I have a confession to make: I have been on a disposable diaper bender. There. I said it.
It all started earlier this month when we were visiting my parents. As I blogged about a couple weeks ago, my mom usually buys some disposables “just in case” when we come to visit even though I bring the cloth diapers, wet bag and detergent with us. So there they were, taunting me like a little devil on my shoulder at every diaper change “I’m so EASY, one less diaper to wash,” “C’mon, throwing away one or two isn’t the end of the world!,” “Mama needs a vacation too!” (I do have some at home, but I keep them tucked out of sight). I didn’t give in to the convenience every time. But probably at least half the time, I indulged. Eeek! Some people binge on alcohol or food. I binge on disposable diapers.
Now that we are home, I’m back on a regular wash schedule (which was part of the problem) and my daughter is back in cloth diapers…during the day. My binge has sort of tapered off, but the one thing that I’ve had a hard time giving up is the night time disposable. My daughter’s nighttime diapers are the worst offenders in our ongoing war with ammonia and it has just been nice to not deal with the soaked bowling ball of a diaper in the morning (not to mention the leaks!). She is a pretty decent wetter and those things seriously weigh a couple pounds when they are wet. Even though I am rinsing the inserts by hand before washing, I have a hard time getting the smell out.
But excuses aside, I’m currently throwing away one diaper a day. Plain and simple. And like I’ve said before, a disposable here or there (or even every day) is not something I am going to stress about. Life has been busy the past several weeks trying to get the most out of the last days of summer and get ready for the changes coming in the fall (my oldest starts preschool next week!), so there isn’t room for guilt right now about disposables. If there is one thing that I have learned about cloth diapers, it’s that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I can use mostly cloth and still be proud of what I’m doing for my planet and my children.
And there you have it. Confessions of a cloth diaper blogger.
Please tell me this happens to some of you too?
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.
