That's Not Soup!

Today, I cooked for several hours and I have no food to show for it.

I do, however, have a large stack of prefold diapers that are ready to go!  Prefold diapers are plain, cloth diapers, and when they are new, they are not very soft or absorbent.  So, you have to wash them 5-6 times in hot water.  Or, you can boil them, which is what I chose to do.  Boiling seemed like a better idea than multiple washes because it uses less water and less energy.

This is what a stack of 10, new, cotton diapers looks like right out of the package.  They are mostly flat, not so soft, and really too large to put on a baby.  We have a total of 60 diapers in both newborn size and regular size.  I don't know what a "regular" size baby is, but apparently that size applies to any baby that is no longer a newborn.  Regular is also a funny word to use when talking about diapers, but only because it makes me think of people on laxative commercials since I have a juvenile sense of humor.

I generally only get out the huge canning pot in late summer/early autumn when we are taking in tomatoes, beans, and other produce from the backyard by the basket full.  But today, it came in handy to boil about 10 diapers at a time.  I filled the canner with water, and set it boiling.  Once it was going pretty good, I added the diapers and boiled each batch for 30 minutes.  All in all, I boiled diapers on the stove for about 4 hours today.  Our dog, Bonny, sat diligently in front of the stove hoping I might give her a taste of what was cooking.  We kept telling her, "that's not soup!"  But, she didn't believe us.  In her mind, there was no way someone would spend that much time in front of the stove on a day off of work if they weren't cooking up something delicious.  We ate leftover pasta from the night before as the diapers continued to boil.  And boil.  And boil.



When the diapers were done cooking, I moved them to the washing machine to wash once in hot water and then tumble dry.  After the entire process was through, the diapers were much softer and fluffier than before. They had also shrunk down to the appropriate size, and they grew in thickness.  Here are the same 10 diapers pictured above, now having been boiled and washed.

Diapers are pretty expensive, cloth included.  I've read that the average baby goes through about 2,200 diapers per year, and that it's parents spend $1,500-$2,000 on diapers each year.  And that's just diapers, not wipes or anything else!  We spent $130 on enough cloth diapers to get our baby from birth through potty training thanks to a lady we met on Craig's List who had a great supply of cloth diapers that she had never used.  We think that cloth diapers are a great idea due to the money we will save, the comfort factor for our baby, and the lower impact on our environment.

Next up . . . dying the diapers in all the colors of the rainbow!