DIY Laundry Soap

As maybe some of you know I have ventured into the realm of Cloth Diapering, if you care to read more about all that you can read my other post on it, here, here, or here :)

So far things have gone pretty well in that department except for one frustrating detail: Rashes!

From much researching and experimenting I realized you can't entirely use diaper rash cream with cloth diapers because it can make the absorption defective. So when they would come up I would have to put her in disposable with the cream until it cleared up.

After much more researching I figured maybe I needed to "Strip" the diapers of all the chemical buildup of laundry soap and such. Which helped some, but she was still lingering with rashes that wouldn't ever fully go away.

So yet again, much more researching, on how to care for and clean the diapers. And amongst it all I came across a recipe that another blogger, Elisa Loves uses specifically for their cloth diapers, they also had problems with rashes and once she put together this laundry combination and it worked great for her, I knew I must try.

So just for safe keeping, I stripped the diapers one more time, and then made the soap. Simple as that and the cloth diapers are back into their normal full functioning gear, this recipe has been a real life saver. And no more rashes, bless-ed hooray day!

So to share on this lovely goodness, here is the simple life saving goods, and I am sure this combination could work great for more than just cloth diapers.

 All it is, is equal parts of the following ingredients, Pure Baking Soda, Super Washing Soda, and Sun Oxygen. I just got a 1 cup and scooped from each thing one at a time till I filled my nice #10 can (and I still have some left over in the containers to make more later), then put the lid on and gave it a good shake to make sure the powders blended well, and that is that!

A nice glance on the inside. Then for each load of diapers I just do one scoop (that came in the "Sun Oxygen" container) or two table spoons. Or if it is a small load, just one table spoon.

It's as simple as that, and it has been a wonderful life saver! Hooray!

Well that's all I have for today, join me again tomorrow for a continuation of the Bean fudge, where I will share the goods of the yummy Graham Crackers that are so good dipped in it!

Cloth Diapers Part III

Sorry for the delay AGAIN on these, my Internet was out all day yesterday, so here I am today. But for this "We-flecting Wednesday" (even though it is Thursday) I thought I would do another little recap for you on how the diapering has been going, in case you were curious!

First things first, it is all going super swell! If you want to read my other recaps on the diapers, here's Cloth Diapers Part I and Cloth Diapers Part II. In the first one I introduced that we would be doing it even though my little girl wasn't born yet, and showed the ones that we bought from the Willow Store. The second part we had been doing it for a little while and was discussing how things were going for the first few months and now is a little recap of it all since then.

I tried making another diaper again.

I tried making another one before doing some research on making diapers, which I really should have done and would have probably made my life a lot easier. But I decided to use umbrella material as a sort of water proof layer. . . .

And then I lined it with a freezer zip lock bag in the middle, to make it more water proof. In my recap in Part II I tried making a diaper but I lined it with plastic wrap, and it didn't work for very long, so I thought this time a thicker layer of plastic would be better

Then I made some Velcro straps

And sewed on the front Velcro area

And sewed in the elastic in the legs and back

Then officially sewed in the zip lock plastic

To help keep the sewing from ripping the plastic, I put liquid stick on the seams to seal it better

And the finished product

I lined in the inside with a new cleaning rag, hoping that it would be a good absorbent layer

The finished product on my little girl. OK, now for the real truth.. . . this one didn't really turn out as great as I would have liked. It isn't very breathable, and it didn't really fit right, but overall it still serves as a nice back up diaper if I need something to hold me over while doing laundry, but overall, I need to do better research before I make another diaper.

In case you were wondering how we did the whole laundry situation, we put the dirty ones in here, we use our fancy toilet sprayer to clean the poopy ones and they all go in here. . .

See. . . just be glad you can't smell it in here, it is SUPER stinky. But we do laundry about every 2-3 days, sometimes sooner depending on how many buildups of poopy diapers we get.

Then. . . .in my discouragement of homemade diapers not going super well for me at the time, but needing a few extra we found these. . .

 We got these off EBay from this particular seller: HERE (hopefully this link works for you, if not, I just searched "U pick cloth diapers, and it had many different options available where you can pick 10 diapers with 10 inserts for about $40-50 and they have the buy it now options, which I greatly enjoy!), but there are so many different options there.

We got ten in all, with ten more inserts for about $50 with free shipping, yeah!

Here is a little more up close, it is adjustable by snaps instead of elastic like our other ones

The insert can go inside the diaper. . .

Or on top (which we tend to do most of the time, simply because it is easier and quicker

Then, since my little girl tends to wet more at night we double layer her inserts. We use one wool one and wrap it around a regular one

Like so. . .

And then we set it inside one of her willow store ones, since they are much more water proof than our new eBay ones and then we save the eBay ones for the day time.

With the new system of using the eBay ones during the day and the willow ones during the night, it has been going pretty well and it has really helped in having a manageable system and being able to be caught up on laundry each time. We still do disposable when we go to church or leave town, or if we know we will be out of the house longer than 3 hours, simply because I am still not sure how I would handle the mess outside of our house. But even with these few times, we haven't had to buy very many disposable diapers, it is a great feeling to not have to be completely dependant on them!

So there you have it, things are going well, and it is a venture I have not regretted getting into, even amongst all the mess it brings.

Now don't forget to join in on my "50th Venture Celebration Giveaway" where I will be giving away 15 free clips (with free shipping too, you don't have to be living here in Idaho to participate, just live in the USA, sorry if you don't) The last few days have been a little busy, but I do have at least one clip going so far, but I will share more on Monday, since this day will actually be my "50th Venture" and I thought it would be most fitting to share most of them on this day.. . But as a sneak peak, here is one that I have gotten done so far, and on Monday I will share at how easy it was to make. So come join the fun by going to the giveaway page and joining in, there are lots of ways to enter to win!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a great Thursday!

Until next time! . . .

Cloth Diapers Part II

You may recall 5 ventures ago I talked about doing cloth diapers, you can check that out more here if you so choose. But basically I gave a little intro about how I wanted to do cloth diapers for when my baby would be born (I typed that venture when I was still preggo), and showed off the fancy things we found online and all that jazz. Well the babe has come and it is now two months later, and I know you are just DYING to know how it is all going, to know how the whole cloth diaper thing is going, right!? (since you check up on me SO often, right!?)
Well then, this is your lucky day, I will tell you exactly that: how the cloth diapering is actually going...


Here is her showing off one them...


First off, I would give it all time 8 Star, for it is going pretty good (not perfect yet, but still pretty good!)! I got a good amount of disposable diapers as gifts from various people. Since a good amount of the gifts were newborn sizes, I knew I needed to use those up first, especially since I knew the first few weeks of diapers would be a lovely tar like ordeal, and it would be nice to take in this whole thing slowly and I also wouldn't want those new born disposable diapers to go to waste since I figured she would out grow that size pretty quickly, and she did. So I didn't use cloth in the very beginning...

After about 3-4 weeks, when her diapers became more manageable in smell and looks (poop is such an interesting thing), I began in my venture I promised I would try. It has taken quite a while to get used to a routine of laundry and keeping up in that department in order to not have to use as many disposable while the cloth are, well in the laundry. But after two months now I think I got a good system down and things are going pretty smooth. I do still have occasions where I still do disposables like when we get a babysitter (I wouldn't want to have to put them through this too :) and then I like to use them for church on Sunday as a "day of rest" sort of deal, in giving myself a little break after a long "poopy" sort of week, if you get my drift :)

On a fun and thrifty note- we still have not bought any packages of disposable diapers since she was born, because we got a good amount at the baby shower, and because we are finally using the cloth enough we just haven't needed to buy any so far yet. We will prob need to be buying a package soon though, since in a couple of weeks we will finally start doing a little of traveling to see family, which will also be a time when we wont do cloth- could you imagine trying to keep up on this sort of thing on the road? I don't want to have to imagine it :)

On some other fun and frugal notes, to help keep up with the laundry I was thinking I would need more of the outer shells (we originally bought three, hoping they wouldn't get that dirty while the inserts we knew would, so we got 24 of those) and it actually has worked out pretty well, as long as she doesn't poop. For some reason the inserts catch all her pee pretty good, but when she poop it tends to get past the inserts and making a mess onto the shells- thus creating the need to do more laundry. So long story short, I decided we needed more shells, but before we jumped right in on buying more, I wanted to try making one, and well folks... I think it just might work, for what I put together. Here is just my first round of one, and if it continues to be a success I think I will make a few more, especially to help things out when she will start pooping more when she will start eating solids soon.

Her showing off her new fancy shell that I made

I made this double layered. The outer material has a sort of waterproof feel to it, and then I also sewed a layer of plastic wrap in between the two to help give that much more leak protection. This homemade one isn't reversible like the store bought ones are, and I put Velcro on it instead of the cool fancy buttons, but other than that it is basically the same, and is still adjustable so that it should fit her as long as she needs it too.  Now the only fun part to see if this will really work is to see how well it will wash in the laundry and if the plastic layer wont get messed up.

Anyway, long story short, it has been a great venture, one I haven't regretted wanting to venture on. It is comforting to know I don't have to run to the store every week or so to reload on diapers, and it is saving lots of money in our pocket- which ALWAYS gives me a good peace of mind! And not to mention it is also fun to think we are also helping the environment- one diaper at a time!

Until next time!....

Cloth Diapers: Part 1

Yes, I said that right, cloth diapers. These are usually those kind of things you hear your grandmas raving about "back in my day...." and it was usually seen as something that people ONLY did back in the day, because with the connivance of the new disposable diapers, why would anyone ever consider going back to the cloth. Well as crazy it might sound, or as crazy as I know many people will think I will be (if they don't think so already) I am going to venture into using cloth diapers. On the same note I am not planning on being a 100% cloth diaper-ier, because when I will be out and about, or if we leave town, I will use disposable to save on the hassle of trying to carry around extra "crap", or trying to clean them while being out- it isn't worth it to me that much- but is for me to try at home, especially since I plan to be home most the time.

After doing some research on it, it has come to my attention that cloth diapering is actually becoming pretty popular (not that this is my reasons for it though ;), and with the increase of popularity, there has become an increase in supply of it, and making them a better quality, which is another reason I am not too worried in trying them. After reviewing this handy Cloth Diaper Review Website, that another fellow-cloth-diaper-venturing-friend gave me, I found the ones I wanted and that I think will be worth trying. Then with the support of my husbands work and giving bonus incentives, we were able to order a set from the Willow Pad store online. The overall total was $220 (which included shipping, a diaper sprayer, and also a pair of nursing pads I got along with the order, they looked so nice and soft, I couldn't resist!) for what we ordered. I know that sounds like a lot up front, but in the long run I figure this will save us thousands of dollars we might have spent on disposable over our baby's diapering years (plus, I hear that kids that have cloth jump into potty training faster because they can feel the poop/pee easier and are willing to learn how to use the toilet sooner to avoid the awkward feeling on their bum).

Here are the lovely cloth diapers we got:

 We got three shells (the outside part) that are reversible, and then 12 each of the different kinds of inside linings, making 24 total. You can use the outside shell as many times as you want (or as many times they stay clean), and then the inside lining will allow for 24 diaper changes before its laundry time again. Since newborns poop more frequently, we will also use some disposable at the beginning to help save on laundry, but when the diapering needs lessens, we will use the cloth diapers more.

 One feature I loved about these diapers when looking at the reviews is that it was one size fits all, as in these suckers should last us till the baby hits potty training. They have adjustable elastic in the inside that allows to snitch it up tight for the little one, or pull it out more for the toddler size bum.

 The one on the left is it at full size for a toddler bum, and the one on the right is smallest size for a wee little bum.

 Here is what it looks like when you put the inside lining in, where all the poop and pee will be caught. They are super thick and absorbent, so it is to help keep from leaking through, and when/if it does, then move on to using another outside shell.

Here was another lovely feature the store offered, that I insisted on getting in order to make this venture a little more do-able for myself. It is a high powered sprayer that you can hook up to your toilet, to spray off the bigger chunks right into the toilet, so that it makes the end result cleaning all that much easier.

Okay, okay, now that I got it all out that we are in fact going to venture in this, the real question now is "can I really do this?" In fact I ask myself this question almost every day, especially now that we finally got all the supplies to do it, when this little one pops out- can I really do this? I sure hope so, I sure plan so! I am all about saving money, working hard, and when the occasion allows I like to help in saving the planet too (did you know it takes about 500 years for disposable diapers to fully decompose!?). But because this venture is still a little in the "unknown" since the little one isn't born yet, that's why this post is "Part 1," or the Intro. After I have a go at it in all this cloth diapering jazz I will post "Part 2" to let you know how it all REALLY goes!

I am gonna have to see the poop a lot anyway from changing diapers, so why not do a little extra work that should save me a lot extra money? Anyway, we'll see how this goes, hope you have a great day!

Till next time....