Flats Challenge Day 4: How's The Handwashing?

Well Day 4 of the Flats Challenge is done, and overall it went pretty well. One of my biggest worries before the Flats Challenge was how our overnight diapering would go with Ava being such a heavy wetter. The first three nights of the challenge I had used my Sweet Bobbins flats with another flat pad folded as an insert. This worked amazing, BUT... when I went this evening to get my Sweet Bobbins flats off the indoor drying rack I discovered something sad. They weren't dry! Even the one that I washed yesterday morning was still dampish on the line. So we are trying out a new combo for tonight and I am really nervous. I really dislike changing my overnight diapering routine because I really love waking up to dry sheets! I'll let you know tomorrow how it went! It is really interesting to me how my gut reaction to a damp diaper on a line is "oh, I'll just throw it in the dryer for a second." The Flats Challenge is really forcing me to see just how long things take to dry on a line when it is humid and rainy out!

The topic for Day 4 is "How is the Handwashing?" and I am happy to be able to tell you all about my hand washing routine that I am learning and how it is going. I'll start off by telling you that where I live we have really hard water and I have learned to add an extra wash cycle and rinse to my regular washing machine diaper loads, so when I read Kim's washing routine for her bucket washer I knew I might have to add a couple extra steps to mine.

This is my camp washer set up. I bought a plunger, 5 gallon bucket, and lid from a hardware store for about $9. Ben helped me drill a one inch hole in the center of the lid, and then he drilled 3/8" holes all around the plunger to allow water to pass through easier.

I decided to forego using my wet bags for the challenge. It would just be one extra thing to wash and wring out every day and it is easy for me to walk from Ava's bedroom, where I change her, to the bathroom, where my bucket is, and just dump the diapers in the bucket.

This picture was my first load in the camp washer. I washed seven flats and four covers the first time, and I definitely recommend smaller loads! The easiest load I have washed so far had only four flats in it and one cover. When I am ready to wash the diapers I cover them with cold water and use the plunger to agitate for a little bit. Then I dump the cold rinse water out in the tub, add my soap to the bucket, and fill it with hot water.

Once the hot water covers the diapers enough I put the lid on snugly and begin agitating the plunger. I have been setting a timer for five minutes for this step because let me tell you, five minutes feels like forever when you are hand washing. Once my time is up I drain the water again, do a quick cold rinse with agitation, drain, and do another hot wash. Lastly I do two cold rinses and make sure the water is running clear from the bucket. Once the diapers are clean and drained I take each one and twist it up and wring it out as good as I possibly can. The more water you can get out in this step the quicker they will dry. As I said above, if your water is less hard you can probably do a wash routine like Kim and do a cold rinse, hot wash, cold rinse.

The first day that I washed and wrung out the diapers I really regretted not wearing the rubber gloves I had. My poor hand was red and raw from wringing out so many diapers! The second wash day I wore the gloves and it helped quite a bit with pain from wringing the diapers, although I was disappointed to find that the gloves almost immediately got water splashed in them.

Once the diapers are wrung out thoroughly, you just hang them either outside on a clothesline or inside on a drying rack. I found that my flats were completely dry from several hours outside on the clothesline on a hot day, but like I said above the flats that were drying indoors still have a ways to go.

Overall, I feel like hand washing has gone well. My camp bucket did suffer a casualty, though. During my second load in the camp washer the lid decided it had had enough of the plunging and it cracked. I think I can fix it with a shim and a couple small bolts, but there are two cracks in the lid starting at the center hole. I was pretty bummed that it didn't last as well as I had assumed it would. It still functions, but it does splash more. I have just left the lid off a few times as well, but I find that I don't agitate the diapers as well with the lid off because I am too worried about getting splashed in the face with dirty wash water! The diapers are getting nice and clean though, with no stinks at all! (Something I can't say for my washing machine in recent weeks, but that's another story.)

I won't lie to you: hand washing is not all fun and games, and it is not as easy as tossing your diapers in the washing machine and pressing start. I do have a couple small blisters on my hands from hand washing that I'm sure would turn to callouses if I continued to hand wash. I did get dirty-ish water splashed in my face this morning while agitating the diapers. It is hard to occupy my 16 month old for 35 minutes while I wash her diapers. This morning there were three diarrhea diapers in the wash so it took even longer.

BUT.

I am so happy that I have learned this skill. I feel like the ability to hand wash Ava's diapers has given me freedom from feeling tied to a washer and dryer. If we want to go on a road trip, this is a fabulous skill. If we lose power, I can still diaper Ava with this skill. If my washer breaks, if I have washing issues with the washing machine, if we ever live somewhere with no washer. It is just a very good and satisfying feeling to know that I can do cloth diapers with little to no technology. I feel like I've tapped in to a heritage of diaper washing mamas that goes back thousands of years, and I love that I now have this skill that I can pass on to mamas in need who can truly benefit from it.

Flats Challenge Day 1: Why Take The Challenge?

I am so excited to start the week of posts about the Flats Challenge! I am blogging along with Kim Rosas of DirtyDiaperLaundry this week while we and over 430 others use exclusively flat cloth diapers and hand wash them. I first heard about the challenge last spring when Ava was about 3 months old, but I was really new to cloth diapers at that time and flats were very intimidating to me. The thought of hand washing as well? It just didn't seem like something I could do. Now as I have cloth diapered for 15 months, I have started to realize just how manageable flats are. The hand washing part? I think it will be just fine.

My primary reason for taking the Flats Challenge is to show that flats are not as hard to use as people think. Learning the folding technique is what makes most people nervous about flats, and I am hoping to show that anyone can learn it! As many as 1 in 3 families struggle to afford to diaper their babies, and I hope that this challenge and series of blog posts can be a useful resource to help families be able to learn about how they can save money by using flat diapers. 

A messy Origami fold - Ava didn't want to hold still today.

An additional benefit to learning to hand wash diapers is the ability to take cloth on the road very easily. I love that I can take my camp washer and flats camping now or on a road trip and not have to spend money on disposables! Learning to hand wash diapers (or clothes!) in a camp washer is also great in case of power outages, weather emergencies, or instances where a washer breaks down. Many families don't have their own washer or dryer and can't get to a laundromat, so I hope that this series will also show that hand washing diapers is doable for anyone and can be a great cost saver!

My camp washer! I've never been so excited about a plunger before.

I started using my flats occasionally a few weeks ago to practice the folds, and I have fallen in love with the simplicity of them! They are so easy to get clean since most are only one layer of fabric and they dry lightning fast on the line. For anyone who has struggled to find a washing routine that will actually get their cloth diapers clean, flats are a great option to try. It is hard to mess up a flat diaper!

First flat of the challenge: Geffen Baby flat pad folded in a GroVia cover.

I hope you all will follow along this week as I learn and explore flats and hand washing! Follow along on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #flatschallenge. 

Pantry Challenge!

The Pantry Challenge is hosted by Good (Cheap) Eats a couple times a year. The goal is to "eat down your pantry" to use up forgotten ingredients, rotate your stock, and reduce grocery costs for a month.

I read about the Pantry Challenge a couple days into the month, but was already unintentionally meal planning out of the pantry so it was easy to jump right in! I had already started with some "leftover" meals from my Christmas week meal plan, so meal planning last week was fairly easy. We eat light breakfasts and for lunches we mainly do leftovers, so dinner has been my primary "eat down the pantry" focus. Before I started meal planning, however, I took an inventory of my pantry, fridge, and two freezers to see what we need to be using up during this challenge.

Some items in my freezer were no surprise at all. Ben still has a mallard in there waiting to go to the taxidermist. There was a bag of Very Old fish that got thrown in the trash finally. There are a lot of green beans from our garden. (Does anyone have clever ways of preparing green beans? I've run out of ideas.) And then there were a few thing in there that I didn't expect, like the fact that we have four (yes FOUR!) turkeys in our freezer! I knew we had three, but the fourth has magically appeared out of thin air. So we will be roasting a few birds this month, to say the least. Then there was a bag of... something. Ham, maybe? It's on the list as Mystery Meat, a tribute to the days before I started labeling my frozen goods. Suffice to say, our freezer is full and we may even carry the Pantry Challenge over into February just for good measure.

So far we've had homemade barbeque chicken pizza with cheese sticks, Rustic Chickpea Stew with brown rice, mango curry chicken salad, ham sandwiches on homemade wheat bread, and Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast. Our grocery bill for the last two weeks was about half of what it normally is, so our Pantry Challenge is working great so far!

The Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast turned out fantastic! I decided to make it after noticing that I had cream cheese in the fridge, and strawberries and a loaf of sweet currant bread in the freezer. I pulled out an old index card recipe and tweaked it to use what I had around. Here's what I came up with!

Strawberries and Cream Stuffed French Toast

about one loaf firm bread, cut into 1 in pieces (I used currant bread and some homemade whole wheat bread)
8 oz cream cheese, cubed
12 oz strawberries, quartered

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

8 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla or almond extract

Butter a 9x13 inch pan and spread about half of the bread pieces on the bottom. Distribute the cream cheese evenly over the bread and layer the strawberries on top. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the berries and then add the remaining bread as the top layer. Mix together eggs, milk, syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla and pour over bread. Refrigerate, covered, for at least an hour or overnight. Bake at 375 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Serve with syrup and whip cream if desired.

Let the eating begin!

Our garden is just starting to let us in on its bounty. Our pepper plants are struggling a little, but everything else is flourishing. Note for next year... less is more. I don't think we realized how much a single plan can produce when planted in good soil!

So far the harvest has been: 2 yellow squash, 6 zucchini, 4 pickling cucumbers, 1 salad cucumber, 2 grape tomatoes and 2 yellow cherry tomatoes. No, the grape and cherry tomatoes did not make it inside the house! They were happily consumed in the garden while searching for zucchini in the other bed.

I found two quick refrigerator pickle recipes to use up my cukes, and I must say they turned out delish!

The first recipe I made comes from Aarti Sequeira, last season's Food Netword Star winner. This was my favorite of the two pickle recipes... slightly sweeter, and the cilantro with the salad cuke is so perfect and summery! The only modification to Aarti's recipe that I made was that I substituted white wine vinegar for rice vinegar. Turned out great even with a substitution.

The other recipe I used was actually a Rachael Ray dill pickle recipe. While I am definitely not a Rachael Ray fan, this recipe was easy and really good. It has a good mix of spices and herbs with the white vinegar, and the addition of garlic added really good flavor. The longer these sit in the fridge, the better they taste, too!

From the ground up...

We tried to garden last year... tried and (mostly) failed. The soil at our new house is solid clay so aside from grass and weeds things don't grow well here. We did have some very successful green pepper plants though, and we were motivated to try harder this year. I decided to take up blogging again to journal about our garden adventures and our journey toward a simpler life.

Since the clay wasn't friendly toward the plants we tried to grow in it last year, we decided to cart in some better soil and build a better growing environment from the ground up. Over a month ago Ben and I built ten garden boxes to hold the soil we were planning on getting. Our boxes are just build out of pine 2"x6" boards with 2"x4" pieces as the connecting supports. We built two 30'x2' boxes, two 4'x8' boxes, and six 4'x12' boxes and laid them out in their places.

Fast forward through many rainy weekends until we finally had a dry(ish) day to have soil delivered last week. Of course the day we were going to borrow a tractor to distribute our dirt to our boxes it started raining for two days. Thankfully by Saturday of Memorial Day weekend the rain had cleared up. Saturday and Sunday were spent hauling and spreading dirt, picking up more dirt at the distributor, hauling and spreading more dirt, and finally hauling and spreading dirt in a thunderstorm! Yes, that's right... it started storming mid-task Sunday afternoon, so we decided to buck up and finish the job. Finishing the soil left us all day Monday to spread landscaping fabric down between all the boxes and get our load of pea gravel spread on the paths. Once done with the boxes and paths, we were finally able to get our seedlings and seeds in the ground!

Lest you think that this all went smoothly, rest assured that box gardens are a ridiculous amount of work and we had plenty of issues along the way. The tractor got stuck in the soggy clay a few times, and once got stuck for quite a while. The remaining grass back there will take a long time to come back and some of the tractor tire ruts are there for good. I already mentioned the pouring rain that we spread soil during, but then on Monday the temperature hit at least 85 with full sun, giving us some fantastic sunburns. Not to mention the fact that we initially tried to get these gardens in about a month ago!

After all of that, I'm just thankful that the gardens are planted. If we get even half of what we planted to produce, then we'll be eating like kings all summer! We'll have: seven varieties of tomatoes; summer squash and zucchini; strawberries; three types of beans; three varieties of peas; several kinds of lettuces and spinach; radishes; celery; six kinds of peppers; six kinds of winter squash; potatoes; three kinds of onions; cucumbers for eating and pickling; carrots and parsnips; rutabagas and turnips; and that's not counting the herbs in my deck boxes and herb garden! We should be stocked on herbs: basil, cilantro, oregano, thyme, marjoram, dill, sage, rosemary, lavender, beebalm, mint, parsley, chives, and chamomile.

I'm looking forward to finding ways to use and preserve our harvest this summer!