Mother's going GREEN Day 64 - Cloth Diapers and Vacation

As those of you already know from reading my blog on a regular basis, I use cloth diapers on my baby and love them. Deciding to go on vacation brought on a challenge of keeping the cloth diapers clean. Although I probably could find a laundromat near the hotel I am staying in - did I really want to spend every second evening washing diapers after a fun filled day which would probably leave me exhausted? What about the film of 'bad' detergent left behind in those washers and driers? And I do not think I could trust the hotel laundry service to use a natural detergent. You see one of the things with cloth diapers is you do need to wash them with care and with a natural detergent in order for them to retain their absorbency...

Hence, for our vacation I opted to go with a disposable diaper. Now not any disposable diaper would do. My babies bum has been chemical free for sometime now and I hated the thought of placing a 'disposable diaper' on her bottom. My search began for a 'natural disposable' diaper. I did find a few out there Seventh Generation and Nature Babycare to name a couple. I choose to go with Nature Babycare. The packaging is 100% biodegradable. The diaper is too. Now I know that is not 100% accurate of anything as it still finds its way into a landfill where the conditions are not quite right for it to degrade as it should, but at least it is a possibility and made from all natural ingredients and is cholrine free.

To read more on this diaper and the company behind it, visit: http://www.naty.com/.

Okay, so I am cheating on my cloth diapers but only for a few days..... I will be back to them as soon as I get home.

Mother's going GREEN Day 43 - Drying our Clothes

Again, you may note that I am posting a day later for day 43. Internet is still intermittent - but I see crews in the neighbourhood working to get it fixed. Today I post for Tuesday July 8, 2007.

As I had noted in an earlier post on Day 29 - Greening your Laundry - sunshine is the best way to dry your clothes. I also mentioned that my husband probably would not be open to the idea of hanging our clothes outside to dry. How things change in a few days.

On Monday - the same day our power went out - well our dryer broke too... It is still under warranty thank goodness and we are waiting for a repair man to come and have a look at it. Until then those cloth diapers still need to be washed and dried - so by default my husband has no option than to have them drying outside. I set up a nice little area on our front deck (it gets the most sun) and it is not visible from the street - just a visual bonus. My husband was impressed by the set up and announced "Hey, why don't we dry all our clothes outside on a sunny day - they will smell so good and we can save energy. Now that's something for your blog" Sometimes we (wives & women) just have to let them think it was their idea while we are already 3 steps ahead. So it was decided drying our clothes outside - weather permitting. Victory for mother earth.

Now let me tell you how impressed I was with drying the diapers in the wonderful sunlight.... words just can't express my amazement. One of the blogs I read regularly: Jolly Good AND Green suggested that sunshine is probably the best natural bleach out there and she goes on to explain how the stains came out of her babies diapers by hanging in the sun. I had to try. Cloth diapers get stained - you wash them and they are clean but stained. Yes throw in some natural oxygen bleach - but they are still a little stained. Put them in the sun to dry and those stains that you thought would never come out are GONE. Yes gone completely gone - not a hint of a stain even on the badly stained diapers. Just gone. If you don't believe me just try it yourself. It is miraculous - IT IS THE POWER OF THE SUN.

Mother's going GREEN Day 7 - My take on Cloth Diapers

On Sunday (yesterday) was our first official day of cloth diapers. I thought I would leave my comments on them for today as now I can comment based on experience.

I LOVE THEM !!!! Truly and honestly they are great. I have had two kids in disposables for a 21/2 years each and would have never ever thought of making the switch to cloth. They are easy and slim fitting (and really now that is all I can say about them). I want to say they are disposable, but when you think of how long it takes for a single diaper to compose (they say up to 500 years), is it really disposable.

Cloth diapers are great - no more complicated than a disposable to put on to a baby. There are no pins like in the days way back when. If you plan to wash your diapers every second day then you do not need to put them in a pail to soak and deal with that yucky mess. What about the poop you say - well with disposables and especially in young breastfed babies as my youngest is. Their bowel movement are so runny that I was always having to rinse my child's clothes as the disposables always leaked no matter what. My baby has had 4 bowel movements and not once did the cloth leak onto her clothes. Okay so now I am dealing with a poopy diaper instead of poopy clothes.

I have only one con for the cloth diapers - well it makes my baby's bum look so much bigger - yes they are quite bulky compared to disposables.

I realize that there is still some debate out there as to weather cloth is more environmentally friendly compared to disposables.... This is how I see it:

• Cloth have no dangerous chemicals in them (both good for my baby and the environment). Disposables have bleaching agents, and chemicals that are linked to toxic shock syndrome. Those chemicals are not good for the environment or my baby. It also these chemicals that lead to diaper rash (skin irritation) Cloth diapers are less likely to cause a rash.


• Cloth diapers will last as long as your baby is in diapers and for future babies you may have, saving the environment and your bank account. Disposables well they are expensive and take forever to decompose. Since I plan not to have any more children, I am already thinking that these cloth diapers will make the best cleaning rags ever.


• Washing cloth diapers is said to use up as much energy as flushing the toilet 5 times in a day. If this little baby was going to the toilet then we would be flushing it 5 times a day.


• Furthermore Treehuggers.com They say that cloth diapers has a 53% ecological footprint of that of disposables. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/how-to-green-your-baby.php and since my goal is to reduce our family's footprint I am sticking with cloth.

For more websites debating cloth or disposable (although it seems cloth wins) visit:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/12/ecotip_nappies.php

http://www.ec.gc.ca/envirozine/english/issues/45/any_questions_e.cfm

AS FOR ME I GIVE CLOTH DIAPERS THE FULL GO AHEAD AND GLAD I MADE THE SWITCH FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND MY BABY !!!!!