Well, it’s the last day of vacation. My husband goes back to work tomorrow and the kids and I get back to our normal routine. Ahh, the holidays are so much fun – this year with a 3 ½- and a 1-year-old was especially so – and they go way too fast. But as I sit here, slightly depressed about another year of holiday fun gone, I am a little excited about getting back to regular food, regular bedtimes and wake times and regular daily rhythms.
To be honest, I used a few too many disposable diapers and let the cloth diaper laundry slide quite a bit over the past month. I’m adding a couple cloth diaper-related New Year’s resolutions to my other goals for the year (for the record, I don’t necessarily believe in strict New Year’s resolutions, but it’s a great time of year to take stock and reflect a little on what’s going right and what could stand a little improvement. I love Simple Mom’s list of 20 questions for reflecting on 2011).
My cloth diapering goals for the year are:
- Test out different detergents: I continue to struggle with stink and ammonia issues (is that line in every post I write?), so I am resolving to try some different laundry solutions in a very deliberate way. I don’t want to jump from detergent to detergent without giving each a good college try, but I need to figure out something.
- Use cloth wipes again: I’ve gotten lazy with my cloth wipes and have been using disposable wipes almost exclusively. These sticky, paste-y toddler poos I’m dealing with make disposable wipes more appealing, but they are a pain to figure out how to actually dispose of the poo-covered nasties.
- Resize one size diapers to fit: This is a silly one, but I’ve been adjusting little by little on the fly lately as my girl seems to be a different size all the time. Consequently, many of her one size diapers are sized differently so I’m never sure how to adjust the snaps. I think it’s time to get her in a good mood and then fit her exactly and adjust all of the diapers to the same setting.
- Invest in minky inserts: I really like the new minky inserts that come with the new FuzziBunz One Size Elite cloth diapers. Like really, really like them. Once I pay some of the Christmas bills, I’d like to replace a few of our really old, nasty inserts with new minky ones (I’m thinking it may help with the stink).
- Line dry more often: I love to sun my diapers outside in the summer. But when the weather gets cold, I’m not so good about line drying diapers inside. I’ll do it once in a while, but I’d like to figure out a better system to line dry them more often. It’s better for the diapers and uses less energy. Now I just have to get organized and leave myself enough time to get them dry before I need to use them!
- Stuff and put away straight from the dryer: I love a changing table full of stuffed, ready-to-go diapers. Stuffing a diaper with one hand while holding down a squirming, flipping baby is not fun. At all. Yet, I continue to put the laundry basket of clean, but unstuffed diapers next to the changing table instead of stuffing straight out of the dryer. Habits are hard to break, but I’m going to work on it.
So that’s it. Nothing drastic, nothing wild. Just getting back to basics with my diapering. It’s like anything else, things start to slip a little after a while. But now is the time to start correcting some of these bad habits, so here’s to a fluffy 2012. Happy New Year!
What are your cloth diapering resolutions? Anything you’re going to do differently in the New Year?
Sarah is a mom of two and blogs about her adventures in motherhood, cloth diapering and everything in between. Catch her “Cloth Diapering Unwrapped” series on the FuzziBunz blog every Tuesday.
