Whew! One week of using nothing but flats. I wasn't sure if I would make it through the second half of the week. The first four days of the challenge we were mainly at home. Sure we ran a few errands, went to church, and went berry picking, but we were never too far away from home.
Then Thursday night the boys and I packed up and went on a road trip.
My cousin was graduating high school. Originally we planned on just going for the graduation. It's a little over a four car drive to where they live from our house. My plan was to leave early Friday morning, hang out with the amazing extended family I have over there, attend the graduation, and then head home.
I called my aunt to give her a head's up about our plans, and she graciously suggested that we come up that night and stay with her family.
I packed all the clean flats that I had, plus a few doublers, I thought about bringing the freshly washed flats and letting them think of a good place to put the wet diapers to dry. I changed Spain's diaper and used a flannel topped doubler to give him a stay-dry feeling. Loaded the boys, and the dog into the car and off we went.
I decided to play everything by ear. We arrived at my aunt's house as the clock struck midnight. Twenty minutes later, we were all in bed. The next morning the real fun began. I had brought a small disposable bag of powdered laundry detergent, so that I didn't have to put off washing. I've learned that immediately rinsing diapers makes washing them so much easier. In the morning I let the dirty diapers soak in the sink with a little laundry detergent, while I took a shower. Three rinses, and a tight wringing later they were stashed safely in my wet bag ready for phase two. Since we weren't going to do a lot of driving, I decided to let the diapers dry in the car. I spread them out on the dash and left them there to dry. Four hours later, they were dry and ready for use again.
I did one other load of incognito washing before we left. These ones I left in the wet bag, since we were driving and I didn't have a space to put them.
So the stats:
31 hours away from home. 8.5 of which were spent in the car driving. 10 flat diapers, 5 fleece topped doublers, and 2 covers. 2 loads of washing away from home. Completely success!!
I even had 4 clean diapers still in our bag when we got home, thanks to the incognito hand washing.
Reflections:
Honestly a week of using flats wasn't as intimidating as I expected. Doing laundry wasn't my favorite activity, but it wasn't horrible. Once we found a system, it worked out fantastically. I did buy a set of Boingos which arrived on Friday. They weren't the greatest with the receiving blanket diapers, but they work fantastically with our prefolds.
We did practice some ECing again. Spain doesn't walk yet, but he does show signs of being ready to use the potty, and hey, every time he uses the potty that's one less diaper I have to wash!
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