My Plastic Free & Minimalist Baby Diapers

Most of you know by now that I had my third child in May. He's a beautiful, bouncing boy! Meet Jonah...

He along with my older two children are a great source of joy. With babies come more "things" and most of those perceived needs are commonly "plastic things." The most prolific plastic baby item is definitely diapers. The average child will use more than 2,700 diapers in the first year alone, which can add up to more than $550 (based on an average price of $0.20 per disposable diaper). The average baby will use 3,500 - 4,000 diapers before potty training is completed. 

I have an intense dislike of disposable diapers for many reasons. The first one that comes to my mind is that they really don't seem to do my baby justice to contain the 'leftovers' that his body can produce. If you've changed many diapers you know exactly what I mean...the leg gussets aren't sufficient or the waist band. It always seems to escape the hatches up the back, out the legs. GROSS!

My beautiful mother cloth diapered four out of five of her children during the 1980s and 1990s. I remember her hanging the cloth diapers out on the clothes line. Such a fond memory. When we were expecting our first child I informed my husband of my desire to cloth diaper our baby. At the time he had just retired, due to a medical injury, from his career as a professional fire fighter. You can only imagine the things that he encountered during his daily duties in public service. However, when it came to changing baby #2 diapers he freaked out. I still remember him using a spatula to remove the solids from the diaper in the toilet while holding his nose. Holy cow, if he got pooped on by the baby or the baby's tummy was upset, the neighbors could hear his screech a mile down the road. Three babies later, we're still cloth diapering and his screech has lessened. His dislike of changing poopy diapers will always be there no matter how many he changes - cloth or disposable.

The beautiful thing about cloth diapers is that the waste rarely exits the diaper unwanted. When I first made the decision to cloth diaper, I purchased my cotton pre-fold diapers and organic Little Beetle wool diaper covers. The initial cost was an investment. It cost around $500 for the whole shebang - diapers, cover, pins, wet bags, etc. This investment covered the entire diaper experience for our first and second child. I finally decided to part with my cloth diapers last year. One month later, I found out that I was pregnant!

With Little Beetle no longer in business and my love of wool diaper covers, I decided to take on the task of making my own upcycled wool diaper covers. My motivation came after seeing a couple handmade diaper covers by Ozark Mountain Mama. She makes beautiful covers! We excitedly started frequenting thrift stores in search of 100% wool items to craft into our own covers for Jonah. It wasn't difficult to locate the wool at all. I got such an adrenaline rush when I would find a sweater with moth holes that had finished it's useful life as a sweater and now would have a second life on my baby's bottom. What can be more zero waste about that!

Next I thought, if I can make wool diaper covers why not my own pre-fold diapers? I set my mind to making a minimum of one dozen newborn and one dozen infant pre-fold diapers out of 100% cotton t-shirts and an old flannel blanket. I had many remnants left from the t-shirts and thought why can't I turn these into my wipes? Yes, the remaining t-shirt pieces and sometimes sleeves were cut into 8 x 8 inch squares to be used as diaper wipes.

I have never been a inventive person, creating my own patterns. But I can follow instructions well to create almost anything. So I found a few ideas & patterns that other bloggers had already published and got to work. Here's a great blog by Rita. We diaper Jonah with three soft wool diaper covers (in each size) and two dozen pre-fold cloth diapers. Now that I've made the same pattern several times, I can whip them up fast! I hope to keep my 4,000 diapers out of the landfill. I love my minimalist, plastic free diaper routine and wouldn't change it.

If you'd like to see step by step instructions & pictures please post a comment to the blog page.

Plastic Free Shopping: In the Waste Stream of Others

I grew up in what most people would consider a large family (in a modern sense). There were seven of us: Dad, Mom, four girls and one boy. Don't feel sorry for our brother, he held his own. We were very fortunate to have loving parents who stayed together faithfully, until our mothers death in 2011. Our mother was a wonderful homemaker and didn't work the majority of my childhood. She was very frugal out of necessity. She loved to shop at secondhand or thrift stores. To her it was almost like a scavenger hunt to find the hidden treasure. She would lie in wait for the next cart of treasure to come rolling out of the intake room like a cat waiting to pounce on its prey. The thought makes me smile.

I've recently begun re-living my mother's passion partly due to frugality but also as an excellent, eco-conscious endevour. When we give an item a second life we are able to keep plastic packaging out of the landfill. Living in the waste-stream of others is a very eco friendly habit. It certainly lessens our carbon footprint too.

I've been able to clothe our newborn son 90% of secondhand clothes all carefully chosen from natural fibers. No synthetic clothes for us! I keep an electronic list of the clothes in my children's current wardrobes to evaluate whether an item found is really needed or not. I need to work further on creating a minimalist wardrobe for each family member. In time that's a task I'll conquer.

To keep within our goal of minimalism for this year, I need to go secondhand shopping with a list otherwise my excitement can get out of control quickly. Plastic free purchases, yipyee! Reminder to self, we still want to limit our purchases to only absolute necessities. What can I live without?

My Dental Check-up: Plastic Free?

I wish that I could answer with a resounding YES. Unfortunately the answer is no. 

Every prior visit to the dentist I've taken their little plastic bag full of goodies (brush, toothpaste & floss) without a thought. This week, I got up the courage to say no thank you to the bag, travel size floss and toothpaste. I did however bring home the toothbrush for myself & husband. Three out of four is improvement, right? There's still guilt lingering. See the picture of the cute travel size dental floss container from my last dental checkup? Is it recyclable? No. Neither are the toothbrushes. I've never contemplated what to do with a empty dental floss container other than toss it. As soon as I throw it in the garbage my kids will say, "But Mom we can reuse it! It can be this, and this and this." I decided to look for ideas to reuse floss containers. I found a good article from Rebecca Rockafeller on Trash Backwards.

I think I might use mine to store small safety pins in my sewing kit for now. Maybe my husband can thread some fishing line on one for a pocket for emergency use. I found some cute ideas on Pinterest for repurposing a floss container into a travel sewing kit. 

Since I refused the floss at the dentist I'm waiting on a package of new Eco-Dent floss to arrive from Vitacost this week. They claim plastic free packaging. What would be superb is if the floss itself could be composted. That would be zero waste! 

Empty Piece of Non-Recyclable Waste