sarah's sustainable life

as my son gets bigger and louder everyday, i am forced to deal with the fact that he is not a baby any more. worse than that, i am forced to deal with a whole lot of baby items that are of no use any more. if you find yourself in a similar situation, you have two options (as i see it):

1)find someone who has a baby to take your old stuff (if they even want it)
2)find a new use for it

as josiah has been pretty brutal on all his possessions, i have opted for the latter of these two. here are a few new uses i have come up with for old baby stuff.
*bath cushion: you know that foam-rubber kneeling pad you’ve been using to give your baby a bath? it works great under your knees when you are scrubbing tubs, toilets, and floors! and because it’s washable, it’s a great pad to rest on while you do gardening (if you are into that).
*cloth diapers: most moms i know have had cloth diapers around, even if only for burping cloths. these little absorbent monsters are spectacular for a myriad of cleaning projects, but my favorite has been to use them as a swiffer cover. slightly damp for dusting or hot and soapy for mopping, the texture of cloth diapers works great for cleaning! and they go right into the wash with some bleach or disinfectant to be used again.
*baby shampoo: i know i am not far from josiah wanting to pick out his own bubble gum scented shampoo in a monkey shaped bottle, so what can i do with these giant economy sized bottles of baby shampoo i have acquired? the best use i have found is as an eye makeup remover. no tears but plenty of suds to scrub away excess eye makeup at the end of the day.
*baby food containers: i may be the only one who wishes baby food still came in little jars with screw top lids, but even the plastic snapping lid container have been quite useful in our home. i use them to pack condiments and sauces in lunch boxes. just to warn you, not all baby food containers have leak proof lids, so be careful how you pack it. (if only they all came in jars with screw tight lids…)
*knit items: finding a little more time to knit and crochet as your baby learns to play more independently? any knit item can be unraveled and hooked into something more useful. i have my eye on a pair of knit socks that he outgrew months ago to become his first scarf this winter.

also, remember that most 2nd hand kid stores will take gently used clothing and toy donations as a credit toward newer stuff for your child!

when you are pregnant, there are SO many issues you have to make a decision about, and no shortage of people willing to give advice. i wanted not to give advice, but to share my experience and conclusions about one particular issue all new moms must face – diapers. there are several options to choose from. in the end, each family must decide which solution (or combination of solutions) fits them best. we’ll start with the obvious.

disposables
there are many reasons to choose disposable diapers. they are sanitary, convenient, easy on baby’s skin (pulling moisture away makes for less diaper rash problems), and less work for moms who already have way too much to do. so, why not use them? they are extremely expensive, they can leave you in a pinch (2am and we’re out of diapers – now what?), and some reports consider disposable diapers to be the worst offenders in the garbage dumps, possibly taking hundreds or even thousands of years to biodegrade. these factors, and a sentimental whim i carry for an impossibly old-fashioned lifestyle, led me to consider the less popular alternative of our time: cloth diapers.

cloth
cloth diapers were the only alternative in the history of babies up until about 25years ago, so they obviously do the job just fine. they are nice and soft (some disposables feel like a strip of cardboard with sticky tabs), you never run out, there’s no cost past the initial purchase of diapers with plastic covers and pins (which i was given at a baby shower), and they leave no garbage for the dump. so, why not use them? i have to admit, the first months of having a baby were some of the most difficult in my life. my son needed constant attention and feeding, and i had almost no sleep. the last thing i wanted to do was rinse the used diapers in the toilet, pile them in the “soaking bucket”, and then have to smell them all again at the end of the day when it was time to put them through the wash. i also worried about poking my son with the diaper pin as he got older and very squirmy at changing time (happy to say, that has never happened). some environmental reports declare that the water spent to wash the cloth diapers makes them a worse waste of resources than disposables. what’s a mom to do? there is a third option that i came across in my research that sounded wonderful to me, but not very practical in my situation.

dpt
diaperless potty training (dpt) is what is used in countries where diapers are considered a luxury item for the wealthy. dpt can begin when your child is as young as six weeks old. parents get to know their children well enough to sense the body language signs given before babies relieve themselves and then hold them over the potty in a slightly folded position. dpt advocates encourage babies to go completely naked, only wearing pants and underwear at an age when children would naturally be dressing to go places outside the home. fun times! children get to run around as God intended without feeling ashamed, parents know their children well enough to predict potty use, and children become familiar with the bathroom so they’re never afraid of the potty. no power struggle to untrain the use of diapers when they are two or three, and there is no cost EVER for anything. so why not use this system? i was really enamored with the idea of dpt, but i knew i would have to go back to work when my son was seven weeks old. nobody but a mom is going to go through that much trouble (i think). also, i was concerned about my ability to “catch” the signs that Josiah was ready to go and end up cleaning messes all over the house. i never did get to try dpt, but as my son is now almost eighteen months old and i know him a little better, i am trying to occasionally hold him over the potty while he goes so that he can get used to the idea.

i used only cloth diapers for several months. when my son actually began sleeping, i found that he slept longer if a wet diaper did not wake him. at that point, i decided to make a compromise and use disposable diapers at night. after a not-so-pleasant cloth diaper changing experience on the ground at a farmer’s market, i also decided that using disposables while out and about town would probably be a good idea. for my family, i feel i’ve got the best of both worlds. i use cloth diapers at home during the daytime, which saves us LOTS of money and makes me feel better about creating less garbage. when my son sleeps through the night or i choose to hand him over to a nursery worker at church, i’m glad he’s wearing a disposable. i think the best part will be when he is completely potty trained, though, and all this is a fun memory.

does anyone else have interesting diaper experiences or ideas?