Flats Challenge AND Traveling – Real Simple, Real Diapers Reuse

It’s Real Diaper Week! All this week I will be trying to keep up with the Real Diaper Week 2012 Blog Hop hosted by Calley over at The Eco Chic. Today’s topic is Real Simple, Real Diapers Reuse (reuse, traveling with cloth, cloth diapering at night). 

I can’t believe the Great Cloth Diaper Change is tomorrow! And, so far I have been able to keep up with the Blog Hop. Barely, but I’ve managed to post every day and I consider that a win. Today’s topics are traveling with cloth or night time diapering. I’ve already covered traveling with cloth diapers. We’ve used cloth almost every time that we’ve traveled. The exception was that someone gave us a box of disposables right before we went to Vegas one time. They were awful and we swore we’d never do it again.

I have a night time diapering post planned, eventually. I just haven’t gotten to it! So, I am just going to give you a quick summary of my experience traveling with cloth,

“The flats win, hands down. They take up much less room in a suitcase than AIOs, pockets, or even microfiber inserts. They can be hand washed if you don’t have access to a washer but also, they can just be left unwashed for a few days without worrying about destroying them. If you don’t have the “right” detergent, washing flats in a detergent that isn’t considered cloth safe really isn’t a big deal. They dry really quick too. They also aren’t nearly as expensive as other diapers so the thought of losing them is almost bearable.”

Simple. Sometimes less is more. By the way, I would have never tried flats if it wasn’t for the Flats & Handwashing Challenge of 2011. The Flats Challenge is the brainchild of Kim from Dirty Diaper Laundry:

The Flats and Handwashing Challenge 2011 was an idea that came about after numerous articles referenced the practice of reusing disposable diapers.  Families with no money for new diapers were scraping out the solid contents or using a hair dryer to dry the diapers for reuse.  Not only is this unsanitary but it is also extremely dangerous.  The media neglected offering the suggestion that families use cloth diapers.  Why?  Who knows.  {read the original article} It was my personal mission to educate others that, although not ideal, hand washing the inexpensive flat cloth diapers was an option to families who had no other way to diaper.  No baby should have to suffer when there are ways to diaper for less than $50.00.

-Kim Rosas, DDL

 If you read through my posts from last year, you’ll see that I absolutely hated the challenge. I am not looking forward to it this year, but I will probably participate. I am hoping that I can get it together enough to not complete despise hand washing. I actually kind of like flats, I just don’t like hand washing them at all. I haven’t been able to make myself commit to the challenge yet, but I will. Probably.

If you want to do the Flats Challenge 2012, it starts on May 21st and you can sign up here. As much as I hated the actual challenge, I learned a lot about diapers and I met a lot of great bloggers last year. Anyway, I encourage you to sign up!

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