Flats and Handwashing Challenge Day 1 and Day 2 combined!

Wow it's been awhile since I've blogged anything...craaazzyy! life kind of got in the way. But I'm kicking off a new goal to actually keep up with blogging! To start off we have joined into the 3rd Annual Flats and Hand washing Challenge this year.

I missed posting yesterday (sorry it was the long weekend up here in Canada and we were off hanging out with family with little internet access :D) So today is a catch up of yesterday and today.

We started off smoothly yesterday, Little Bug (surprise to those of you who followed me before, we have baby #3 but I digress!) cooperated and didn't poop. He went easy on mommy to start with...not so much today haha! Anyways yesterday's topic was why did I take the challenge?

Little Bug in his first ever flat, and the first I've used in almost 6 years!

Well... because I'm crazy...at least that's what Lemur Daddy says ;) To put this in perspective I have been cloth diapering for almost 6 years straight now. When I started cloth diapering we didn't have a lot of money and my mom started me out with flats and plastic pants. Oh I hated flats and plastic pants with a passion and eventually found my way to easier options. But thinking back on it, flats were the easiest available and cheapest option for our situation. I am very passionate about all things birth and baby so I wanted to show people that you don't need to spend tons of money or necessarily have laundry facilities etc to do cloth. I have my diaper stash that I love, and will always love but a week of flats and hand washing I think will do me a world of good. I get to go back to basics, and all the while maybe make a difference and change someone's perspective of how "hard" cloth is. Also I'm hoping that I learn a thing or two along the way!


So Day 2 is all about Preparation and Supplies:

Like I said I have an amazing stash ;) seriously some day I will post pics of our stash but today is about my flats stash. I had absolutely NO flats at all when I decided to do this challenge. So instead of going online and ordering a bunch (shipping to Canada can sometimes be crazy!) I decided to try to show how you can do it in a pinch or if you don't have access to actual flats.


My stash consists of:

2 flannel receiving blankets
6 ikea burp cloths
6 tea towels
2 snappis (already in my stash)
2 wool wrap covers (already in my stash)
A few wool longies/soakers (already in my stash)
1 night time fitted from our stash as we can't part with our night time system that works so well for us!


I started by putting out a call on my local free cycle group for towels and old receiving blankets. I got a couple receiving blankets and a stack of kitchen towels- cost to me: price of gas to pick them up! essentially free in some cases as friends dropped them off.

Then I discovered the Ikea burp cloths and they were cute...I'm a sucker for cute diapers even if they aren't going to be seen much. So I HAD to have some. Now we don't have an Ikea here which is a bit Lame but that's ok. I got a wonderful friend in a city a couple hours from me to pick some up on her way down. Ikea "flats" come in packs of 2 for $4.99. I have 3 packs so cost was- approx $15.

The snappis were already in my stash but they are relatively inexpensive to order online. I think they probably cost me $2-$3 for the 2 of them from a really sweet Mama. Now I did also find pins at the dollar store (I don't get along with pins so no pins for me!)

Covers were a doozy for me...they are probably the most expensive but that's because I love wool and we only use wool. I didn't buy any specifically for this challenge I have tons already in my stash. You don't need to use wool, PUL or fleece covers work well too. If you do choose to use wool, and can knit you can pick up just a cheap ball of 100% wool at any craft store, grab some knittng needles and a free pattern off of ravelry and make your own. Technically for this challenge the cost to me was $0 on my covers but for the tally of things I'll say we use 2 covers that cost $30 each as you really only need 2-3 covers to make it work. So total cost: $60

In total for the challenge I spent $15.00 since my stash already had lots of what I needed. If I had to buy everything my total cost would still be less then $100 ($78) not including soap and a clothes line that you could pick up at the dollar store.

Our Ikea "flats" and one of our Snappi's cute huh? 

Wind Wind Go Away...

So a typical day here usually includes some sort of wind...and I'm not talking about a little breeze, I'm talking gale force winds! Today happens to be one of those horribly windy days...with good weather comes the wind, it's the curse of the Canadian Rockies Chinook *sigh* so that cancels our trip outside to the park with our friends today. Instead we will be doing mountains and mountains of laundry and on my less than 6 hours of sleep I felt inspired and compelled to share my homemade laundry soap with you. We make our laundry soap in a powder form (you can make it into a liquid if you so choose) and it works great plus its cheap and not too chemically :) so here's the recipe:

4 litres of water (warm so that powders dissolve better)
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
1/4 cup baking soda
I use about 1/2 cup per load. I mix it before I use it each time.

I also occassionally use oxyclean on the whites.

We don't dissolve it in water and we add about 1-2 tbsp in with the wash on a cold wash cycle. Although we don't use this on our cloth diapers, we use Dr. Bonner's Pure Castille Soap as the borax can break down the PUL in diapers.

Just for fun! What do you use for your laundry? If you make your own soap please do share your recipe! Leave me some tips or funny laundry stories :)

Freecycling

Well its the first week of November and I have great news already! We found a place to live so now its just packing and cleaning and downsizing. Which brings me to my topic of the day! Freecycling!! Freecycling has to be one of my favorite things of all times. For those of you who are unfamiliar with freecycle basically its a group of people who's goal is to pass along unwanted/unused items for free to other people to keep them out of the landfills. As long as its something in good working order someone out there might want it. You don't even have to have face to face contact with anyone. You can leave your items on your step and they'll just come and get it. I love freecycle, we have received several awesome items such as a high chair and umbrella stroller from freecycle. We have also gotten rid of a bunch of stuff that was sitting around in our basement and we will be getting rid of so much more in the next few weeks. So next time you have something you want to get rid of (like that ugly lamp that you were given for a wedding gift) don't throw it out, look for your local freecycle group and offer it there...who knows someone might actually need or want it!

It's November...the count down is on

Well its offical, Halloween is done with! now on to....Christmas! In the midst of everything else that will be going on. But first we must get through moving...I can't tell you how much I hate moving. All the packing, stacks of boxes, frantic search for a new place to rent and not getting what we want, plus cleaning, dealing with a baby and a toddler...argh! Can I say stress? So the official hunt is on and we're counting down. We've seen a couple places already but they haven't been quite "right" so we'll keep looking and looking and looking...eventually something will come up. Gotta love the start of the month! But at least I get to start thinking about Christmas. I've made an executive decision to minimize the amount of presents we buy people this year (we have to buy gifts for 15+ people normally) and if they can't be made with items we have on hand or can get for cheap then well it's probably not happening. We're only going to buy for the kids if need be. We are planning on making a play kitchen out of recycled materials for L for Christmas. But it hasn't been started yet...someone procrastinates...We also might head up to Ikea and buy a few items for the kitchen for him. But I'm asking all the family to buy him kitchen items and playfood (felt, crocheted or wood would be awesome). And little A has her presents already, I've been picking things up through the year, she's getting the 25th anniversary edition of the Cabbage Patch Doll. I got her one that looks like her a little bit. It's cute and its the classic one which I love. Christmas has to be my other favorite time of the year, I can't wait to dig out the Christmas Music, decorations, and recipes!

Why Cloth?

I get asked this question so many times...My answer is very dependant on the person who asked the question as it leads to more questions or comments from eeewwww that's disgusting! to Isn't that alot of extra work? But I will share my reasons for cloth diapering with you.

Why Do I cloth diaper my children?

Well first and foremost I guess its the cost factor, we are on a very tight budget, and using cloth diapers with two children in diapers definately saves us around $200 a month not having to buy boxes of disposable diapers and wipes because we went through alot of diapers and we were buying boxes every two weeks at least. Don't get me wrong, cloth diapers have a significant start up cost, but for us in the long run they were the cheaper alternative.

It's also the green factor! I can reuse cloth diapers over and over again, and use them for more then one child, plus they aren't filling up the landfill. And with cloth diapers I know that there aren't a bunch of weird chemicals against their skin.

The Cuteness factor- cloth diapers are cute! not only are the cloth diaper bums super cute, but the diapers themselves are adorable. I have diapers that match outfits, diapers just because they are cute, A has a Tinkerbell diaper just because I love Tink and L has a pirate diaper and darn that one is adorable!

What about Convenience? Isn't it a pain to cloth diaper when you go out? What about ALL that extra laundry?

A lot of people think that cloth is more inconvenient because you need to wash and dry diapers all the time. In a household with two children in diapers, we only need to wash diapers every other day, that’s one extra load of laundry added to the laundry we are already doing. And besides if you run out of diapers you just throw them in the washer. You don’t have to worry about running out to the store to buy more when you suddenly run low. (and believe me in the middle of winter with 3 feet of snow on the ground and a blizzard outside you can be VERY grateful that all you need to do is throw a load of laundry in!) Cloth is also just as convenient for going out of the house as well. With products available like travel sized wet bags and bio-degradable diaper liners, cleaning up a diaper in public is a breeze!

Little A in a Goodmama Dipe!