it.


4. "It's a total pain to wash all those diapers. And you're using up so much water!"
Wrong. It's easy. I actually look forward to doing my diaper laundry. I know that sounds strange since I dispise all other kinds of laundry. But doing fluffy laundry is fun! How can you deny that a full clothesline of diapers is stinkin' cute? And if we're talking about harming the environment, have you considered how many disposable diapers are just sitting in landfills, NOT breaking down? Billions! Sure, we use a little more water now that we're doing an extra load of laundry a day. But compared to the harm those disposables are doing in landfills, I think my conscience can rest happily knowing I'm not putting another diaper in our landfills.

Photo Credit: Love and Whimsy Photography

5. "They're not practical for out and about usage."
Sure they are! That's why amazing women (and men) around the globe have come up with new and improved cloth diapering systems that cater to busy parents. Packing up a few cloth diapers when I go out is no more impractical than carrying several disposables in a diaper bag. I have a little wet bag that I keep in my diaper bag that the used diaper can go into. Then I take it home and wash it up with the rest of the day's diapers. Now I realize that cloth diapering can intimate folks that are not used to it or have no experience with it. I haven't jumped ship entirely and abandoned disposables all together. If I were leaving my child in the church nursery, at this point, I'd probably send my baby in a disposable. But if it's just me, toolin' around town, we're CDing all the way! They're no more of a pain than changing a disposable and I can use my diapers all over again the next day!

As I stated in an earlier post about cloth diapering, we are not doing this entirely for the "green" reasons. Our driving force behind cloth diapering our son was to save money. Let's face it, times are tough and money's tight in a one income household. You've got to pinch pennies where you can. We've found that cloth diapering our baby is an easy and fun way to do this. I'm not against disposables for others. If that works best for you, go for it. But this system has been life changing for us and I wish I had figured CDing out earlier and had used them for Gabriel. We could have saved thousands of dollars, literally.

If you're throwing around the idea of CDing your babies, I'd encourage you to do a lot of research to figure out what system would work best for you. You might want to use a hybrid system like me, or maybe you've fallen in love with a particular brand. Give it a shot and try it out for a couple months. In the end, if you try it out and don't like it (which I haven't heard many that don't) you can always go back. All you've spent is a couple months worth of diapers. Check out great information websites like theclothdiaperwhisperer.com, kellyscloset.com, jackbenatural.com, and diaperjungle.com. These are just a few sites that have great information and are great places to purchase cloth. Or host a diaper party! I did this (see Febuary's posts for my experience with this), and loved it. It was so informative and allowed me to really decide what kind of system I'd want to invest in. Bottom line, consider it. My guess is you'll fall in love with it too. Then you may be trying to figure out how to come up with extra money to purchase more fluff for your baby...not that I do that either.

Totally Hooked on Cloth

So Dominic's arrival is just a couple of weeks away (or it could be tomorrow, who knows). As I've shared with you, we're getting ready to cloth diaper our little guy this time around and I am already completely sold out to cloth diapering without even trying it. I'm addicted to the cuter than cute fluff that is available for babies and the idea of saving THOUSANDS of dollars on diapers makes me giddy with glee!

This coming Monday, I'm hosting a Cloth Diapering party at my house and I'm so excited! Kristi Rooks from Hip Green Baby is coming to give demonstrations on how to use cloth diapers and give a run down on what options are available right now for cloth diapering families. Not only does she sell some of the major brands of cloth diapers (FuzziBunz, SoftBums, Kissaluvs, Thirsties, etc), she also makes her own. Now, you all know I'm a sucker for people that craft their own things, so her innovation and devotion to making her own cloth diapers to sell brings a smile to my face. WAY TO GO! I've got 6 other mommies that are going to be attending and I'm hoping that they're going to fall in love with cloth as much as I have.

So far, I've purchased 4 Fuzzibunz diapers, 3 Bum Genius 4.0's, and 1 Thirsties Diaper cover (planning on purchasing some prefolds from Kristi on Monday). I ordered all of these from Kellys Closet, an amazing cloth diapering online store and resource center. They also have a fantastic blog called The Cloth Diaper Whisperer that I've started following. One of the deals that the store had was that if you purchased $59 in cloth diapers, you could receive a FREE cloth diaper (up to a $22 value). Well, I was going to be purchasing my initial stash, so I said, "Sign me up!" When all my sweet fluff came in the mail a couple of weeks ago, inside was a Sunshine Yellow Rumparooz. SOOO CUTE! I'm also planning on purchasing some SoftBums diapers on Monday. I've already seen Kristi do a demonstration at another friends house and she's amazing. I was very impressed with how knowledgeable she was about cloth diapering. I also appreciated that she taught us about cloth diapering in such a way that the fear often associated with moving from disposables to cloth lessened a great deal. I can not wait to put Dominic in these diapers. I've actually been considering putting Gabriel in a cloth diaper at night and moving away from using disposables all together for him, especially since he only uses one a day.

Don't be surprised if my blog starts to have more cloth diapering posts. Eventually, I'm even going to start making my own wipes. I'm all about saving a buck and transitioning to this style of living is going to save us hundreds!

Cloth Diapering Adventure

In about 19 weeks, we're going to have a newborn again. Another adorable, chubby, sweet little boy! Just last Wednesday, I found out that Baby @#2 was going to be a boy. Which was surprising for both Michael and I, considering we were totally convinced this baby was going to be a girl. But it makes no difference to us. We can't wait to have a little guy with chubby legs, cute baby coos, soft baby skin....

However, we're not looking forward to little to no sleep, maybe getting in 2-3 showers a week, and loads of diapers.

When we had Gabriel, I always thought it would be "fun" to try cloth diapering. But I didn't think it was realistic for our family. Who has time to do laundry once a day or every other day, and ewww! Wouldn't it be gross? And what do you do when you're on the go? Aren't they super expensive?

Fast forward two and a half years with one child being in diapers. I think Huggies, Pampers, Costco, and now Target have made a small fortune on the amount of money I've spent on disposable diapers. Earlier this week, I had to go buy yet another package of diapers for Gabriel (as potty training is not going so well), and had a small heart attack when I realized how much per diaper I was spending lately. $.39 a diaper!!! Because I've got a football player in the making, my son has to wear a size 6, which is the biggest diaper they make. Which also means that I have to buy packages that contain the least amount of diapers for the same amount of money. After handing over my $15 to Target for my small box of "generic" diapers, I took a deep breath and affirmed myself that with this new baby we would be doing things differently.

My friend Lauren, who's also expecting, threw a cloth diaper party a couple of months ago and I was able to see all the different kinds of cloth diapering systems. Needless to say I was overwhelmed. But that wasn't going to turn me back to using disposables. So for the past few months, I've been researching all different kinds of diapering systems. Unfortunately, I still haven't made a decision on what we want to try. The initial investment for cloth diapering can really add up, spending close to $200-300 up front. But when you compare that to the amount of money spent on diapering a baby for two years with disposables, it's just a drop in the bucket. And, the benefits of cloth diapering as opposed to disposables are awesome too! Less diaper rash, no torn tabs, no more killing the environment. All I need to do now is make a decision on what few diapers I want to try before we take a huge plunge into a system. Here are a couple of the brands we're looking at pretty seriously. Any thoughts, suggestions, or experiences that you think would help us make an informed decision are welcome!

Soft Bums

Fuzzi Bunz

Thirsties

Sugar and Spice

I told myself that this summer was going to be the summer for projects. I have loads of things on my list, which I'll be sure to share throughout the summer. But the first project that I was ready to head up was organizing my spice cupboard.

Now I love to cook, but I often get frustrated because my cupboard is booby trapped. Where is Data from The Goonies when I need him? I have approximately 50+ spices and seasonings, so this organization is LONG over due.

Spices are crammed in there so tight I have to take
half the cupboard out before I can find what I need.
And look how ghetto I am! I have some spices in Ziplock bags.
This is to show how much was in that cupboard
and the varying sizes of everything.

I got the idea to tackle this from my friend Jenny (check out her blog, it's cool...). She was in the same predicament that I was. Lots of spices, all in different size bottles and lacking uniformity (something us perfectionists REALLY need). She did the leg work and found out that buying jars that would be cute and fun would cost approximately $2-3 a piece. Well, who has that kind of money to spend on spice jars? So she came up with a brilliant idea to re-use baby food jars! I had no idea what she was up to when she asked me to start saving Gabriel's old ones, but let's just say I was thoroughly impressed. She caught some great pictures of her results. Now, my pictures are not nearly as fancy or artistically taken as hers, but you get the point.

I used Goo Gone to get the sticky off the jars
(see my notes for a better way to do this)

Washed them several times to make sure they were sanitized.

This was about half of the jars I used.
I also used larger 6 oz jars for spices I had a bigger quantity of.
Clean Lids!

Spray painting the lids with chrome paint and polyurethane.

I decided to use a polyurethane to seal the lids but it's so important
to let this dry fully before you try to use them.
(I got a little impatient and left finger prints on some of my lids)
Look at how cute my jars turned out!
You can hand write the labels like Jenny did
(which she has fantastic handwriting!),
or you can cheat and print them off like me!

FINISHED PRODUCT!! I feel so fancy now!
Don't they look pretty? I love how the colors look against one another.
My new cupboard!

Couple of things that I wish I had done differently (if you think of doing this yourself):

1. No matter how anxious or excited you are about finishing up, WAIT FOR THE PAINT TO DRY! It's worth it to wait.

2. If you are able to get a hold of jars with the label still attached, keep them on there and soak them overnight in a soapy bath. Then use your fingernail or a razor blade to take the sticky off. I used the Goo Gone which worked until it dried, then I realized I had smeared the glue everywhere. It was a pain to take off.

3. I would still like to find some thing recyclable that goes with my theme to put my extracts and my shakers in.

That's it! I'm so happy with how they turned out! My life is just a little more organized now, which is always a special blessing! I think it turned out really well. And the spices look so pretty in there. It feels so good to be recycling used things and I think the total cost for me was $2 for a can of spray paint. That beats $2-3 a jar and they look just as nice. If you need a place to get jars b/c you don't have any kiddos leaving you with a large amount of them, check out your local Freecycle (this is where I got more jars). More likely than not, some mommy is saving hers and would be happy to give them to you.

Now, all I have to do if I run out of a spice is head to Central Market and just buy the spice in the quantity I need, no wasting of a plastic jar! Go Green and try to organize by using recyclable products. :) Next up, painting the living room!