Flats and Handwashing Challenge–Day 1

[This is a part of the Flats and Handwashing Challenge Series. To read more of my posts on this, see a list here. To see the Dirty Diaper Laundry Flats and Handwashing Challenge series, go here.]
Well here we are! I am so excited about Day 1 of the Flats and Handwashing challenge. Hubbs was REALLY excited because it meant I had middle of the night diaper duty for our daughter. OK, I wasn’t thrilled about that part. The other baby kept me up aaaaalll night long and  I am on meds to help me breastfeed that make me drowsy…so I was so tired when it came time to changing her diaper.

Today I had an early morning meeting on campus and this left my Mom in charge. I gave her a quick tour of the Diaper Bag fold that I recently found out about on Diaper Swappers and I then told her to just go “old school” with what she did on my brother if she got confused.

I called her on my way home and she was flustered trying to put on the diaper. I felt kind of bad making her do that! But she did great and today there were NO leaks.
Around 4pm I did have a moment of panic where I realized I had very few flats left. But as soon as hubbs got home, I quickly washed the diapers.
I learned a few lessons about washing the diaper that I want to share. Since we hadn’t finished making our camp style washer, I decided to use the bathtub. Here is my process:

Fill the tub with water and add diapers for a rinse:

Drain the tub and add hot water, then add detergent:

Let sit for five minutes, then go in and mix it up with a plunger. I initially started stirring it but the flats kept getting wrapped around the plunger. I finally found a neat trick. I would go in to the water towards the faucet at an angle (going diagonally and downwards). I found that this kept things going and let me get a good rhythm. I did this for about 5 minutes.

I then let the diapers go through another rinse and this time added a bit of BioKleen to kill any extra bacteria:

I drained out the diapers and then wrung them to dry. This was the most labor intensive part of the task. I did the whole lasso twist thing, but I found that good ol’ wringing them out worked well. If they are clean enough to go on my babies, they are clean enough to be touched by my hands. But  I will confess, I would have rather used rubber gloves because afterwards my hands were wrinkly so I felt icky.
I hung the diapers to dry using my Ikea drying rack. I love this because it takes up very little space. I am drying my covers by having them connect to each other by the velcro over the shower rod.

I am really worried about my wet bag drying in time. It is sopping wet. Any thoughts on this? I wonder if a bucket would have been better…


I am using the Swaddlebees flats and I LOVE them! Don't forget to use the discount!  http://www.swaddlebees.com/Products/Fitted-Diapers/flats and use coupon code FLATS2211. Good through 5/31/11

I am also using old receiving blankets and one Osocozy flat.

Day 1 Lessons Learned:
* Diaper Bag fold = LOVE
* Use rubber gloves when wringing diapers dry
* Put plunger into tub at an angle to get diapers moving around
* Connect covers to one another and hang on shower rod
* Pad folding another flat into diaper bag fold made it stand up during night time. I am anxious to see how that works tonight.
My thoughts: I have to say, after washing them by hand, I thought, ‘Who would do this?’ I can just say that if I were pinching pennies, especially if I were juggling jobs (as I am now!), I would be a little irritated washing flats by hand every night. Maybe I would want a bigger stash in order to do this. I also felt embarrassed asking someone else to do this. My Mom is very understanding, but what if someone else were watching the kids? But overall, I didn’t think all of this was as big of a deal as I had expected (I say this before my little one has done his weekly clay poop!).
How did everything work out for you guys? What are your thoughts on all of this?

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