Thursday, April 30, 2009

Diaper Care

I came across this article this morning. http://blogs.consumerreports.org/baby/2009/04/how-to-care-for-cloth-diapers.html

It occurred to me that caring for diapers has become more complicated than it needs to be. Honestly, some of this information was not correct. For example, it says to test your diaper by putting water on it and checking to see if it beads up and if it does wash it again. However it fails to mention that with any stay dry material ( ie. Fleece, microfleece, suedecloth) it will ALWAYS appear to bead up so you’d be doing a lot of washing! Stay dry materials are used in many modern diapers and in all of the top 3 major brands and definitely deserve mentioning.

I am going to love being able to give the easy instructions for Smartipants!

I also get disturbed at the promotion of wet pails. Honestly it wastes more water and can be a hazard with a baby or small child in the house. It is no more helpful with stains than line drying your diapers in the sun. Avoid the risk and waste of the water and store in dry pail. If you really need to rinse your diapers then use a diaper sprayer! Very convenient.

When it comes to washing start simple and if you are having trouble with additives and a complicated washing routine then go back to basics!

Wash, rinse dry. Use a detergent that won’t leave residue and if you get stains put your diaper out in the sun-it takes out stains like magic! This also works great on clothing stained with baby food. Just wash and hang to dry in the sun.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Benefits of Cloth Diapers

Frugal Moms use Cloth Diapers to Save Money

I found this article today http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30330852/

I really felt this was a good accurate article and presented modern cloth diapers in a positive light.

I definitely understand the mom who says cloth seems “ick” and it makes me smile to know our new design would really benefit her! No mom I know wants to deal with poop, they just do because they have to. Reducing that as much as possible makes our innovative new design something that will really benefit these moms.

I giggled at the mom who said she washed her child’s poopy clothes separately! I don’t wash poopy diapers together with my other clothes. I have a specific system set up and enough diapers to wash every few days and have the diaper load go in a load by itself. Most cloth moms do it that way. I also laughed because in cloth we have poopy diapers, in disposables she’s washing poopy clothes I guess that tosses the theory of cloth being wasteful of water out the window. This mom quoted in the article actually washes her sons clothes that have poop on them as the result of leaky disposables separately meaning she tosses the diaper into a landfill AND THEN proceeds to use the same amount of water I use to wash my diapers to wash her sons poopy clothes! So we use the same amount of water and energy but one of us creates no no additional waste in the process-just saying!

I really love that our innovative new diaper will solve a few of the problems some mothers present as reasons they might not choose cloth diapers. I also love that cloth is finally being presented in the media as a viable money saving option and that they are presenting modern designs and not plastic pants and pins. Overall I enjoyed the article, what did you think?