One of my besties visited me over the weekend. She is one of those friends with whom I can pick up like no time has passed even though we rarely talk on the phone and it’s been more than a year since we’ve seen each other.
Maybe it’s because the two of us can still finish each other’s sentences after spending six weeks together backpacking through Europe when we graduated from college and before we moved to the big city to start real jobs. Maybe it’s because she was friends with my husband before I was, saw some similarities and insisted that we go out on a date. Or maybe it’s just because since the minute we met during freshman year in college, our souls have connected. Whatever it is, visits with my old pal are never often enough and always leave us crying and saying “we HAVE to do this more often” and “why did we wait so long?”
There is really something special about good girlfriends, isn’t there? Yet so many of us don’t make time for those friends who restore us and uplift us. Anyway… that’s beside the point. Back to my smart friend…
We spent most of our day together catching up, watching our kids play and wondering where the last 15 years have gone. My friend is a relatively new mommy, her firstborn is 8 months old, so the conversation – as it almost always does with moms – eventually turned to parenting topics.
For hours we discussed and debated everything from balancing career and family (she will be going back to work in a few weeks) to sleeping training to inspiring our girls to be confident but not mean to others to how we suddenly have short fuses with our own mothers. I had mentioned cloth diapering briefly in past conversations, but we finally had a chance for her to ask me questions about it. And questions she asked.
I answered each one dutifully and honestly. Went through my weekly routine. The ups and downs. Differences between cloth and disposable diapering.
And then my astute friend said: “So, you mentioned all these reasons why cloth is so great. But why do you really do it?” What was my one reason for cloth diapering above all others? I had never thought of it like that. There are so many benefits, so many different reasons that a group of five cloth mamas might have five different answers.
My one thing is the environment. I just feel good when we only fill our trash can up halfway. When I don’t have to buy diapers that have been trucked to the store and are filled with chemicals that will eventually end up in a landfill after one use.
That’s it. My one thing. The reason over all others that I use cloth diapers. What’s yours?
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.
Tags: cloth diaper benefits, Cloth Diapering Unwrapped, cloth diapers, environment
