I'm going to talk honestly about...

Diapers.

So, that's fair warning for anyone not interested in that kind of potty talk, or has too much of it in their lives already to waste precious free time on the computer to read about it too.

When we headed down to Bolivia with a five month old in tow, I was stocked and almost mentally prepared to cloth diaper her little hiney. After we settled in, I realized that I didn't have a good way to wash all that cloth goodness. EVERY laundry detergent here contains perfumes and additives which will eventually cause the cloth to stop absorbing--not a result I was going for! So, I was relegated to hand washing them in very hot water with laundry bar soap. This worked well enough but was obviously time-consuming, back-breaking work. Which is fine, but there was a better way.

We ended up returning to the states for a couple months last fall. While it wasn't our primary purpose for returning (those pesky visa requirements and a potential political coup are responsible there), I saw it as a prime opportunity to stock up on homemade laundry soap ingredients. (I won't go into a "how to" post here, it's all been done very well by my friend Jeana at "Frugally Green".) already.) I'm sure Adam loved that we ended up bringing back an entire suitcase of Fels Naptha soap, Borax and washing Soda! But it has been truly a blessing and the cloth diapering fell into full swing upon our return.



Until...I just got tired of it. It was frustrating.

But not for the reasons you might think. Once I figured out how to fold and "pin" (which you don't do these days because we have snappies.) the actual changing of the diaper wasn't any harder than a disposable. It wasn't a big deal to take the diaper into the bathroom, rinse it out and put it in our diaper bucket. I loved the satisfaction of knowing I wasn't putting *another* diaper in the trash! It smelled a lot better than several dirty disposable sitting in the garbage too. Plus it was kind of therapeutic to see all those white diapers hanging out on the line.

Relaxing and energizing almost.



No, the worst part of all was that I was the only person who would use them. I guess I forgot, as I told Adam about my beautifully environmentally friendly plan, to ask him if he'd like to join my on my cloth diapering journey.

So, we've had a few weeks of disposables recently. But now I'm ready to go back to cloth. I'm looking forward to that next freshly laundered load of whites!