Cloth Diapers- why do I do it?

How many of you knew that I cloth diapered? (Henceforth to be referred to as CD, CDing, etc.) Well, I do. Except at night. But even that will be coming to an end soon. There's a lot of buzz right now surrounding cloth diapers, disposable diapers, which is easiest, which is cheaper, which is more environmentally friendly... etc. Gotta have something to argue about, right?

I chose to CD because for us, it's cheaper. Right now I'm just using your basic prefolds, liners, Snappis, and covers. Nothing fancy, heck, the prefolds are Gerber! At the time when I was buying the diaper covers, I felt like I was spending a lot of money. I really wasn't. Really. Diapers are cheap where I live. $10 for a pack of 40. (Okay, at least I think that's cheap...) We use disposable at night, so it normally takes us about a month to go through a pack, factoring in the occasional middle of the night leak. But if we were using solely these disposables, we'd go through approx. a pack a week. That adds up. All our ultilities are being paid for us this year, so all we have/had to pay for were the diapers (again, Gerber- $13 for 12, we bought 4 dozen, but are really only using 3, so 4x13=$52), covers ($100, I think...), Snappis ($4), liners ($30), and detergent (I don't know how it works out for the detergent). I'm not a math whiz, and I don't have my calculator open over here, but it looks to me like we spent less than $200 for start up, and are now just paying detergent costs. $200 would have bought us 20 weeks' worth of diapers. Max is now a year old, so you do the math. We saved a lot.

Yesterday I spent almost $300 on pocket diapers, inserts, and one PlanetWise wetbag. I will probably have to buy a few more in late June or early July before we head over to Korea, so I'm figuring on about $400 for diapers for soon to be two children. These should last us until Max is potty trained, and possibly even the new baby. I have no idea how much disposables cost in Korea. But I will be shocked if it worked out to be cheaper. Shocked.

Beyond the whole cost issue, there's the landfill thing... it takes possibly hundreds of years for a disposable to decompose. Now, you could use gDiapers, which are biodegradeable, but they're really expensive. Otherwise, all those diapers just sit. And sit. And sit. I read somewhere this morning that by the age of 2, a child has been changed approx. 13,000 times. That is a lot. of. diapers.

And the chemicals. I looked into that a bit, but really don't remember much besides the fact that I was grossed out by what was touching and leeching into my baby's bottom.

Anyway... I also hopping onto Etsy last night and typed in AIO cloth diapers. And, WOW! I found some AMAZING deals from sellers with stellar feedback!!

I think I've rambled long enough... and considering nobody is paying me to even type this post, no PR, no nothing... I'll leave you with the websites I use(d) for buying cloth diaper stuff. =)

Green Mountain Diapers

Nicki's Clearance

Nicki's Regular site

Random Things I like

As I picking up a paper clip off the freezer earlier, it struck me that I really like paper clips. I don't know why. Maybe because they're so versatile... (what, you don't believe me!?!? Trust me. They are.) or maybe because they do their job so well. I don't know. But it did give me the idea to write a list of random things I like. Hopefully it will make you laugh, or, at the very least, smile. And sometime later I will come back and post about Max's first birthday.

Random things I like:
-paper clips
- post-it notes
- rain
- clean sheets
- empty kitchen sink
- checking things off my to-do list
- adding things I've already done to my to-do list just so I can check them off
- winning giveaways (ha ha, maybe that's not so random after all...)
- captioning pictures

Okay, that's all I can think of right this second. What are some of yours?

Loose Teeth Vintage Inspired Sundress with Petticoat GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Loose Teeth Vintage Inspired Sundress with Petticoat GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Milk Weed Skirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

Milk Weed Skirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

Things I'm Thankful for Thursday

Various things were running through my head on Wednesday, so I decided to do this post today. (I actually started it yesterday, but "Things I'm Thankful for Wednesday" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.)

So here are some things I'm thankful for, in no particular order:

~ my husband
~ my daughter
~ the good health of the above mentioned people (you see, Baby Kayleigh passed away on Monday, so I'm reminded of how fragile life is, and that I really can't take anything for granted.)
~ electricity
~ water
~ washer AND dryer
~ air conditioners in all the rooms of our house
~ good parking places (yep, I pray for a good one when I remember! Worked today!)
~ a working computer
~ decent internet

That's all I can think of right now. My brain is being taken over by my to-do list today. (Ha ha, To-Do List Thursday.) Guess I should go get started...

Sigh

I joined yet another social networking site. I guess it makes 3- Facebook, Blogspot, and now.... Twitter. Why did I join Twitter? Honestly, again, it's more for the extra giveaway entries than anything else... and before anyone CYNICALLY asks, YES, yes I've won stuff. 5 stuffs to be exact. 2 books on Finanaces (counts as one win): huge set of waterproof, washable name labels for the Maxster; Skip Hop Duo diaper bag (never heard of it? check it out on Amazon!); a Rubbermaid container set; and, just this evening, a children's book called "The Quiet Bunny."

My house is still fairly clean. Thankyouverymuch. There is a pile of dishes in the sink, BUT I discovered bright and early this morning that the Rottie that we're taking care of this year dug through my water line from the street! I'm SO mad at him right now. Good thing he doesn't belong to me. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr...... so we're conserving water.

I remembered something I wanted to mention last time I posted. It's a "note to self/PSA"- tuna tastes a heck of a lot stronger when heated up. That is all.

Oh, and just in case anyone cares (and I'm totally okay if no one does) my Twitter ID is newwife777

I forget

All weekend long I've had random thoughts bouncing around in my head that I keep meaning to post. Now I can't remember any of them. Pregnancy/mommy brain. Gotta love it. My most recent thought was just now when I eating one of my hoarded Fruit Rollups (the red one) and as I was opening the package, I noticed that there was a note on the flap "PEEL FRUIT FROM CELLOPHANE BACKING BEFORE EATING." I kid you not. Caps and all. Now you KNOW some idiot tried to eat their Fruit Rollup WITHOUT peeling it from the cellophane backing. Actually, my almost 1- year old DD would probably do that. But not intentionally. That kid eats anything and everything. Including green beans. Did I mention that in my last post? Sorry if I did. Yeah, she loves green beans. Ryan hates them with a passion. He's not entirely sure that she belongs to him anymore.

Once, a long time ago, I jotted down my thoughts that I wanted to blog about so I wouldn't forget them. I should try that again.

Oh, I SHOULD mention that Ryan and I finally hammered out a decent looking budget. We're both horrible with budgets. Like, really bad. But some friends of ours are really really good at them, so last week while I was having coffee with E (and Max), I asked her about it, and she showed me how they did it. I was super impressed and super motivated. I tried to aim a little higher than I thought we might actually need in some areas, because I'd rather pare down than have to up things. That always irritates me.

I need another Fruit Rollup.