Day 6
#flatschallenge Prompt: open topic. I had enough clean diapers hand washed and the babe mostly used the tiny potty, so I didn’t need to do any washing, just hung dirty flats on the line. Ryan is back home so we did some planting and had a restful day.
Day 7
Forecast: high of 73, low of 43 degrees. Cloudy, breezy with the occasional light rain.
Moving chicken fencing and goat fencing around today.
Today’s #flatschallenge2021 prompt: How did it go?
As long as we continue to have rain water in our catchment and/or a full well I will continue to hand wash the babe’s flats and muslin cloth wipes. It has been a good challenge, and good timing for us. Hawkeye is pooping 100% on the tiny potty and soils just 2-5 flats a day with pee. This makes Handwashing really manageable and I think I will start washing his clothes by hand, too. I feel like I can tackle grass and dirt stains better with a wash board than a machine can. Summer is also ideal weather for line dried cloth. I think it stays manageable if I keep loads small and do several throughout the week. It really does not take up much time and is very peaceful work.
Some things I’ll take away from the challenge:
-Use three clothes pins on the clothesline instead of two per flat. Two pins yielded a batch of flats that were off-square and more challenging to fold into a neat diaper. Three pins yields a square flat that’s easy to fold into neat diapers when it’s pinned on the clothes line with one pin on two corners and one pin in the middle.
-Harness the power of the sun and rain. Hanging up dirty diapers and wipes in sunny weather lets ammonia evaporate first, and makes for a cleaner wash. Hanging up dirty diapers before a rain gives them a rinse before their first wash. Hanging clean cloth in the sun on the line kicks stains, drys quick, and smells wonderful! -Change is constant. Two days after the babe was born, the midwife came to our house for one of the standard follow up visits (one of the many in the six weeks postpartum), and she said: the one thing you can count on is change; as soon as you think something is fixed, it will change. I have found this to be so true, and flats are so accommodating to change! We have been using the same flats and wool covers since the babe was born; one-size organic #clotheeze #greenmountaindiaper muslin and birdseye flats, and 6-12 month #disana wool pull on covers. The folds adapt and the knit stretches. I had no idea when I decided I was going to join the challenge over a month ago that we’d start potty training him and that he’d be using fewer flats. -Now that Hawkeye is using fewer diapers I can use some of the flats in our giant stash for other purposes: sewing him clothes and dying them pretty colors, kitchen towels, and a few for the first aid kit.
Washing Wool Covers:
I realized that my wash routine post didn’t include anything about covers. So I’ll add that in here. We use Disana merino wool pull on covers. We have three. They’re pretty reasonable to buy from Green Mountain Diaper, cheaper than it would cost me to make something of equal quality mysel (two layers of fine knit merino wool). We bought ours second hand, so they were even more reasonable. Wool is an amazing animal fiber, breathable, fire resistant, water resistant, naturally antibacterial, and antimicrobial. So my routine usually involves rotating through our three covers, airing them out between changes. I give them a rinse and a soak with #eucalan wool wash every few weeks. Wool works best with no compression, as it’s the loose weave of fibers that repels moisture. So occasionally when he’s in situations with more compression and I haven’t added an extra layer in the flat, the cover will get wet; in a car seat, backpack carrier, etc. when this happens it takes a little longer to air out and I usually give it a rinse and soak with eucalan. Eucalan is a wool wash that contains lanolin in it, which is the naturally occurring moisture resistant oil in wool, so each wash helps boost the moisture repellent character of the cover. When Hawkeye was pooping in a diaper, occasionally some of the poo would leak out of the flat and onto the cover (but never through the cover, and never onto his clothes or bed). If this happened I would turn the cover inside out and set it over a bottle to dry next to the wood stove. When dry, I would take a little plastic cast iron skillet scraper (I had one dedicated just for the purpose), and scrape the poo off the wool fiber, then spot clean with eucalan and water ( https://www.lodgecastiron.com/product/pan-scrapers?sku=SCRAPERPK ). Letting it dry made the poo come off so easily, instead of adding water to a wet poo which just made things a mess and took longer to dry when finally clean. To dry the covers, I lay them down on a towel and roll them both up together tightly and squee the water out into the towel. I then set them atop a bottle by the wood stove to dry. Wool is awesome!
Disana wool cover on the newborn 9 pound babe. He’s 7 months and 21 pounds now and they still fit!
Modified origami fold adds length so a one size clotheeze flat still fits.
