Frugal Friday: Cloth Diapers and Wipes

I have come to the conclusion that I blog better when I have a deadline. I'm sure I am not the only one who feels this way but I love blogging and I just don't find the time unless there is a goal in mind. So with this thought as motivation, I am starting a Frugal Friday post here. Each Friday I will post something that I have found to try to be more frugal and usually more natural too. Some of my posts maybe things I have tried, some will be things I would like to try. But I will have one each Friday, Lord willing!

So, today we are talking diapers and wipes. There has been a lot of talk about how much it costs to use cloth diapers and whether the impact on the environment is any better when you use cloth over disposables. I can't answer all those questions since I am not an expert in statistics or anything like that. I can just tell you what I know from my experience.

Using this calculator, I figured out it cost me about $1.60 a load to wash my diapers once a week. (I wash them twice, once in cold and once in hot. The first time, with cold, I add soap, borax and bac-out. The second round I use just soap and hot water.) If you add that up, it costs about $6.4 a month to wash diapers. Then you have to add the cost of the diapers. Even if I had to buy them every two years (which is crazy...) it would cost me $5 a month. So all together, that's $11.40 to cloth diaper one child every month. When you figure the best price you can find consistently to buy disposables is about $22 on Amazon, cloth diapers sound pretty good. :D (There are situations make cloth diapering difficult or next to impossible, but again that is beyond the scope of my blog today.)

So for me, cloth diapers are the way to go. I wish I could have cloth diapered all three of my little ones but I figure better late than never!

I'm getting ready to start using cloth wipes too for my son. I'll be using the Anti-fungal Baby Wipes recipe from this website to make them. I'll have to let you know how the cost plays out. Right now, I use the Seventh Generation wipes from Amazon. They are only .02 when you use the subscribe and save option, which is pretty good, I think.

Anyway, that's my tip of the day. In the next few weeks, we will be talking about natural shampoos and conditioners, laundry soaps and fabric softeners and others. If you have suggestions, please let me know!

Have a great weekend!

Orderliness

"Let all things be done decently and in order." I Corinthians 14:40


It is sometimes funny how God directs us. I was praying about what to do for school for my 3 year old this year and felt God guiding me to study Character Qualities. You can find the list we are using here.

I thought I would walk y'all through it as we go to give you a picture of what it might look like, that and it will help me keep me on track. :D

Day one we started with a working definition of what Orderliness is: Arranging myself and my surroundings to achieve the greatest efficiency. Then we started memorizing I Corinthians 14:40.

Here's the funny part. When "I" chose orderliness, I wasn't thinking my daughter was particularly disorderly and this would fix it. Nor did I think that I was in need of training in being orderly. And yet, as I teach my daughter, God is showing me just how disorderly I am and how far I have come from His established order. Don't get me wrong. I love to keep things clean but I have always struggled with clutter. Just ask my mom...or on second thought, don't. You don't have that kind of time. Anyway, the point being, that in teaching my daughter these character traits, I am learning things I need to be learning too. I'm so thankful God is big enough to organize all this for me. I am surely not that orderly! :D

Day two we read a few stories that deal with orderliness from Living Like Him (out of print) and worked some more on memorization.

As I am preparing Day three, I found this helpful advice at Lifestyle Homeschool:

We must remember that Orderliness is a character trait - it is not a life’s purpose. Our life’s purpose is to be used by God; bringing our life out of chaos will make us more effective.

~If you think of it – do it
~Create appropriate times for your activities
~Set a timer to keep you on track
~Leave a room better than you found it – this means pick up after yourself and possibly others. See this as blessing others rather than the usual response of “It’s not my mess!”.
~Have a “home” for all your stuff (piles are not homes!)
~Stop a task a few minutes earlier, giving you time to pack away before the next activity.

We have to remember that if we are going to teach things like Character traits, we have to live them first. It is not enough to drill our children in the study of them during the day but not show them by our actions. Honestly, that is the most challenging part of homeschooling; you can't tell your children what should be done and ship them out the door. You have to live it, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day.

So tomorrow in addition to showing my daughter what an orderly home and life look like (or trying at least), I think we will be studying Creation. I can't think of a better example of the importance of orderliness than God's perfect order in creating all things.

Good order is the foundation of all great things.
~Edmund Burke

News

I know, I know...I haven't been posting much. Truth is I have been spending most of my time learning how to do my job better and part of that is spending more and more time with my children and more time keeping my home in order. But now as my home is more organized, not perfect yet but definitely improving, I am excited to share all that I have learned with all of you here!

I will be posting things I have been learning here as well as guest posting on a new site created by my mother-in-law at Proverbs 31 Practical Helps. You can find my posts on the Clean Heart and Home page.

Anyway, I can't wait to get started. We will also be starting a weekly project for all of you to join in on so keep an eye out for that...coming soon!

Blessings to all of you!

Perspective on Children

My mom told me this story today and it has been spinning in my head ever since. I can't help but wonder how many others there are like this older gentleman who may wish they had it to do over again.

After walking in to an office one day with their two young children, my parents were stopped by an older man who told them what nice children they had. He said when he and his wife got married, they agreed not to have children so they could enjoy life; travel the world, have it all. And they did. They saw the world, all of it, soaking in every minute. Life was a constant adventure. They had all the nice things they wanted and enjoyed them too. Then suddenly his wife passed away. Now this poor old man was left alone in the world. He no longer had someone to travel with him. no one to enjoy his things with him and no one to whom he could leave them when he died.

He had chosen the path of pleasure and it left him empty-handed. He would have gladly traded it all for some one to love him his old age.

Grandchildren to sit on his knee and listen to his stories.

Someone to keep his memory alive long after he was gone.

This man probably is gone now, since this story is over 20 years old, but maybe his sad tale will helps us rethink what is really important and what our perspective of children should look like.

31 Days to Clean...my way

So any one who has read my blog could probably tell you at least these two things about me:
~I am pursuing a clean house
~I have a hard time following a schedule

Here is my latest way to try to make this happen:

31 Days of Clean

I had planned to start this with every one on the 1st...needless to say, it is not the first. But I am starting and I will try to keep my progress updated as much as I can. But I can't guarantee that I'll be done in 31 days, or even 31 weeks.

Anyway, day one asks us to make a list of why we clean so, for the sake of making you all laugh, here is my list of reasons in no particular order:

Why I Clean My House-
~I hate tripping over clutter
~I like seeing out my windows
~I like using on a clean toilet, showering in a clean tub
~I don’t like my children eating two day old food off the floors
~I can relax and enjoy my free time so much more if I am sitting in a clean house
~I want to be able to welcome company anytime they want to come without having to kill myself before they get here

I'm still working on my list, but one thing I realized is I clean for almost entirely selfish reasons. So what about you? What are your reasons for cleaning? Care to share?

Project:Simplify Week Five Results...sort of

For those of you who are waiting on pins and needles for my before and after pictures, well, I'm afraid that Project:Simplify week five will finish in week six. (Who am I kidding? My mother-in-law knows this already! :D) As I mentioned in my previous post, at least part of my family has been sick for about two weeks now and last week, all of us were down. So needless to say, I did good to keep up with the basics. Anyway, I am still working my area of choice and while I really think I bit off more that I can do in one or even two weeks, I will post the result this Friday of what I have been able to accomplish.

Until Friday then!

Week Five of Project:Simplify

Sorry to be so late in posting this week's hot spot. We have a houseful of sick people and things have been a bit crazy.

Anyway, hop on over to Simple Mom and see what the final week's project is. I'm excited to see what I can get done...as least I hope I get something done...

Project:Simplify Week Four Results

This week was by far the easiest for me. Since I started using the one day/one room method of cleaning, my kitchen has stayed under control. But this did give me a chance to catch up on a few projects and I am pleased the results.

I started with my small kitchen pantry, where I store just enough for a week at a time. I have found that for me, shopping with three children 3 and under, once a month shopping is the way to go. So I store most of my groceries in a closet downstairs.
Before

After

Then I cleaned off the top of my frig, the spice cabinet and the inside of both the frig and the freezer, none of which had very interesting pictures but I am happy to have them tidy!

Finally I finished off Wednesday by cleaning out the oven, which was so dirty that I was too ashamed to take a "before" picture, and organizing my downstairs pantry, which was so messy, I could barely walk in it anymore!
Before

After

All in all, a good week! Only one more week to go!!! Head over to Simple Mom and enjoy everyone else's hard work too!

Week Four of Project:Simplify

I'm sorry for the delay in posted this week's hot spot. This is one I have been working on every Wednesday for a few months now. (I'll try to explain my system soon.) Anyway, I've been so excited about finishing up my simplifying that I haven't posted for all of you! :D

So head on over to Simple Mom and you can get started too!

Project:Simplify Week Three Results

This project was both easy and frustrating. I recently weeded through most of both the boys and girls clothing totes, so there wasn't much to do there, except my younger daughter was ready to move up a size...just a few weeks too early to change to summer clothing. So I will be moving totes up and down the stairs again soon.

And we don't have a lot of toys to cull but we did make some progress there too. So without further ado...

Before

After

Before

After

Before
These boxes are my toy rotation system. This means less stuff we have clean up every day, but we don't have to get rid of good toys, books and puzzles.

After
The box on the right is the remain toy rotation box. Some day I will get a tote for it but for now is a recycled diaper box and packaging tape. (Important so the girls don't get in to it while it's being stored.) The toys on the left are headed to my son's room, since they are going to be his toys anyway. I forgot to take a picture of the things we got rid of, but there was about a trash bag full between clothes, toys and just a few books.

Before

After

Anyway that was my week three. How was yours? You ready for week four already? I wonder what we will be simplifying then...:D

And don't forget to check in at Simple Mom to see what others did to simplify this week!