You’ll find when you get to the potty training stage that there is a whole new arsenal of gear you just have to have:

• Pull-ups
• Cloth training pants
• Potty Chair
• Singing/talking/laughing potty chair
• Miniature urinal for boys
• Potty Ring
• Travel Potty Ring
• Step stool
• “Incentives” (e.g., candy, stickers, toys)
• A peeing doll
• “How to Toilet Train Your Child” instructional books/ DVDs for you
• “How to Abandon the Diapers” inspirational books/ DVDs for your child
• Underwear
• Waterproof mattress cover
• Extra sheets

So what do you really need? Well, I would like to say I simply took away the diapers and introduced the underwear, and that was that. There’s something to be said for the cold turkey approach to toilet training: the child quickly learns that no diapers = big mess and then takes it upon himself to jump up on the toilet and take care of business.

We ended up buying a little potty before Audrey was two. I like the idea of skipping the potty and letting kids learn on the regular toilet, but she just seemed so little and uncoordinated at the time. What if she fell in and became traumatized forever? She did enjoy sitting on the potty but it did not inspire her to take any action for several months, and we didn’t do much to push her along.

Throughout our potty training adventures, I ended up getting her a few of the listed items above: cloth training pants, a potty ring, incentives in the form of unnatural and not-exactly-organic chocolate candy, and of course underwear. While I’d like to claim that she trained on her own without any help from potty training products, I found everything I bought helpful.

What were your potty training essentials? What can you skip altogether? Help other parents avoid some unnecessary purchases (and save the world from one more singing potty chair).

If you’re lucky, your child will make a seamless transition from full-time diapers to full-time underwear.  That said, it’s pretty common for most kids to phase the diapers out gradually: at first they cut down during the day, then they’re “day trained,” and then–sometimes years later (according to my sources)–they stop needing diapers for naps and overnights.

We are in one of these transitional phases now.  While my daughter does not need a diaper while she’s awake, she still wears one while she sleeps.   I’ve been using cloth diapers since she was born and never want to buy another pack of disposables again, so I’m continuing with cloth diapers even now that I have much less diaper laundry to do.  This leaves me with a diaper conundrum:

If I wash my diapers just as frequently as before–that is to say, every three or four days–I’ll be wasting a lot of water and energy on partial loads.

But!

If I wait until I have a full load of diapers, I’ll be letting wet diapers fester in the diaper pail for almost three weeks.

So what is a water conservationist who does not want to smell a three-week-old diaper pail to do?  My solution was simple, though it may gross some clean freaks out a bit: I wash a small load of diapers every week.   I feel comfortable washing them this infrequently because they are always just wet diapers–no dirty diapers now that she’s day trained.  Because I have so few diapers even after a week, I hang them to dry.  I could never do this before Audrey became day trained because I couldn’t wait for several days for her diapers to dry on the rack during Oregon’s drizzly months.   Now I have so many spare diapers that I can afford to wait.

One day I will no longer need to wash any diapers, but until then, I’ll stick with my once-a-week method.  This compromise should please both my inner tree hugger and inner clean freak.

Since we often learn heaps from our wise readers, we’ve decided to ask a question each week and see how much information we can gather from our green parenting peers.  Thanks so much for contributing the wisdom you’ve gained from your time in the trenches with your little ones.   If you’d like to propose your own parenting question, we can feature it sometime soon for our Saturday question and you’ll get some great advice!

Joy’s Question: 

My son is 2 years and 3 months old and we’ve started casually potty training.  He goes to daycare during the week for partial days and spends the rest of his time with us, but he seems to only be alternately excited about sitting on the potty.  Sometimes he’s totally into it, and on other occasions he utterly refuses.  Many experts advise waiting until your child is really excited about potty-training, but I wonder if he’d do better if we actually invested more energy into his efforts.  Maybe if we were more consistent he’d do better.  So, should we wait or should we use a few time-tested tricks for piquing his interest in the potty?  

When I started potty training Audrey, I wasn’t planning on buying disposable Pull-ups or even cloth training pants.  I just took her out of diapers and put her into underwear.  This actually worked, for the most part.  But then Audrey’s daycare provider said she was on board with potty training, but that Audrey would need to wear training pants.  I guess she wasn’t up for my “just wear underwear” technique, which admittedly results in a puddle here and there. 

So I looked around.  Our big grocery store carried Gerber training pants, but they didn’t carry them in Audrey’s size–ever.  I stopped by a drug store, which had disposable training pants, but no cloth ones.  Then I popped into two children’s consignment stores and came out empty handed.  Who knew cloth training pants were such a rare commodity?

Finally I remembered a Hannah Anderson gift certificate I’d had since Audrey’s birth.  They have a store downtown, so I ventured out there and bought a set of three adorable little training pants for $28.50—cheaper than Imse Vimse training pants, which cost about $12 each.  (By comparison, a jumbo pack of 88 Pull-ups costs over $30.00.) 

The Hannah Anderson pants are made from 100% organic cotton and don’t have a plastic layer.  In other words, they are not water proof, which is just what I wanted.  A child in these training pants will feel wetness and won’t be tempted to treat them as a diaper.  (At least this has been our experience.)  They’re also absorbent enough to prevent those pesky puddles, so they definitely work for me. 

Audrey is potty trained now, and I never needed to buy more training pants or a pack of Pull-ups.  I can personally attest to the fact that a life without Pull-ups is possible!  Although she didn’t need training pants for very long, she still wears them and thinks of them as regular underwear, so I consider it money well spent. 

For more great Works for Me Wednesday tips, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer––and please join us for our Thrifty Green Thursday carnival this week!