Tuesday, May 29, 2012

To cloth or not to cloth?

Of all things I could be doing to be getting ready for our journeys, I seem to tackle the, what one might call "trivial" tasks. While undergoing such endeavors may look to others as if I have done nothing to prepare for my family's adventures, to me it feels like no small means. Tonight I spent the past five hours figuring out and sewing a cloth diaper. One. But as made evident by the title of our blog: "Around the World in Diapers" it is a pretty substantial aspect of our lives at present, and I am assuming will continue to be for a while. Meaning years. 8-10, to be precise. So! Diapers. To cloth or not to cloth? Let me fill you in on some important background information. First and foremost, I am bound and determined to save the world. Every drop of water raises the ship in the harbor, right? My goal is to not have my childrens poopy diapers fill up the worlds landfills. Or the harbors. Upon my reasearch, America, just America, tosses 50 million disposable diapers every day. That is 20 BILLION a year. Can you wrap your head around 20 billion diapers? So sad. And what's worse, they take up to 500 years to decompose.Disposables have only been around since the 40's so I'm not sure how they manage to come up with that number. But either way, there is no denying the guilt I feel as I throw yet another ball of plastic and cellulose into the trash ::sigh:: we are ready for a diaper change. Literally.

Back to the story about the five hour love affair with my sewing machine and a cloth dipe pattern. My mind is made up. I will make the switch. It has only taken me 9 months. That's somewhere around ::deep breath:: 1,650 diapers just from one tiny human. Heart breaking. But don't worry! Remember my mind is made up. Can I also just say, though we did not buy all of those diapers for ourselves (most were gifts, for which we are very grateful) that's a whopping total of $313.50! What could I do with $313.50? I'm getting a bit off track. So I went out to Hobby Lobby and bought plenty of elastic and velcro for $3.00 and I chose a cute old sundress that was in my donation pile. Hours later I have my first cloth pocket dipe and soaker liner. So cute I can hardly stand it. And it only cost me about 20 cents to boot. I can now do diapering so cheap! Cloth diapers online are anywhere between $4 and $25. I would love to buy the $25 dipes, and maybe I could have justified such a purchase had I done this in the very begining and not spent arms and legs for disposables. But I am happy with my adorable pink patchwork dipe and I almost wanted to wake Basil up just to put it on her. Next scene: Basil bum is clad in cloth. Love! Next next scene: my shirt is wet. Homemade dipe = failed.
But at least I got a cute picture out of it.

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