Cloth Diapers

With Elinore being potty trained, I bleached my stash of diapers and snapped them down to the smallest setting for miss Ruthie.  However, the first weekend we tried it, them broke out with terrible diaper rash.  It was diaper rash everywhere the diaper was against here.  We quickly switched backed to disposables, washed some more diapers and got her cleared up.  Since then I've occasioanlly put her in cloth just to see what happens and we've been doing better since that first time.  I think now I need to get back on the cloth diaper bandwagon and start saving some money by not buying so many disposables!

Potty Trained!

Elinore has been officially potty trained for over a month now!  She's very good about it, and we've had very few accidents since she's gone to underwear.  I think we've had less accidents than we can count on one hand.  She's proud of herself and she's wearing big girl undies!  Princesses, Minnie and Frozen of course. 

That frees up the cloth diapers for our little Ruthie!

Keeping Up

I've been sturggling, espeically since the weather has turned nice, to keep things caught up at the house.  We have a to do list crazy long of spring chores and finishing touches to complete the bathroom and house projects, but I'm struggling to keep up with the daily chores. 

I feel as though I can never keep up with the laundry for the six of us.  I know it's a never ending chore, but it always seems as I'm behind.  Keith and I folded probably 5 loads of laundry last night, so we have some clothes and dish clothes.  I had to use a bathroom washrag the other night for the dishes.  We have those now!

However, when I showered this morning, I noticed we have one towel left, and no hand towels clean left.  And guess what, tonight is shower night for the kids and I have a dinner for work.  Diapers were finishing in the washing machine, so I couldn't switch anything over.  I did a load of clothse last night before the diapers though so we would have clean underwear for the morning!

I've briefly thought about purchasing more, but that only makes the mounds of laundry higher because I can wait longer to get it done.  Yet there isn't a day that goes by that I don't do laundry.  at least one load a day, often many more.  On a good day I can get two through in the morning and a few at night.  More regularly though it's one in the morning and one at night. 

I'm especially behind on laundry after Elinore was sick last week and we had extra sheets to wash and diapers that needed bleached.  Hopefully we'll get to a more managable system again soon.

It's not just the laundry though, getting the shopping done is increasingly harder too.  Getting to town, getting motivated to get it done, and having the time are hard to come by.  I tried Amazon Pantry for the first time last week to help with the shopping.  It was well overdue.  We ran out of toilet paper in our house over the weekend and ketchup too.  We were out of more of course, but those stamples caused issue.  Toilet paper for obvious reason.  The ketchup Caden really wanted on a leftover cheeseburger he ate for dinner earlier this week.  I ran through the list of other options we had to put on it and none of them satisfied him.  That's when I realized that we had fast food ketchup packets in the van.  I sent him to the driveway to retrieve one for himself.  After I assured him the date was okay on it so it wasn't spoiled, he ate his cheeseburger happily. 
I didn't tell him there's no dates on the ketchup packet and I had no idea how old it was.  It was from Sonic, and the last time I remember going there was in September, so it may have been a bit old, but it was ketchup. 

In all the household chores, I try to delegate a bit more to the boys for some help and to teach them responsibility as well.  But I also try to remmeber that this is my opportunity to serve my Lord by serving my family and caring for them.  I try to do the chorse with a grateful heart and willingness to accomplish them chores.  I think of it as a serving opportunity.  It's one way, I can serve Him. 

Crunchy Diapers

Elinore does not like disposable diapers.  She calls them crunchy diapers.  She likes her good once, her nice ones she says. 

Last week she was sick; sick enough we went and bought some disposables for her to wear to avoid the mess of cleaning up the cloth diapers.  She was NOT a happy camper about it! 

Grandma, my mom, refuses to use cloth diapers.  She doesn't like them and is always offering a disposable for her from her stash so she doesn't have to use them.  Elinore keeps telling her she doesn't like them, but it doesn't matter to Grandma!  She'll always choose us over her to change a diaper if Grandma's around!

BUT, to my surprise, when she woke up this morning she asked me for a crunchy diaper.  She asked if she could wear a crunchy diaper today.  Sure I said, we had some left anyway.  I asked if she wanted me to send crunchy ones to the sitters to and she said yes, so I sent some there too.  I don't know what she'll want to wear there today, but we'll see.

If she decides she wants disposables, so be it.  Ruth will get the cloth then!  She can fit them now, but I don't have enough diapers or time to do the laundry for them both to be in cloth! 

Hopefully Elinore will be potty trained soon and then it won't be an issue any longer!

The Diapers are MIA!

Over the weekend I washed, folded and stuffed a load of diapers like usual.  Saturday morning I put them in their place in Elinore's room.  Saturday afternoon Keith was changing her diaper for nap time, when he asked me where the diapers were.  I said what?  I put the diapers in there this morning, a bunch of them, how are we out already?? 

Turns out we were.  We found them all in the dirty clothes hamper.  Elinore was giggling as we found the diapers in the hamper!

Cloth Diapering

Almost two months ago now, we started cloth diapering full time. This far in, Keith and I are both happy with the change and no longer even like disposables the very few times we've had to put her back in one.


I was quite anxious about getting started and felt like I was a bit under prepared to start, but once I committed, I dove right in and picked it up along the way. I'm fortunate to have a couple good friends who also cloth diapers. I used them as resources to help me get started and have reached out to them a few times since we got started too when I've had questions.

I wanted to consider cloth diapering before Elinore was born, but Keith was very against it. I wasn't willing to try it without his support. By the time Elinore was about 5 months old, Keith was ready to switch to generic diapers of lesser quality to save money, which I wasn't against, until I realized I didn't like using those diapers at all once we tried it!

That was my gateway to bring up cloth diapering again, and this time, he jumped right on board!

We started researching what brand and style of diaper we wanted to use. We decided we want to use BumGenius diapers and started scouring eBay for used diapers. Keith did most of the eBay work finding diapers, bidding, checking with me if I thought they were alright. Keith got a bit over excited maybe in his purchasing, but we ended with 44 used diapers from eBay. Four of the diapers were Fuzzibunz. About a half dozen were all-in-one elementals and the rest are 4.0s from BubGenius. Excluding one diaper, they are all snap closure, which I’m certainly a fan of. I’m not crazy about the Velcro one we have, and it’s harder to maintain the Velcro and annoying in the wash!

We thought we were going to prefer the all-in-ones the most, but it turns out the 4.0s are our favorites! I don't mind the stuffing them with the inserts, and they are easier to use and clean and they dry faster in the dryer once they're washed. We like all of our BumGenius over the Fuzzibunz.

I'm not sure how much money we're saving by going cloth. I know our water bill increased last month, which is probably a result of the increase laundry. I think we'll really benefit in savings if we use them for future Haynes babies too. :)