Do you have a complex system of soaking and pre-washing, or are you cloth diaper slackers like Rebecca and me?  How do you handle smells and stains?  Do you use hot or cold water?  What’s your favorite detergent?

Cloth diapers were a total mystery to me in those early days of parenting–as was cloth diaper laundering.  I didn’t have a copy of our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, to help me with selecting and caring for cloth diapers, so I was lost!  I have to confess that I even bleached our pre-folds a few times at first before a friend taught me that it’s unnecessary and also very tough on the fabric.

These days we are incredibly lax about our diaper washing system and are quite happy with the results. We use a dry pail and when it fills up, we simply toss them in the washer.  We use cold water most of the time and throw in a little Bac Out to help freshen them up.  We don’t hang up our diapers at this point, although summer is a different story.  Our diapers are no more complex than any other load of laundry and come out smelling great!

Please feel free to share your cloth diaper laundry struggles and victories!

Is it deciphering cloth diaper vocabulary?  (Like hybrid, chinese prefold, pocket diaper, all-in-one?)  Is it being able to afford the organic produce you’d like to buy?  Is it the physical challenge of early breastfeeding?  Do you need some homemade babyfood recipes? Or are you still trying to prepare for baby’s arrival with the planet in mind?

My children are now leaving the realm of babyhood and hearing your questions and challenges keeps us connected with what our readers need in those early days of parenting.  If you have a problem, chances are there are dozens of other women face the same dilemma.  Thanks for sharing ideas that we can present to our readers for future Friday questions!

Even when I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to use cloth diapers. This went hand in hand with my desire to save money, and I became almost obsessed with the idea of spending no more than I possibly had to on diapers and diaper accessories. Suffice it to say, a diaper sprayer is something I lived without–and I survived just fine.

Years later, I have to look back and wonder at my own frugality. Is it possible that twenty dollars here, fifty dollars there might have reduced some of the burden of those early days with a new baby? Take the cloth diaper sprayer, for example. Attach this gizmo to your toilet and use it to spray off those diapers. No more disgusting dunking and swishing! (For the record, I had to dunk and swish under a dozen times during all 2.5 of my diaper-changing years. But it left an impression.)

Here are some of the models available:

Mini-Shower Bidet and Multi-Use Hand Held Sprayer

$44.95

Metal—nice design. Easy to install.

bumGenius Diaper Sprayer

$59.99

The Original Diaper Sprayer

$35.95

Affordable, plastic

Handy Spray Diaper Sprayer

$39.99

What do you think, readers? Did you live without a diaper sprayer, as I did? Or did you rig one up in your bathroom–revolutionizing your diaper experience?

Just what is a laundry ball, you ask?  It’s a device designed to replace laundry soap that lasts for an entire year.  (If you wash approximately 18 pounds of laundry per day.)  The SmartKlean Laundry Ball is a perforated plastic sphere filled with ceramic pellets.  Don’t ask me about the specific chemistry involved, but the product claims that the pellets eliminate mold and bacteria, elevate PH levels to simulate soap, and break down water clusters to reduce rust in washing machines.  Honestly, the other features of these pellets are a bit too science-saturated for me to grasp.

Skipping detergent altogether and throwing a ball into a washing machine filled with stinky socks and sour milk smells seemed a bit crazy, but I have to say that it works.  You can hear the ball bouncing around inside which must help agitate the laundry a bit more.  We even used it with our diapers, which are mostly wet these days since Jovi uses the toilet for bowel movements, and they came out smelling great!  It doesn’t do a whole lot for stain removal, but if you pretreat your clothing, it comes out just fine.  (The company also recommends adding white vinegar and sea salt to very soiled clothing to boost the cleaning power.)

Would I buy this product?  Probably not.  I simply am not a purchaser of new-fangled laundry devices and it costs $45.00.  Some people spend this much on dryer sheets and laundry soap in a year, but I don’t think we actually do.   Still, I have to say that our laundry ball stays in our machine and we use it most of the time.  It can be recycled if your local site accepts #7 plastics or it can be sent back to the company.   It does require a bit of maintenance since it should be placed in the sun to regenerate the pellets once a month.  For more information on the product, head to their FAQ page.

You shall have a chance to try it out for yourself if you’re the lucky winner of our SmartKlean Laundry Ball giveaway!

Three Ways to Enter the SmartKlean Laundry Ball Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on Friday May 13th and is only open to U.S. Residents.

As frugal souls, we love that you can get our book for free at your local library. It’s even more exciting when the price of The Eco-nomical Baby Guide randomly falls to below eight bucks on Amazon! You can now score a copy for just $7.98, which is sixty percent off the original price of $19.99.  Considering that our little gem can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars, it’s worth the meager investment in a green baby guide that’s infused with humor and humility.  These price dips usually last just a few days so you might want to pick up a few for gifts while the sale lasts. Good luck!

When my son still hadn’t potty trained through the night at age four, I wrote a post about trying to keep him dry through the night. (Most of which totally didn’t work at the time.) Many readers commented that bladder control for boys doesn’t developmentally happen until they’re older—possibly around age six.

Giving up altogether seemed rather strange to me. My post on The History of Potty Training in America, shared that potty training ages in this country have gone up across the board—partly because of the ease of disposables. If everyone waits to even attempt night training until their children are older, there are years of waste (and expense) that could be avoided with some effort.

The only two choices for parents certainly aren’t the following:
A. Torture your child with extreme night training regimens.
B. Just wait. It will happen eventually. In the meantime, buy lots of pull-ups.

In our case, the successful solution was to cut off beverages at 5:30pm and give him a chocolate treat each morning. It’s successful about 95% of the time and my four and a half-year-old son feels really excited to wear underwear to bed.

I’m not saying that all kids can night train at five (or sooner), but it seems worth knowing that some of our efforts may help kids get there a bit earlier.

Have you had success or struggle with night training? The best tips always come from readers so please share your experiences from the trenches of early parenthood!

I didn’t with my first child.  They seemed so much more expensive than the standard brand that I couldn’t bring myself to make the switch.  Then, with my second baby, Rebecca inspired me to make the leap to cloth wipes.  They’re easy, incredibly inexpensive, and much more eco-friendly than green disposable wipes.  (I just picked up a few packs of baby washcloths at the dollar store and that three-dollar investment is holding strong almost two years later.  We simply spray them with water before using them.) What wipes do you use?

If you live in Merced, California, you can wander on down to The Frog Shop any old day and buy adorable children’s garments at cut rate prices.  And as you stride out the door, you can know that the green glow wasn’t just about the wall color, but about the fact that you just recycled while having a lovely shopping experience.

This is the second half of our interview with The Frog Shop’s owners, Corinne and Heidi Britt.   Check out the previous part of the interview in last week’s post.

What are some of your customers’ favorite products?

Our customer favorites are as varied as the parents who buy and sell in the store. One thing parents comment on is our “mompreneur” hand-made section. We sell hand-made hairbows, hats, blankets, bow-holders, booties, diaper bags, seat covers and jewelry. We love being a place where crafty stay-at-home moms can sell their wares. And our families love shopping the unique items we carry. They can’t find these items anywhere else. I think we all feel good knowing the money is going to a stay-at-home-mom to help her stay home, as well.

What are the biggest challenges you face as an eco-friendly small business?

Our biggest challenge has to be keeping the doors open in the current economy.  We are working moms too, and trying to balance our family and work lives. Another challenge we face is trying to keep our prices reasonable for our families, while still making enough money to pay the rent.

Also, because we’re still fairly new (we will celebrate our 2^nd birthday in June), we are still learning what our customers want and need, and how we can find it for them.

We started carrying FuzziBunz cloth diapers after a few parents recommended them to us. Now we’re the only retailers who carry them in our area. We also are one of the few stores that carry cloth diapers, raw wood toys and organic cotton clothing (when available).

Bravo to Corinne and Heidi, and to all the other small business owners out there who are making green options available to new parents while helping build local communities.  You are on the front lines of cloth diaper education, breast feeding support, and gear recycling.  We wish you continued success!

Exactly one year ago yesterday, our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down-to-Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet, hit store shelves.  It took us three years of hands-on research and thousands of drafts before we were satisfied with our practical green guide for new parents.  We flavored the manuscript with humor, anecdotes, and lots of humility as we tried to convey what we wished we would have known before our babies arrived.  The cloth diaper information we provide is highly user friendly, but there ‘s also information on buying less, buying used and buying green that helped each of us save over five thousand dollars on our babies’ first year alone.

If you wish you had a copy in your hands right now, you’re in luck!  We’re giving away one copy on the anniversary of it’s publication.

Three Ways to Enter The Eco-nomical Baby Guide Book Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on March 10th and is only open to U.S. Residents.

Good luck!

Also, we have some gorgeous Eco-nomical Baby Guide bookmarks that we’d love to distribute in OB/GYN offices, midwifery clinics and other spots where green moms can find them.  If you have a location where you know they’d be snatched up, please email us your name and address and tell us where you’d like to distribute them.  Thanks in advance for all your help!

It’s been a while since we’ve discussed chlorine-free disposable diapers on this site and in our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide. With my diapering days well behind me, I haven’t been able to try any of these out on a real-life baby. Has anyone had a chance to compare the brands below? Which do you prefer, and why?

Seventh Generation Chlorine Free Baby Diapers

Earth’s Best TenderCare Chlorine Free Diapers

Nature Babycare Eco-friendly Chlorine-free Diapers

Tushies Diapers

gDiapers

Bambo Nature Chlorine-free Eco-friendly Baby Diapers

Am I leaving out a great brand of chlorine free disposables? I know Whole Foods makes a store brand that ends up being more cost effective than Seventh Generation. What else do we need to know in this complicated world of greener sposies?