The challenge
Use cloth instead of disposable diapers for two weeks—without being buried alive by laundry.
The family
Heidi and Pete Danos, of Evanston, Illinois, and their 7-month old twins, Elsa and James
Good eco-intentions
When Heidi was pregnant, mulling over the sheer volume of disposable diapers her family would be pitching into a landfill “kind of freaked me out,” she says. A business communications consultant, she whipped up an Excel spreadsheet to convince her husband, Pete, that cloth diapering would save them close to $2,000 before their babies hit age 2. Then the babies arrived seven weeks early, right at the start of a disastrously timed kitchen remodel, and suddenly disposables seemed like the only option that wouldn’t reduce Heidi to a sobbing mess. Two months later, when Heidi finally got around to test-driving her stockpile of cloth diapers, she ditched it the challenge after three days, too overwhelmed with work and sleepless nights to deal with the extra laundry. “That was the one thing I felt I could just get rid of,” she says.
Getting started
Heidi was anxious to shed the twinge of eco-guilt she felt about the cloth diapers in the closet. “I could see myself switching. We’ve got plenty of diapering left in us.” Still, at the start of her two-week challenge, “I had to force myself a little bit,” she admits. With twins, routine is king, and Heidi worried that throwing cloth diapers into the mix would upend hers. Once she got started, though, it was simpler than she thought to chuck soggy diapers straight into the diaper pail, or give poopy ones a quick rinse in the toilet—easy-peasy with a sprayer hose that screws straight into the back of the toilet tank. Every two or three days, Heidi ran a load of diaper laundry, first a soap-free cold rinse cycle to remove, um, leftovers, then a hot wash cycle with detergent (she swears by Rockin’ Green, made just for cloth diapers). It’s more work than taking out the trash, “but we’re doing so much laundry in our house that doing a load of diapers every couple of days is not a big deal.”
Twists and turns
When the Danos clan headed on vacation to Heidi’s parents’ house in Minnesota, they left the cloth diapers at home—too much hassle for traveling. “I wanted my parents to invite us back,” she says. In fact, just hearing about her plans, Heidi’s mom and two grandmothers were unanimously horrified, with flashbacks of leaks and pinpricks dancing in their heads. But once Heidi did a show-and-tell of the newfangled varieties—flushable liners; plushy diaper covers; Velcro or snaps instead of perilous pins—they agreed times had changed. (Check out Heidi’s take on her favorite cloth diaper brands on her blog at morajunction.com.) Meanwhile, Heidi’s husband Pete wasn’t exactly gung-ho about the challenge (“He’s a great guy but wasn’t really up for the poopy diaper stuff”), so she stuck to disposables at night, when Pete was more likely to run interference with wailing babies, as well as for the eight hours a week when her part-time nanny was on duty. She did not, however, indulge any guilt about cloth diapering only part-time. “Going into the challenge I knew there was no way I would use [cloth diapers] 24/7, but I allowed myself the opportunity to try it.”
The aha moment
“The only problem I’ve had in the last two weeks is that I had two extremely poopy diapers,” says Heidi. “But both those poo-splosions were in the early morning when they were in disposable diapers! I seriously think that a cloth diaper would have done a better job because I think it would have absorbed more and kept things contained.”
Challenge success
The Danoses went from three bulging garbage bags of diapers a week to less than one, measurable progress that Heidi loves. “It’s amazing how much less garbage we have,” says Heidi. “I feel like I’m doing something good for my kids in the long run by keeping stuff out of a landfill.” Plus, they’ve doubled how long an econo-size box of diapers lasts them, which could save them $600 this year. (The spreadsheet was right!) “I told my husband the other day that I would continue using cloth diapers,” says Heidi. He was marginally disappointed, but Heidi figures he’ll come around. “It’s taken a few months to get started, but having done it now, it’s like, ‘Whatever. This is easy.’ ” For other newbies, she advises picking a diaper style you like, then jumping in with both feet. “You’ll figure it out. After all, it’s not rocket science, just a little pee and poo.”
Read more at Kiwi.