Remember to check out the rules of the challenge here.
Here’s a little re-cap:
Day 1: I start out with great enthusiasm. There’s nothing I like better than creating order out of chaos, and man, are these diapers chaotic.
Day 2: Technicalities. Why won’t they dry? Where do I dry them ? How do I cut down on the 40 minute wash time?
Day 3: In two unrelated events, the rash appears, and I start to wonder about the assumptions that underline the challenge.
Day 4: Technicalities. 5 covers isn’t enough. They are taking days to dry in the humid, wet weather. In an ironic twist of fate, I’m reusing damp GroVia covers to prove that parents don’t have to reuse damp disposables.
Day 5: Here we are.
I washed my regular laundry this morning and reveled in the ease of putting things in a washing machine, turning a knob and walking away. Then I went and knelt at my tub for half an hour and beat the stuffing out of a stack of flats and prefolds. I’m learning things I never thought I’d learn, and I suppose that’s why we stretch our limits from time to time – so that those limits can expand.
Despite my complaints about this challenge, it has been an eye-opener. I’m not sure that it’s taught me what I expected it to, but it has taught me some things. For example: I either need several more PUL covers or else I need to switch to wool. The moisture next to the skin situation is a recurring problem. Some diaper-free time succeeded in clearing up the minor rash from day 3, but it also succeeded in causing a big puddle on my carpet, so it’s not a long term solution. I went to the local thrift store with the idea of buying an old wool blanket and whipping up even a makeshift wool cover, but the store was out of wool. So, we’ve been muddling along with what we have. To my pleasant surprise, I love the flats. I love them so very much more than the prefolds I had been using previously. They just get so clean and nice-looking. I can treat them like regular laundry and even (gasp!) bleach them if I like. Not that I have, but I could, and that makes me happy. I like laundry that doesn’t need a personal assistant.
I’m also convinced that Samuel can recognize a dirty diaper better now. He’s always come to me to be changed when wearing a disposable, but he seems to be more on the ball with changing when wearing cloth. I can really see how this would be helpful when potty training.
And I've thought more about why hand washing and cloth diapering is often touted as 'just as easy as disposables' when, clearly, it isn't. Even if you use AIO diapers, even if you send your diapers out to be laundered; something dirty that can't be thrown away but needs, somehow, to be cleaned and reused is more work than something that doesn't. AND THAT ISN'T A BAD THING! For goodness sakes, something that a person truly believes in may inconvenience them, and that inconvenience is just a minor price to pay for the knowledge that you've followed your heart.
I've also learned that I cannot compare myself to women who lived in the past. When mothers used to wash a family’s clothes by hand, what were a few more diapers tossed in? You were already boiling your other fabrics with soap and then putting them through a manual wringer before hanging them on the line, so diapers weren’t that big of a deal. But very few of us wash all of our fabrics manually anymore. I have tried it in the past, but I can tell you from experience that hand washing jeans, or blankets, is time consuming, wet and exhausting. There’s one other thing that these long-ago mothers probably had that I don’t: help, in the form of older children, a live in parent or a hired girl. I have me. Here’s something else those mothers had that I don’t: a society that doesn’t expect the same levels of cleanliness or changes of clothing that they do now. I cannot go to work every day in the same two rotating outfits. And yet those women of yesteryear could. Their children could have a single school outfit. My child cannot.
my society is organized to handle a certain kind of life, as theirs was. If I insist on living in a way that my society is not set up to handle, then my life will prove more challenging, just as theirs would have. For example, I don’t have a car. The town I live in expects that I do, in fact, have a car. The stores are not within easy walking distance because I’m not supposed to be walking to them. In my ancestor’s time, you were supposed to walk to them. All of the stores were very close to each other because you went out on foot, you bought the groceries you needed, and you walked home. Likewise for them, women’s higher education was less common. If you wanted to ‘go against the grain’ it was challenging for you, because your society wasn’t set up to handle that. For me, my society expects post secondary education. If I tried to get a job without it, it would prove difficult, because having a diploma or a degree is a societal norm.
Anyway, those are my ramblings...
No comments:
Post a Comment