Want Some Tips?

I mentioned in one of my last posts that I had more to say about cloth diapering tips.  (are you sick of hearing about our diapers yet?)

If you would like to see my tips and a few ‘through the year’ pictures of Jack, you can go to HERE and see yesterday’s guest post. 

I would have posted this yesterday, but I was without my laptop.  We’re all back up and running now.  Better than ever!

Oh, and this was my first guest post, which made me really nervous!  I think it went well though.  No hate comments as of yet.

Cornstarch – The Wonder Ingredient!

*I stole this picture from the internet…I’ve never seen this brand before.

Back when I dropped off the face of the blog-world, we went to visit my sister-in-law’s family in their new home.  They have 5 kids, and they’re one of the most amazing families ever.  I feel like I won the family lottery when I married Rick! 

Anyway, when we were there, Jack had a pretty bad diaper rash.  The only time he ever gets a rash is when he’s eaten something acidic, is teething, or some other foods I haven’t figured out yet.  Basically, it’s always because of what he puts into his belly, not from the diapers themselves.  With cloth diapers, you can’t use creams to sooth the burn.  You can’t use petroleum jelly or anything that will leave a residue on the diaper after it’s washed.  So what do you do? 

You use cornstarch!!  Now, how did I come to gain that wealth of information?  From my sister-in-law of course!  She learned it from her mother when her kids were little.  I can’t explain why it works, but after just one or two diaper changes all traces of ‘red bottom’ are gone!  Every time!  It is the most amazing thing to me.  Here I was trying coconut oil and tea tree oil to help coat and sooth his bottom – both are okay to use with cloth and have healing properties – but it was taking a day or two for the burn to go away. 

I can’t get over how amazing this wonder ingredient is.  It’s one of those things that I want to shout from the mountain tops : “Hey!! I found a CHEAP and FAST way to heal your baby’s burning bottom!!!!”   Maybe I’ll just stick to shouting it from my blog.

I hope this helps at least one baby’s bottom out there!

My Cloth Diaper Fix

I’ve mentioned before that I use cloth diapers, right?

I love using cloth diapers.  We bought one brand, lots of them, and never looked back.  I love how easy they are to use and how cost saving they are.  Most of all I love how there are never poop leaks.  I can remember two or three poop leaks he’s had in 2 years.  Seriously!  I love them.

There are two things though, that I don’t love about them. 

1.  The brand I chose only came in solid colors.  No cute prints.  I love seeing all the cute prints available in cloth diapers on my message boards.  They’re amazing!  So many cute designs!!  I could go broke getting all the ones I love. 

2.  The Velcro on these diapers is starting to go bad.  I’ve caught a diaper falling off more than once in the past month, and the closures catch on his pants all the time.  I’m getting kind of annoyed with my choice of Velcro over snaps.  (Hindsight is 20/20) 

Here is what my Velcro tabs look like after two years of use and no maintenance -

 

They’re full of lint, strings, and fuzz.  They just don’t work anymore.  I was thinking about buying some new diapers with snaps and building up a new set.  BUT…that costs money, and if I can help it, I don’t want to spend any.  So, I figured out that I could probably clean out the tabs and they might work like new again. 

Here’s what I did.  One afternoon, after a load of diapers came out of the dryer, I sat and pulled out every last string, fuzz and lint from each tab.  My fingers HURT at the end of that afternoon!  I accumulated quite a lot of lint.

After I cleaned out the tabs, they worked like new!!!!!  Go figure!  Anyone else would probably already be cleaning out the Velcro tabs after every few washes, but not me!  I like don’t think of things like that.  Here’s a look at the same tabs from above after I cleaned them out.

 

 

Much better, eh?  I love it!  I have to clean them out every so often, but it surely beats buying new diapers! 

My advice to anyone considering cloth diapers -

Go with snaps.  I thought it was going to be hard to get a good ‘seal’, and that the baby would be too wiggly to do snaps, but I see in the end that they probably would last longer than Velcro tabs and I’ve been told they fit just as well as Velcro diapers.

Or clean out your Velcro tabs more often than I do.  Whatever.

 

 

 

A Travel Cloth Diaper Bag

Last weekend we went to visit my in-laws for Easter.  They hadn’t seen Jack for a few months, and we wanted to visit my father-in-law’s church one last time before he retires.  We were staying for two nights and three days.  That’s not a very long vacation, but to a mama who uses cloth diapers, it is long enough to induce a mild panic attack.  I don’t have a travel size wet bag to keep my diapers in.  All I have is a big plastic diaper pail and a small tote that holds 3 or 4 diapers.  Three days is usually how many days we go before needing to wash the diapers, so I knew we’d be using more than just  a few diapers this weekend. 

Up to the last minute, I had planned to bring our big diaper pail, and just cart it home with us in the back of the van.  It would be inconvenient, but I couldn’t think of anything else.  Then, when we were almost walking out the door, I saw this insulated grocery bag hanging on the door handle.  I thought it just might be the perfect travel diaper bag!

 

It’s insulated, so it shouldn’t leak if a diaper is too wet, and it has a zipper, so it should lock in the stink for the most part. 

I have to report that it worked GREAT!  I used one for the clean diapers and one for the used diapers.  The zipper did an excellent job of keeping the stink in, and there was no leaking at any time!  I did have to dunk some diapers in the toilet, which I usually don’t have to do, because we have a diaper sprayer, but overall, this was a pleasant travel experience with our diapers!  I don’t know if the bag is washable, so I just took a Clorox Wipe to the inside when we got home.  I’m not going to ever use this particular bag for groceries, but I may use it again for this purpose.

(My husband was happy I didn’t have to go buy a new bag!)

I’m linking this post up to What Works For Me Wednesday over at We Are THAT Family.  If you’re looking for other fun tips, check out her blog today and search through the tons of tips linked up by other bloggers!

No Pants Allowed

My son is member of a gang. I just know it.  Not a bad, break the law, color specific type gang.  A 'no girls allowed', meet in a clubhouse, secret handshake type gang. 

He has decided that diaper changes are not for him, and therefore will NOT lay still for one second of them.  I have tugged, pulled, pried and turned him back over to get him to lay on his back, but it seems that nothing works.  So, I've decided that the gang he is in must have this rule - NO PANTS ALLOWED!

I will not be following this rule, but I'm not speaking for Daddy. 

Random Cleaning Tips

This week has a theme!  We were asked to submit our cleaning tips this week.  Now, my family will laugh when I say I do have some cleaning tips, but really, I do!  I may not keep the cleanest house, but here are a few random tips I've used to make things just a little cleaner in my little world. 

Let me start by saying I use cloth diapers.  And because I use cloth diapers, I use flushable diaper liners.  They're what keeps me going in my cloth diaper endeavor!  Here is how I make dealing with a poopy cloth diaper just a little less messy  When I change my son's dirty diaper, I put the dirty liner in a little basket I keep by the changing station. After I put it in the basket, I use the antibacterial hand sanitizer on my hands.  When we're done with the diaper change, I say "let's go put your poopy in the potty!"   We walk to the bathroom and watch the poop go down the potty, sometimes saying "bye-bye poopies!" (meaning I say it, because my son is only 9 months old)  I have only had to touch the liner once, I've cleaned my hands quickly, and I didn't have to move his changing table to the bathroom!  (And just maybe I'm getting him used to the fact that poopy goes in the potty, so potty training will go quickly!) 

When I made this recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake Balls, I knew it was going to get messy.  I was going to have to mix crumbled cake with frosting.  Luckily, I knew my hubby had a box of disposable, vinyl gloves in the garage.  I grabbed some of those and mixed away.  Not only did it make the cleanup practically nothing (just throw the gloves in the trash), it made it kind of fun to play around in the cake-play-do-like mix.  By the way, I highly recommend making this recipe, but be prepared for a lot of mess and a divinely rich dessert. 

When we bought our new van over two years ago, it had that "new car smell" and it also looked spotless.  I loved it.  I don't know about you, but my cars have never stayed very clean for very long.  This time I thought I'd try harder to keep my new van clean.  I went to Wally-world and purchased a Dusting Microfiber cloth for around $2.  I keep it tucked in a bottom compartment in the van console, and pull it out every so often to dust my dashboard. Every once in a while, I throw it in the washer to get the dust and dirt off of it.  I've also used it to wipe the rain off my door when I have to open my window in the rain.  It has kept my dashboard clean for these 2+ years.  If only I could keep my cup holders clean too!

And finally, back to the cloth diapers.  I found this company when I was looking for cloth diaper tips that sold trial-run packages of cloth diapers.  They included a bunch of different brands of diapers in this package so you could "test drive" different brands before you spent all your money on them.  They send out a pack, let you try them for a few days/weeks, then you return the pack to them.   I loved that concept, but like some others who commented on their site, wondered how they kept the diapers clean.  It turns out that they strip them every time they get them back. So, I took this bit of wisdom, and strip my diapers every few weeks as well.  It really helps to get the stink out.  All you do is put your diapers in the washer with HOT water, dissolve some Oxi-Clean, let them sit in the water for a while (usually I let them sit for a half hour), then finish the wash cycle.  I also do an extra rinse on the days I strip them, just to make sure they're squeaky clean.  This has kept my diapers looking great, with very few stains.

Those are all of my random cleaning tips for this week's What Works For Me.  Stop by We Are THAT Family to see what other cleaning tips you can find. 

I'm "Crunchy"

The other night, Hubby and I were invited to dinner by one of his co-workers. It was such a nice invitation to come out to the country and enjoy a casual evening with new (to me) friends. They had a great home, yummy food, and CUTE kiddos! I enjoyed the visit especially with this co-worker’s wife, because she and I had a lot of similarities. She used to be a teacher (taught kindergarten for 7 years) and then became a stay-at-home-mom when her daughter was born three years ago. She could completely relate with my sadness from not going back to my classroom this year for the first time. The other big connection for us was our love of our laptops and the internet. We both feel like we need our connections online. And both of our husbands don’t understand this at all! So, needless to say, we bonded.

During the evening, we shared our baby and parenting stories. I think mom’s can go on for HOURS talking about our kids and their stories. While we were sharing, she said to me “you’re crunchy!” It was not meant to offend me, and it was said in jest mostly. But it got me to thinking. For those of you who don’t know, ‘crunchy’ refers to being ‘granola’ or ‘hippy’ or an earth-lovin’, organic-eatin’, tree-hugger.

Am I crunchy? Let’s see.

1. I use cloth diapers on my son. I love how cute they are. That’s one of the main reasons I use them. They also keep Jack from getting rashes, and they hardly ever leak. And they’re saving us money.



2. I breastfeed. I used formula for one week when Jack was born, and I was waiting for my milk to come in. Since then, we nursed for every meal until we started solid food. And we don’t use bottles much, since I’m staying at home and don’t have need for bottles very often. I have my home-made cover (Hooter Hider) for when I am out in public and need to feed Jack. I’m also getting pretty good at feeding him in the van. This has saved us a ton of money.



3. I make my son’s baby food. I never realized how easy it was. I can make sure he’s not getting any unnecessary sugar or ‘other’ ingredients that aren’t good for him at this age. I’m hoping it’s saving us money.



4. I’ve only purchased one toy for my son. He has toys, but they’re from family and friends. All of his toys from me are containers and boxes. He LOVES the empty oats round containers. This is definitely saving us money.



5. I use a ring sling. It seemed like it would last us longer than a baby carrier, since they only last through a certain weight. As long as I can carry his weight, I can use this sling for years. I bought it for 50% less than the original price. So that saved us a bit of money.



6. We got rid of cable. Jack doesn’t need to watch TV yet. And it’s another distraction during the day that I just don’t need. (The internet is enough) This is definitely saving us money.


7. I meal plan and make sure we eat at home almost all the time. I grocery shop every Monday to get what I need for that week’s meals. Since we rarely eat out anymore, I think we’ve saved money on food.

So, do you think I’m crunchy? I’m thinking I’m more thrifty than crunchy, but you can be the judge. I do own a tye-dye shirt.