The Big Decision to Live More Simply

Life is a balancing act

 The decision to begin to live a more natural and Eco-friendly way of life was more of a challenge then decision. To give you some back story I have mild OCD.  My compulsions mainly have to do with contamination and germs. While pregnant with my daughter I had to go on modified bed rest and I had no choice but to not clean and rest up but besides the bed rest I almost fainted cleaning the bathroom due to the fumes that I so dearly loved.  They made me feel clean. I was very dependent on my chemical commercial cleaners as most people are.

While on bed rest I saw a documentary called Chemerical.  The movie was about a typical American family and their challenge to live a more chemical free life.  They did all sorts of air quality testing and the testing showed that the air was toxic in their home due to the chemical cleaners she used that she "thought" were cleaning her home. I was a total skeptic that homemade cleaners could do the same job as my fumy bathroom spray.  They also showed and explained the ecological effects of the break-down by-products of the cleaners. In the end, the mother switched to all homemade cleaners. I took this as a challenge but I had to do baby steps to ease my way into it.

The second part was eating a more chemical free from the ground to my mouth way of eating.  This mainly started after I was comparing butter and butter flavored spread.  I was grossed out at the ingredients that I was putting in my body.  I attend nursing school and knowing what I know about chemistry I knew I had to make a change in the what I was putting in my body.

Besides not being 100% sold on it I also needed to save money or spend close to the same amount of money that I currently was spending on food and cleaning supplies. There was NO way my husband was going to go for any of this if I spent more money then I already do.

I also have to add that I am not "crunchy" and I loath the term.  I prefer semi-natural Diva!  I am not 100% all natural.  Living more natural for me was a balancing act. I do believe that sometimes the better alternative is the modern not so natural way.  I say alternative because that is how I see lots of modern technology..as an alternative not my first choice.  I try to find all natural alternatives but sometime cost or quality is an issue so I choose what I feel is best at the time. I do a lot of research to make educated decisions that leave me sleeping well at night. 

So to make my life more simple and more natural I decided to make a change but I needed the changes I make to do the following
* Cost very close or less then what I am currently spending
* Not be overly complicated to make or store
* Incorporate  items or ingredients that are easy to obtain
* A level of convenience

I hope you choose to try out a few of the small ways you can to live more naturally and Eco-friendly~

So Excited for the changes!

This new blog will reflect the changes in my own life. I have decided to make moves to a more greener/cleaner/healthier way of living. For my family and myself.  It hasn't been all smooth sailing but along the way I am learning and testing things out.  I am a modern woman. I love my name brand shampoos and conditioners, luxury lotions and all that jazz and I am trying to find a happy medium between living more naturally but not to complicated and how to save money but not lose the quality that I have become accustomed too.  I do a TON of research.  I absolutely need to be informed on the decisions I make for myself and my family.  Going off the word of one source is never a good idea.  I encourage you to do your own reach too..I will post links to the sites I use or places I get information along the way.

I might make some small visual changes along the way but I am too excited about writing to wait!

Things I am more focused on:
*Sharing my journey to a balanced, more natural way of living
*Simpler Cleaner Way of Living inside and out
*DIY tips, tricks or items to help you on your greener path
*Reviews of greener things I have tried...greener vs. store bought
*Travel (which I LOVE)
*Photography

Under some construction

I feel that my blog has began to evolve into a different type of blog then I had initially had in mind. While I love the concept I originally had I want to go with the way that feels the best and is the most enjoyable for me to write about..bear with me for the next couple of weeks while I make some changes..TIA :)

Adventures into Cloth Diapering : Washing your Fluff!

You may not believe me when I say this but I have never and I mean NEVER been so excited to do laundry the first week I was CDing my daughter. Later my love of washing my lovely stash waned a bit when I came into some issues but being the ever determined woman I am I did not give up! So, we will take it one step at a time with the first step being,  water.

Water

Duh! You may say..Of course you need water to wash and to that I totally agree but you need to know your water. By this I mean you need to know if you have hard or soft water because while you may not have any issues with your wearable clothing this will cause you HUGE issues when it comes to your diapers. 

I found the easiest way to find out what type of water you have is to Google it.  The hardness of your water is something that your County is required to publish to public record. So just type in your search engine "Does _____ County in ____ State have hard or soft water?"

This is important because hard water has more minerals in it and requires more soap to clean and soft water requires less soap to wash properly among other issues that can arise.  If you join a Cding community and you post a question regarding washing issues this will be the first thing you are asked....Do you have hard or soft water.

FYI: something like 80% of the US has varying degrees of hard water.


Detergent

You will not be able to just use any old detergent to wash your precious fluff.  Many detergents contain brighteners and softeners that can build up on your diapers and irritate your babies skin.  There are many different brands of CD safe detergents such as Rockin Green, Soap Nuts, Charlie's Soap, Crunchy Clean and these just name a few. I use my homemade detergent that you can find here. Some of this may be trial and error to find the right detergent for your diapers.

I am giving you this link to Padded Tush Stats.  This website/blog has been an amazing resource to me in my adventurers into cloth. Besides lists of retailers and reviews of TONS of diapers they also have detergent stats . So, bookmark this site..

I have to share that my MIL said she used Ivory Snow and so did many many other people that I have spoken with that CD'd before the age of disposables.  You can still find this soap and I am thinking of trying it myself.  


Prepping

So you have been stalking your mail person for days anxiously awaiting your fluffy mail and it is finally here! You tear open the package like a kid on Christmas morning and there they are..Your beautiful diapers.  You take them out and instantly you want to place them on your precious baby but wait!  First you must prep.

Cloth diapers need to be washed before you can place them on your child. You want to make sure they are 100% clean and free of anything that might irritate you babies skin.  Depending on what type of diapers you have they will need to be prepped differently.

Microfiber inserts and All-in-ones can be washed once and be fully absorbent.  Follow the instructions for your particular diaper but in general you will want to line dry your covers and you can toss your inserts into the dryer.  If you have an all-in-one you might be able to put them in the dryer but you should NEVER put them on high. You will damage the plastic coating on the diaper and they won't be water proof. 

None synthetic material like cotton, bamboo and hemp contain natural oils.  These oils need to be removed before the diapers are fully absorbent.  You will need to wash and dry these diapers anywhere between 5-7 times before they are at maximum absorbency. I need to add that I used to fully wash and dry my diapers exactly 5 times before I would place them on my baby.  I now feel that this is totally unnecessary. Not only is it time consuming it is extremely wasteful to use that much water to increase the absorbance of my diaper by 10 or 20 mls.  After a few weeks of owning them they will be at 100% absorbency so I say just wash once maybe twice and put them on and admire your fluff!



After the Prep

After you prep your diapers and happily place it on your baby take a step back and admire your beautiful fluff then count to oh lets say 10 and you will see the biggest smile ever on your babies face...followed by the sound of the largest poo ever coming from your baby.  It seems to be an unwritten law of fluff that the second you place a new clean diaper on your child they will poo in it. Your heart will break a little but remember that is what you bought it for :)

You take off the diaper and place it in your dry pail or hanging bag but before you do that know that if your baby is breast fed the poo is water soluble so there is no need to do anything..If your child is eating solids you need to either dunk and swish your diapers in the toilet to remove the solid material or use a diaper sprayer or rinse in your utility tub in your laundry room..but we will cover this in more detail later basically you need to remove the solid material.  You do this for a couple of days until your pail is full or you are running low on diapers. Finally, it is laundry day so what do you do? Rinse cold or warm no soap, wash hot with soap, rinse cold or warm no soap is the easy answer.  Everyone has a wash routine that they have learned though trial and error and swear by but I can give you the general gist of it and we will save problem solving for another post.

Take all those lovely diapers and place them in your washer. You will run either a cold or warm or hot rinse or full cycle without any detergent.  This "rinse" cycle is to remove any large pieces of crud to allow your detergent to do its real work on the cloth.

You will then do a full hot wash with detergent.

Then you will do a rinse cycle to remove any left over detergent and either line dry or use the actual dryer to dry your diaper.

Voila! Clean diapers

Adventures into Cloth Diapering : How to choose?

Hindsight being 20/20 I feel like I have good advice on how to find the right diaper for you and your little one.  Advice that I was given but did not follow but wish I did. Finding the "right" diaper is one of the harder parts of cloth diapering.  It is pretty hard to find stores that have cloth diapers so you can actually look at them so mostly, you will end up buying them online through Buy/Sell/Trade boards like  Diaper Swappers or through retailers.

Word to the wise..Do not..let me repeat..DO NOT just spend 100$ on one type of diaper you have never tried or seen. Yep, I did this and seriously regretted it. I highly recommend Googleing " Cloth Diaper Trial Programs" or you can visit this link from Diaper Swappers, Cloth Diaper Trial List.

This is how the trials typically work.  You place a deposit and they send you the diapers listed.  You keep them for a specified time ( 21-30 days typically) and return the ones you don't want, all of them or none of them.  They refund you per the agreement. Tip: make sure that who ever you pick refunds in cash and not store credit. I mean what good does store credit to a cloth diaper store do you if you decide you don't want to cloth diaper! 

These trials come in handy so you can find out what you like or don't like about a particular style of diaper or if your child (like mine) has sensitive skin and can't use a particular material.  I will give you my sob story of CDing.

I researched several brands but not nearly enough and decided I wanted to go with Cotton Babies. They sell Eco Bum, Flips, BumGenius ect...They were having a wonderful sale and if you know me I can't turn down a sale! So, I decided I would buy the Flip system.  This required me to buy Flip shells and inserts. I bought 6 shells and 12 micro fiber inserts. I stalked my mail man daily waiting for my fluff mail to arrive.  The day it got here I followed the prepping instructions and put my first cloth diaper on my daughter. I have never been so excited to change a poopy diaper in my life! I was super impressed. Her bottom was nice and dry and the system was very easy to use.....That was day 1. Day 2 I noticed that she had a redness to her skin that was the same shape of the insert. I made sure I was placing it in her shell correctly because one side cannot touch the skin because it will dry it out. I was placing it on her correctly but the redness continued to get worse. Day 3 I was worried and I Googled " Redness with microfiber inserts". Very quickly I realized she was sensitive/allergic to the microfiber!  I did a sorta patch test by laying her back on the insert and within minutes she had a red square on her back. I just spent 100$ on diapers my daughter couldn't use! Lucky me I had found a buy/sell/trade board for cloth diapers and I was able to sell the inserts (for less then what I paid) and repurchased natural cotton inserts instead.

The point of me tell you this is to say that had I listened to my friends that told me to do the trial package I would have figured this out with out loosing money which was the reason I wanted to cloth diaper..to save money not lose it!

So, try a few out..find out if you love aplix or snaps..If you are a all-in-one kinda girl or if you love pockets.  Find out if you love a particular brand or style and you can't do that if you don't try them...

Go out there have fun! Love your fluffy mail and love those fluffy butts!

Next...we will go over washing those lovely diapers!

My Stash of BGE's, Flip and Flip Organic Inserts!

Adventurers into Cloth Diapering : Types of Diapers

Now that you have had sometime to learn the lingo lets dive into part one of choosing a cloth diaper.  You need to know what kinds of diapers there are.

Prefolds and covers: These are pieces of rectangular cloth that are prefolded into 3 sections.  You place them on baby and hold with Snappies.  The cloth is NOT water proof so you need to cover them with a water proof cover. You will also see numbers like 4x6x4 or 4x8x4. These numbers are describing the number of layers of fabric in each third of the fabric. The higher the number the more absorbency. These are popular because they are probably the cheapest way to start cloth diapering. You can get prefolds for a few dollars and Snappies are equally as cheap. The covers can be very cheap if you go with simple PUL or you can use wool covers treated with lanolin to make them water proof but that is another post.

Unfolder Prefold w/snappi

Prefold as if it were on a baby

How to fold a prefold

One of my JuneBug mommies LO. This is a Prefold with a PUL cover :D

 AI1's : All in One diapers are exactly what they sound like. They are functionally just like a disposable diaper. You put it on the baby and secure with either aplix (aka the genric name for Velcro, in hind sight I should have added this term to the list) or snaps. When you need to change you take off the whole diaper and toss it in the diaper pail.

This is a BumGenius Elemental AI1 (my favorite!)

AI2's: All in two diapers are diapers that can function as a all-in-one or as a diaper cover.  They have a layer of PUL fabric which makes it water proof . You can typically remove the inner soaker that is attached by snaps or is laid in the cover and reuse the cover until it becomes soiled.  Many people prefer these diapers because you have less laundry. 

This is a Swaddlebees Econappi allin2

Pocket Diapers : Pocket diapers are two material sewn together with a pocket in the middle. The outer material is made of water proof PUL (polyurethane laminated) or a hidden PUL layer and the inside is made of different materials to wick away moisture from the skin. The material typically tends to be micro fleece but I am seeing many WAHM diapers that ingeniously use sport wicking fabric! Genius!!! There is an inside pocket between the PUL and the inside material that you can stuff with different material to absorb the wetness. These are popular for the ability to stuff the pocket with nearly anything you want. They are great for night time diapers.

This is a Happy Heiny's Pocket diaper

I tried to use several brands of diapers but I have to admit I am very bias to BumGenius/Cotton Babies products. I am trying to branch out but I haven't done so just yet. Next, how to choose from all of the choices!

Golden Toe BzzAgent Give Away!

Yippie, I have long waited for this day. This is my first give away. First let me tell you why.

I am a super lucky BzzAgent. BzzAgents are a international WOM (word of mouth) campaigning program.  Customers, like myself, are given products and asked to report back to the company if they like or dislike the products. This is the big key part..they want us to give our honest opinion, no hype or BS.  We are also asked to share our experiences with our friends and family positive or negative.  This also means my friends and family get tons of great coupons! The last campaign I was in was for Fair Trade Green Mountain Coffee which I loved and now buy nothing except Green Mountain Coffee. I am currently in a few more and will report back to ya'll with those experiences later.

On to the current one...Golden Toe.  I received my lovely Bzz Box with my Golden Toe goodies. Boxer's, socks and TONS of coupons to use at Kohls. They are 5$ off 25$ worth of Golden Toe products and with all the sales running right now that can get you a great deal.  First, I have to say that I already love Golden Toe products. They are the only socks I buy for myself.  They last for a super long time and are very durable. The socks I received are just as amazing as the ones I have bought for myself.  They have reenforced toes with comfort seams and are super comfortable. They also have an elastic band at the top to hold them up, which is PERFECT for fall boots. The two pairs I am giving away have a great blue argyle and blue stripe print.  My husband and I fought over these sock because while I am fully aware that they are mens dress socks I needed a new pair of fall/winter boot socks and these were cute, comfy and perfect!

So, enter below for your chance to win! Good LUCK!




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