Day 8: Final Thoughts

Wow, Kim over at Dirty Diaper Laundry wrote an amazing post about her end thoughts and how she intends to move forward after this challenge.  It's amazing.  I'm going to join her in it.  Read about it HERE.

If y'all have been following, you know what my opinion was of handwashing on Days 2 and 3 (in short, I hated every second of it-until it was time to hang the dipes and that made me feel better.)  By the end of the week my opinion was much different.  In fact, by days 6 and 7, I was in a groove and very grateful for my camp-style wash bucket.  I still have to use it until the gas guys get the work done (they were here this morning already and it's not looking so promising, but we know God has it all worked out already!) so in a way, the challenge continues for me. 

I'm going to write my thoughts as Kim did..."If I were doing this out of necessity" (and I am...HA!) here are some of the things I will be telling my "clients" as tips I learned over the course of the week.

1. Minky covers take 3x longer to dry than the flats...get regular covers.
2. Use a plastic handled plunger in the wash bucket and buy quality products-especially if you need to use it a lot.
3. When draining the bucket between washes/rinses, click the lid on the sides, leaving it partially open.  Tip it on its side in the tub and walk away for about 10 minutes.  It will be well drained when you come back.
4. Snappis don't like to grab recieving blanket materials, but those work great as diapers.  Ergo, it's good to have some pins for back-up.
5. The flour sack towels at Target or WalMart are far more square than most flats, cheaper and work great.
6. Most things we have to do are about perception.  Understand that you are doing your baby, your pocketbook and your earth a favor and take cloth diapering in stride.  There are lots of fun covers to make it enjoyable and you can take a lot of pride in the process.
7. When you only have a $20 investment hanging on the clothesline and the dog takes it down, you are far less angry than when you have hundreds of dollars hanging there!  (Maybe no one else will need to know that, but it came in handy for me last night...)

Things I want to find out to help more people locally:

1. Which daycares in the area are cloth friendly, if any.
2. How to be a "distributor" of certain products we can't get locally (i.e. snappis, covers, CD friendly creams, cloth wipes)
3. Who in our area helps with diapers so I can drop off a "business card"
4. If the local laundromats will allow people to wash cloth diapes in their machines.

Moving forward I want to do some things with the end goal being to eventually teach the Childbirth & Beyond class I talked about here.  First I will print some business cards like Kim talked about in  her post.  After I read that I checked my email and had a LivingSocial deal in my box to buy $50 worth of VistaPrint stuff for $10.  (Click HERE to purchase one for yourself today only) How's that for God saying "Yes...this is what I want you to do."?  I'll drop the cards off at the local Women's Resource Center and hopefully at the WIC office and I'm not too proud to drop some on the diaper shelf at WalMart.

Then I have a pile of diapers to sell that I wasn't absolutely in love with but kept because I needed them to be able to only do a load of laundry every other day.  Now that I have flats and know how to use them, I can get rid of these.  I'll use that money to buy supplies to help out local mommies who need supplies but can't afford to go buy them.  (The stuff is now up for sale at Spots' Corner link HERE)

It would be great to be able to be a "distributor" of the things I listed above, so if some of my friends who own shops read this, please let me know who to contact and how to go about that.  I will also look for donations of the items needed. 

Well, there are the touch points.  I am so grateful for the challenge.  I truly am sad it's over.  I pray the commraderie I felt this week will continue!