Archive | flat folds

Flats and Handwashing Challenge Day 4: Wring, Wring, Wring

May 24, 2012 By Melissa

It’s Day 4 of the Flats and Handwashing Challenge! The 450+ of us participating are over half-way through our week long commitment to use flat diapers, with no washer or dryer. If you are just joining us and wondering what it’s all about, you can read more details here.

Today the bloggers participating are sharing how we are doing, and what our thoughts are on handwashing so far. I know I’ve giving some daily updates about that as well. I will start by saying the Challenge feels easier than it did last year. I think there are two reasons for that.

For one thing, I’m only cloth diapering one child this time, not two. That makes a big difference in the amount of flats used (and therefore washed!), especially since I was having to use two flats at each change to get enough absorbancy for my 2 year old. That also means I’m less stressed about how quickly they dry. I came very close to running out several times last year.

Another reason the Challenge is easier this year is because I’ve done it before. Last year I spent a lot of the Challenge just trying to find my groove and figure out how on earth to get my diapers clean. By the end of the week I had finally found a system that worked well, and I’ve been able to use that from the get-go this time.

So what’s my system?

Rinse each diaper immediately after diaper change.

I find this helps a lot with stink issues, and means I don’t have to agitate as long to get them clean. My arms thank me!

Wet pail

This was suggested by a few people last year, and it really does seem to make a huge difference. As soon as I finish rinsing the diaper, I drop it into the rubbermaid container I wash in, which I leave sitting in my tub all day. I have just enough water in there to cover the diapers, and I put a little bit of baking soda in there, too. I make sure to keep the bathroom door shut to keep my toddler away from it, but I already do that to keep him from playing in the toilet. He has a thing for water. Ugh. Oh, and I do not soak the covers. I wash them out by hand immediately and hang them up to dry.

Hot wash

When I get ready to wash, I pour out the cold water and fill the rubbermaid back up with hot water. I add just a little bit of soap (its hard not to use to much!), and then agitate the diapers for a bit with my hands.

Soak

I let the diapers soak in the warm water for about 20-30 minutes. The amount of time varies depending on what else I’m doing!

Agitate

I agitate again for awhile, and then I sniff the diapers to be sure they smell clean. If they do, I move onto the next step. If not, I keep agitating, or let them sit for awhile longer.

Rinse

I pour everything out of the rubbermaid, rinse the rubbermaid out, and add a bit more water to it. I rinse each diaper out under the faucet, and then put it back in the rubbermaid. I agitate everything again for awhile, and then pour the water back out. Then I just rinse each diaper individually under the faucet, wetting and squeezing until I either don’t see any bubbles, or not very many (depending on how tired I am!).

Wring

Then comes my least favorite step, and that’s trying to wring as much water as possible out of the diapers so they will dry quickly. I tend to fold them in half and then twist and twist and twist as much as I can. I tried wearing my rubber gloves for this step, but it tended to cause even more rubbing on my hands, so I do it with my bare hands now. I’m working on some good blisters…

This is about 20 minutes after washing, so the redness is starting to calm down. But it's still sore.

Hang dry

I’ve been doing this step in my basement the entire challenge. Washing at night seems to work best for me, so I can’t really line dry outside.

So how am I doing?

Pretty good. Last time by this point in the Challenge, I was completely exhausted, and couldn’t wait for it to be over. But this time around I’m doing a lot better. If I needed to keep doing this for several more weeks, I could. But I’d have much stronger arms, and some serious callouses! It is hard. It is another demand on my time at the end of a long day, when I would much rather sit and read a book, watch some tv, or catch up on blog posts. But if my family needed me to do this so we could get by, I would. And if it was this or re-using disposable diapers? I would do it in a heartbeat.

I think I would be a lot more motivated to learn about Elimination Communication, though! It can’t be a coincidence that in many places where women still handwash on a regular basis, EC is widely practiced.

On another note, I found my pins, so I’ve been playing with folds again. Check out my smiling model!

I actually got Nehemiah to hold still long enough to let me take a quick picture! Receiving blanket flat in the airplane fold I mentioned in yesterday's post!

Be sure to check out the other great posts to find out how everyone else is making it, and what they think about handwashing!

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Flats and Handwashing Challenge Day 3: The Versatile Flat

May 23, 2012 By Melissa

It’s Day 3 of the Flats and Handwashing Challenge. Four more days left of using just flats, and no washer and dryer! There are over 450 of us participating to bring awareness to just how economical cloth diapering can be, and the fact that its something anyone can do, even with limited resources. To read more details about the Challenge, check out the announcement post at Dirty Diaper Laundry!

Personally the challenge is still going ok. I made it to bed after 11pm last night, but all my diapers had been washed, wrung out, and hung up to dry in my basement. They were all damp this morning when I first got up, but by 9am or so I had a few dried out enough they could be used. I think tonight I am going to experiment with placing a fan down there and see if that helps them dry faster. Also, the birds-eye flats dry much faster than the receiving blankets.

Diapers line drying in my basement. I just strung some twine wherever I could, and it gave me enough room to dry about 2 days worth of flats.

Today the Flats and Handwashing Challenge bloggers are focusing on “How do you use your flats?”

I started cloth diapering with flat diapers when my second born was 2. I searched the internet for fold ideas, and since I had some nice, big receiving blankets, I was able to do the origami fold for quite awhile with her. That was also my absolute favorite fold for my birds-eye flats when my son was born and I was cloth diapering a newborn. I tried to always fold my flats up fresh from the dryer. That way they were ready to be pinned on at diaper change time, and covered with a Thirsties cover. I didn’t feel like it was terribly time consuming, either.

My now 3 year old in a birds-eye flat, origami folded and pinned, when he was less than 2 weeks old!

As my son got older I branched out into some different folds. I often used the kite fold, with an additional flat folded as an insert. During the Flats and Handwashing Challenge last year I also found the airplane fold, which became my favorite because of all the great absorbancy in the front, where boys most need it!

Front view of the airplane fold on my 5 month old last year!

So far for this year I have been using the pad fold exclusively, with an occasional tri-folded flat as a doubler. I need to hunt down my pins so I can branch out some more!

As you can see, there are a lot of different ways to fold flat diapers – many more than what I’ve mentioned in this post. That is one of the things that drew me to flat diapers in the beginning. They are so easy to wash and take care of! They work beautifully on both a preschooler and a newborn, and you can experiment with folds until you find one that works best for you and your baby.

I don’t use my flats very often any more as diapers, but they do get used for other things:

Tri-folded and used as an insert in a pocket diaper.
Tri-folded to use as a doubler with prefolds.
As a changing mat – they take up so little space, they are perfect to throw in the diaper bag to use over dirty public changing tables.
As a wipe – If I run out of wipes or can’t find one when I need it, I can just wet the corner of a flat and use it!
To clean my mirrors – My birds-eye flats are perfect for cleaning glass, which has come in handy several times now that I don’t buy paper towels!

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Flats and Handwashing Challenge Day 1: From the Road

May 21, 2012 By Melissa

The Flats and Handwashing Challenge is finally here! This entire week I’ll be using flat diapers exclusively, handwashing, and hanging them to dry. I’ll also be sharing my experiences here, and on our Twitter and Facebook pages. The challenge seeks to raise awareness about how economical cloth diapering can be, and that it can be accessible for everyone, even those with limited resources. This year there are over 450 people signed up! You can read more, or join the challenge here.

People are participating in the Flats and Handwashing Challenge for many reasons. I shared a lot of mine in this post last week. There are two other reasons that I’m participating in the Challenge, not mentioned in that post. I have a bit of a stubborn streak And I want to prove to myself that I have what it takes! I also think it’s important for my actions to back up my words. If I really believe that using cloth diapers is a viable option for families, even if they can only afford flats and don’t have access to a washer and dryer, than I need to be willing to do it myself, or I feel like I’m being hypocritical.

For the first two days of the challenge, I am out of town visiting family. I did consider whether I should still participate, but I decided that real life happens for the families who would need to do this, so what better time to start? I don’t anticipate needing to wash diapers while I’m here, but I only have four covers, so there’s a chance I will need to wash one of them. They shouldn’t be to hard to wash out in the sink if needed, though.

Covers, flats, wipes and snappi for the trip!

I love all different kinds of flat folds, but I forgot my pins, so today we have been rocking the pad fold! I have a snappi, but most of the flats I’m using are old flannel receiving blankets, and the snappi is having some trouble gripping the fabric.