Wiped

I have no personal experience with the cost of wipes --I never bought any. They were around, but like the cloth diapers I washed instead of buying new ones all the time, I used  cloth --those little baby face cloths, specifically. Water and a cloth: as high tech as possible, obviously. That's me.

There are a number of reasons I can think of to avoid buying disposable wipes, but the one that leaps to mind in this era of the Environmentalist, is Reduce~Reuse~Recycle. Buying a dozen cloths once is quite different from buying cases and cases of disposable wipes, all neatly packaged in disposable containers. Apart from the garbage they create, there is the inability to re-use them, and the fact that they are neither biodegradable nor recyclable. 

The cost difference from name-brand wipes to cloth wipes is incredible. In hours-of-work necessary, after taxes the cost a month's supply can be a whole day's work --or more. Somewhere around $40-50 a case in bulk (and a lot more one package at a time) after taxes at minimum wage, is about 10 hours. If mom and dad both work, and pay for daycare, the number of hours necessary to work just to buy wipes rises dramatically.

But here's a fantastically inexpensive disposable alternative: my sister emailed me the instructions...

Boil four cups of water and let it cool (perfect for a busy Mom cause I forget about it anyways)

Mix in 1 tablespoon body wash (I use the kids' Melaleuca) and three or four drops of tea tree oil (you can add lavender as well if you like but I don’t have any of that at home today)

Take the cardboard out of one roll of paper towels and put them in a plastic container with a lid that will fit them. 

Pour some of the water over the paper towels

Flip them over

Pour some more water over

Flip them over again and pour the rest on

Available to use
 
....I am breaking a sweat now....

I replied: You. Are. A. Super. Hero. I'm wiped. 

_____________________

Photo (Butt Wipes, by basykes) used with permission (Creative Commons, attrib)

When They Can, They Will: Potty Woes

If there is a subject that gets more airtime than potty training, I'd like to know what it is...


There are three simple and easy ways to potty train a child:

1. wait until they're physically and psychologically ready, can understand and want to
2. let them watch the parents and older siblings do bathroom activities for a couple of years and, 
3. do nothing

Inappropriate potty training (too early, involving any kind of bribery, coercion or humiliation, too intrusive) causes some seriously weird behaviour, not only in kids but in adults, too. Those odd diaper fetishes, shy bladder and  impacted bowel (don't google that, it's gross) come to mind, but they are hardly the only ones. 

Allowing kids to sort it out for themselves when they are capable and care might add to the laundry pile for a few extra months... and the only thing I can think of to say about that is 'so?'

Are there really parents, or parenting experts, who think that the whole goal is to minimize laundry? Personally, being of an extremely lazy bent, I would do an extra load of laundry every week if it means avoiding having to clean poop off a carpet even once. The number of parents who pick 'all the bedclothes' over diapers almost every night amaze me.

When it was time to think about 'training' my kids, all I could think of was 'why?' They'd learned to walk and talk without any lessons or training led by me or anyone else, how could this be any harder? When they could, I had no doubt they would figure it out. Strangely, they did. And you know what: you can't tell anymore which one of them started or finished learning younger. In fact, you can't even tell today if they learned this when they were 14 months old, or 14 years old. 

If parents hate handing thousands of dollars to diaper manufacturers, maybe considering switching to cloth for the rest of the time for the same reason we don't buy single-use disposable shirts? 

No?