Laundry Composition

One load of warm (colors) laundry contained:

6 sleepers for baby
13 onsies/outfits for baby
6 bibs for baby
4 shirts for baby
3 sweatshirts for baby
6 pairs of pants for baby
3 pairs of socks for baby

AND

ONE pair of sweatpants for Mommy
THREE shirts for Mommy (2 tanks, 1 T)
FOUR pairs of underwear for Mommy

TWO pairs of underwear for Daddy
TWO pairs of socks for Daddy

AND

2 boppy covers

. . .

Gee, who's the important one at our house?

Random Update

Sorry for lack of an update! I haven't been on the computer too much, trying to whip the house into shape for the party we're having on Feb 5th (more on that later).

I'm starting to get really excited for James to start eating food, even though it will be four more months until then, hehe. I never understood why people were so eager to start solids but now I realize it's pretty fun to give your baby food in the beginning! At least, I imagine it will be considering how excited I am to do it!

James "worked from home" today but he's really bad at it. We got another 15 inches of snow last night, so he was snow-blowing the driveway from like nine until noon--then he changed and rested and ate--and then he finally got down to work about 2 and only worked until like 5 . . . I wish he was able to focus better when he was here, I really like having him here, but I know he won't "work from home" very often when he can't actually get a lot of work done! :-/

Anyway, then we went and washed a bunch of big stuff at the laundromat--quilts, comforters, mattress pads, couch covers, etc--and then we went food shopping while our stuff washed, and then we got pizza next door to the laundromat while everything dried. It was fun--James said it was like being on a date (only with a baby there, hehe).

Dum dum dum dum

Cloth Diapering 101: Washing Diapers

So a few people have asked us about our system of washing cloth diapers. This is pretty standard, I think--I would love comments about how others do it!

We have two wet bags and a diaper pail (one wet bag in the pail at a time). When the diaper is dirty, it is put in the bag in the pail--there is no need to "dunk", rinse off, or dump out dirty diapers when the baby is only eating breastmilk--you can just put the whole diaper and all its contents directly in the laundry. Once the baby starts eating food (or if the baby is formula fed) then it is preferable to rinse off the (poopy) diaper before washing it. We don't have to do this yet though!

When the pail is full we wash them.

The best detergent to use seems to be Rockin Green--we actually haven't been using this, we've been using All Free and Clear, our normal detergent, but among the cloth diapering community this seems to be a big no-no. Most detergents leave a residue on the diapers making them less absorbent. Rockin Green is awesome for NOT doing this, so definitely worth the extra effort to buy. We have ordered our Rockin Green (I think?), so we'll start using that soon.

To wash them:
-First we do a cold soak and prewash, with soap. We put the wet bag into the load with the diapers.
-Then we do a hot wash (with more soap) with a cold rinse.
-Then we do an extra cold rinse.
-Then we dry them in the dryer--though in the summer we might hang them on the line, which keeps them nicer for longer and bleaches them in the sun.

We have to do a load just about every day, but we can skip the occasional day. It honestly takes almost half a day just to complete the whole washing process so we basically have the diapers going in two cycles all the time--a set that we are using and that are dirty, and a set that is being washed/dryed/folded.

So that's the how-to (or at least what we do) on washing cloth diapers. Not too hard but the extra laundry is definitely noticeable.

I'm going to do a separate post (sometime) on the different kinds of diapers that we have and pros and cons of each.

Baby Laundry

So you always hear that babies make a lot of laundry and I never got it. I always thought that even if they wear a lot of clothes, that the clothes are small and that wouldn't be very much extra laundry.

What I didn't count on was the fact that any of the following things might suddenly get covered with baby pee, spitup, or breastmilk at any given time:
-our sheets and pillows
-our shirts (and pants)
-bibs
-his mattress sheets
-his swaddle blankets
-his clothes, obviously
-the boppy cover
-his towels
-our robes

And all these things smelling slightly of milk is unusual for our vegan household . . .which means we like to try to wash things fairly promptly.
So it's more than just the baby clothes--it is a LOT of extra laundry.

Plus we go through certain things quickly (like sleep sacks) and so we need to wash a load with them when we run out.

PLUS we are cloth diapering, which means we ALSO have an extra load every day of diapers. We can skip the occasional day, but mostly we wash diapers every day or day and a half.

So it's more than I anticipated. I'm so glad we got our washer fixed before the baby was born!

Laundry Ketchup

After just three days of sorting, doing, and folding laundry (only like one load per day) I am mysteriously nearly caught up! At least, all the remaining "dirty" is fitting in my laundry sorting bin.

At first I couldn't figure out how this could possibly be the case, but then I realized that I've been averaging about one/two outfits per week. So while there is plenty of dirty socks and underwear, my contribution to the rest of the dirty clothes has been fairly minimal.

Yay for having nothing to wear and no reason to wear anything!