Our gorgeous, colorful, eco-friendly hybrid cloth diapers have STAINS on them.
Yes, stains.
Unsavory, unbecoming, unattractive stains. I'll spare you the picture.
I pouted. I sulked. I even considered abandoning ship. Why this time? What did I do wrong? What did I do to our precious investment?!
In this last round of use, I thought I was taking even more precautions. I had used my mother's 1979 method. I dipped the dirty diapers into the Scary Toilet Bowl and swished them around. I even erected the Infamous Bucket of Poopy Water, of which we had all been afraid (and of which I had promised Michael that I would never let into our house, lest my foot accidentally kick it over or something). But there it stood, ominous and intimidating, right beside our friendly bathroom trashcan. Gross.
And yet: these stains. Ugly, awful, terrible stains. There they remained, on that adorable plush fabric that had formerly been snow white.
All this made me realize that I needed to stand back and truly assess this process of cloth diapering. Was I being consistent? Was I really doing that which I ought?
After some deliberation, the answer was clear: Nope, I wasn't.
I had handled the cloth diapers with emotion, not practicality. Sometimes I pre-treated; sometimes I did not. Sometimes I used a liner; other times it was an insert. I disregarded the company's plea to only use their biodegradable Charlie Banana brand laundry detergent since it doesn't clog fabric pores. In short, I made careless mistakes. My methods were crappy. (That pun was intended.)
So today, I sat down for awhile. I collected my thoughts. I made an outline. And then I made a flowchart. I streamlined the process. And I promised myself that I would follow my OWN rules. Thank God they are easy to understand. Here they are:
Can you follow it easily?
I hung the little flowchart above the diaper changing pad, feeling confident that my new procedures would keep things running smoothly and that this visual aid would help me to remember. But, when I went to change Liam's diaper a few hours later, my flowchart had been replaced by this:
Haha. Michael's got a very good point.
