What Hubby Did For Cloth Diapering

Kim over at Dirty Diaper Laundry is having another cloth diapering carnival. This time around she has challenged us to talk about how our husbands or SO has dealt with and supported (or not as the case may be) our decision to cloth diaper. Well, I figured there was no better way to answer that question then to let Hubby tell you exactly what he did while we were in Ethiopia to support our cloth diapering habit. And so, without further ado......

As you may or may not know, my family recently returned home from a month in Ethiopia. While there, one of the many things that we found ourselves up against was dealing with diapers. When it comes to diapering, we use cloth. For the environment? Sure, why not? Really, because they are cheaper. At home, we throw wet diapers into a wet bag. There they wait until they eventually wind up in the washing machine. Dirty diapers get rinsed off in the toilet before finding their way into the wet bag and then to the washing machine. Ethiopia - not exactly the Maytag capital of the world, if you know what I mean. The guest house where we stayed did have a laundry service, but they were pretty darn expensive when it came to washing cloth diapers. And, so, we decided to wash the diapers ourselves. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, after just a few nights of going at it herself, my wife actually put me in charge of washing the diapers. Is this because of my amazing skill at hand washing poop off of cloth? Nah. It turns out that my arms are longer than hers. This would prove helpful as about an hour was spent messing with the diapers in the bathtub each night. Yes, the bathtub. Couldn't think of anyplace else to clean the diapers. So, here's the play-by-play, in case anyone is interested in attempting this feat.

Step 1 - Daytime care. Wet diapers into the wet bag, same as before. Dirty diapers rinsed in the toilet (Ethiopian toilets DO NOT have the best water pressure and, so, the diapers DID NOT rinse so good), same as before. Then, when night fell, and the children were asleep, it was into the bathroom for me.

Step 2 - Gloves on my hands (this was going to get very messy)

Step 3 - Rinsing. With the water turned on, I put one diaper at a time underneath the faucet. The dirty diapers had to be cleaned completely of any poop. If not, there would be pieces floating around in the bathtub when it came time to do the actual washing. Did that mean rubbing the tricky spots with my fingers? That's a good reason to have gloves on. Did that mean picking up the bigger pieces (that got stuck in the drain) with my hands and tossing them into the toilet or smooshing them down the small drain hole? Another reason that gloves were like a gift from God. It took me a while before I realized that the wet diapers needed to be rinsed pretty thoroughly as well. I was only rinsing the dirty ones and then wondering why the water would turn a weird "pee yellow" (let's see Crayola come out with that one) color as I tried to do the washing. So, I rinsed those wet diapers like nobodys business, until I could squeeze it without any grossness dripping out. As each diaper was rinsed, it would get folded neatly, have the water squeezed out, and put on the side of the tub. Oh, don't forget the diaper covers. The same rules applied for those as well. Man, does poop stick to diaper covers in all of the seams or what? Seriously, check it out some time!

Step 4 - Cleaning. Detergent into tub, water into tub, diapers into tub -the whole lot of them. Then, one at a time, I swooshed 'em around a bit, kneeded the soapy, clean water into them a smidge, and finally, once again, stacked them up neatly on the side of the tub.

Step 5 - Rinsing. Faucet on, diapers and covers under the water, one by one, until I was satisfied that any soap residue was out (or 10-15 seconds, whichever came first). I rolled them up, wrung them out, and put them on a towel on the closed toilet bowl lid.

Step 6 - Drying. Just needed to fold the towel up into a bundle and carry the diapers and such outside to the balcony where they had to be laid out in such a way that they would actually dry quickly, but would not blow off into the lady with the chickens yard next door.

Step 7 - Get some rest because, after an hour or so of cleaning diapers, my girls were going to poop and pee plenty more for me the next day. In fact, they were probably doing it as they slept.

The end.