12. ‘Paper’ Towels

So we’ve been doing cloth diapers and I made some cloth napkins a couple of months ago, which have more than served their time. Lots of messes around here. My grandma’s awesome friends who make cloth diapers en masse for charity had sent me a garbage bag full of birdseye cotton when I made C’s

Scraps of blue birdseye cotton. Hmm… the potential!

diapers, and that was what I used for the napkins. It works really well now that it’s been washed a few times, so I figured I would use what was left to make cloth paper towels. Which, by the way, is such an awkward name… I mean, they’re not paper. The end. They’re kitchen rags that you don’t intend to use for dishes. Oh well, it’s all semantics.

I’m not really in the habit of paying money for my projects – is that bad? – but I wanted some cute cotton print (read: quilting fabric) for the reverse side of these. Luckily the fabric store had a sale, so I went that week. And it got even better, because there wasn’t much left, so they gave me the last bit for even cheaper – something about the end of bolt price. Didn’t even know they did that. Score! Making them was pretty straightforward, if a little time-consuming.

All finished, ready to get dirty.

Cut squares (I think I did 12×12, or whatever I could get out of my scraps of birdseye), serge together with a hole to turn, clip corners, turn, press, topstitch. Turned out pretty dang cute if I do say so myself. I’m in love with the flowers.

If you feel that you need to this yourself, but need more specific directions, this is a good tutorial, with some good ideas in the comments. I opted out of the snaps/velcro because I’m still keeping regular paper towels in my kitchen for now (don’t feel like trying to wash bacon grease out of my cute cloth towels), so I will just put these in a napkin holder until I think of a more brilliant storage idea. If you happen to have a more brilliant idea, please feel free to share!

Cloth Diaper Stripping

It’s 4:00 a.m. No one should be awake at 4:00 a.m., let alone awake and hungry.

Because it’s technically the middle of the night (in my universe) the first time I wrote the title for this article, it said “Stripping Diapers”. Then I realized that was just not what I wanted to say.

This post is, more than anything, a reminder to myself of where to find some crucial information. If anyone else happens to be using cloth diapers in a hard-water area, feel free to take advantage.

So C’s been having diaper rash. Not as bad as some pictures I’ve seen, but he just turned two and he’s never had frequent rashes until the last few weeks. It’s been getting worse. I tried everything we had in the house – all the big brand name creams, corn starch, coconut oil, lavender essential oil… No good. So I was ordering some unrelated stuff and trying to find some other products that might be helpful, and came across this website (can you hear the angel choir?) called Pinstripes and Polkadots. This link is to an article about diaper rash creams that are safe for cloth diapers. I had seen a few things about not using most big brands with cloth diapers – but since no one had explained why not, and we really hadn’t had many problems, I hadn’t stressed about it.

So I’m reading along, and pretty soon I come across this article about diaper stripping. The best part of this article, at least for me, was that they broke it down with a ‘symptom’ and a ‘cure’. My indication that I needed to do this was that C’s diapers would smell perfectly clean coming out of the dryer – but as soon as they were the least bit wet or dirty, they stank to high heaven. I thought that was weird, but really, who do you say that to? Well, there it was on the list. Detergent build-up. And I know we have fairly hard water, so it was pretty likely that was an issue too. I decided to just do everything.

Now, my big mistake was starting this whole process at about 2:30 in the afternoon. This should have been an all-day chore. Would have been entertaining for the toddler, too – he thought it was fantastic that there was a bathtub full of diapers and warm water and dish detergent. Though it was some kind of new game. Especially when he saw me stir them all with a big spoon. The water had mostly cooled off by the time dinner was ready, and I let him stir a little while I set the table. Big mistake. Who wants to eat when there are diapers in the bathtub, with bubbles? But now I know there’s at least one activity that will keep him busy for a solid thirty minutes!

Anyway, SEVERAL wash cycles later, I could totally feel the difference in the diapers – especially the inserts. After washing them so many million times, it was amazing just how different they felt. They are softer and more absorbent again, don’t stink the second they’re wet, and C’s diaper rash is clearing up nicely (it’s been not quite a week). So I will definitely be doing this more frequently. Although I think washing the diapers with water softener between times will help, the suggestion is to strip them every three or six months. Since we’ve been using cloth diapers for just about a year now, we were long overdue.