Flats and Handwashing Challenge, Day 5: Busy day!
Today's question: What is working for me?
Well, today was my "busy day." I ran my La Leche League group, setting it up mostly solo as neither of my co-leaders were able to attend. (Many thanks to R for the moral support and baby wrangling that kept me from being totally solo and way more freaked out, doing this with 3 kids for the first time.) I took the time before setting out to the meeting to water my plants, but not to wash my diapers. It was one or the other, and I decided they could wait. In spite of this, and the busy day that kept me out from 9 to 3, and then out again from 5:30 to 8, with nursing a newborn and wrangling 2 pre-schoolers... Wow, I'm tired just reading this sentence... I am going to bed right now with all but one of my diapers clean and nice. Really, this is a busy week for me, and it is going just fine. Great, actually.
Washing big loads is working for me. Washing as I go works too. I washed a diaper in the sink at the church today, just washing off the sticky soap on the outside of their hand soap bottle and drying it in my minivan (inspired by R). That totally worked too. I have the two diapers I washed-as-I-went tonight hanging in my laundry room on hangers, specifically not taking advantage of my lovely yard clothesline. It will work too (though I am curious if they'll be dry in the morning.)
Snappis are working. Pins are working - though not so hot on the t-shirt diapers. They're really hard to push a pin through. Nighttimes are working. I get him set up in a flat, with a flannel wipe or two as makeshift doublers. Then I lay our the Flip cover with a flat pad-folded in it, for those mostly unconscious middle-of-the-night changes, for me or hubby. We've used it a couple times; a couple times he has slept through to morning (!) in his flat and wool cover. How awesome is that?
And it is working for my husband! It would have been fair for him to tell me that this is my wackadoo notion and that if I wanted to ignore our perfectly good quite expensive pocket diapers for a week then he was not changing any hippy flat diapers and I was on my own. Instead he has risen to the challenge and mastered the Snappi, gamely attempted pins with not-bad results, and cheered and encouraged me all through this. Today he even insisted on which t-shirt diaper I was to have Flipper wear to LLL, because it was so cute.
He has comforted my vague feelings of guilt that I am spending so much energy on this instead of other stuff I probably should be doing.
How is this working out for me? Well enough that when my husband asked me today if I wanted to just keep doing this forever, I didn't answer right away. I had to think about it, because I am actually loving this. Of course, the novelty of the Flats Challenge would wear off, and it's not like I have a ton of free time on my hands. But I have often pondered that labor saving devices actually steal some of our mental peace, time that we could be focusing on a simple job to be well done and instead is spent on some other frenetic pursuit, paying bills or surfing the internet or staring at the television or tidying your kids' mess up again or driving about doing stuff or or or... I once read that 50s housewives were resistant to dishwashers because that time doing dishes was their quiet time, their "me time." I totally get that, now more than ever. In a week where things have happened that would normally spin my mental health out of control and land me in a deep dark place, this quiet working time has grounded me and I am truly okay. For this, Chris is willing to have me keep up this week's lifestyle forever - or until Flipper decides he prefers the potty, anyway.
Will I actually keep handwashing diapers full time? No, probably not. But I will be wistful and nostalgic, do the Challenge annually, handwash on trips, and most importantly teach others. I will use more flats, make more flats from old precious but sadly worn out t-shirts, and buy one more set of Snappis and a few more really nice GMD diaper pins. And I will seriously line dry lots. Because I love seeing a line full of clean diapers, love the time spent hanging them, watching them blow while my children frolic through them giggling... Love pulling them off the line and snapping them softly to soften them, taking them in and smoothing them into origami folds with loving hands, them pulling them out to wrap them lovingly around my son - and eventually taking them back off and confirming in my mind the cycles of life, taking what is "used" and making it new again.
I just took a lot of words to say... It's all working for me. It's awesome.