My personal flats challenge

A month ago you asked if I wanted to share my experience with flats and you might want to put it up on the blog. I couldn't messange you on FB and it would take up to much space for your wall. So I will just do it here well blow here. I will be posting a few pics on my fb if you want to grab them they will be in the nintendo dsi folder.

So when the flats challenge was going on in June on Facebook I really wanted to do it but there was no room in the budjet for new diapers not even flats. So at the beginning July I finally got a pack of six from a big box store that we all know. I was so excited I started prepping them as soon as I got home. After they were done prepping I started practicing different folds befor I applied my very wiggly two year old. Abit about my son. Jeffery just turned two this July and under normal circumstanses I wouldn't be even thinking of new diapers we would be moving into trainers. But in febuary it was confirmed that he is autistic with a one year speech delay. And coupled with a gentic vision disorder we are no were near potty training and may not be for a couple more years. We have been told he may not learn to use to potty till he is five. So I am pretty glad he is in cloth can you imagine the cost of disposibles fo 5 years. Ok back to the flats. I was looking for a fold for a very wiggly toddler I googled I checked youtube, had my Mother in-law show me how she did it for my husband and his brother. I also asked my Mom we were cloth babies in the 1970's because that's what she had is what she tells me. Well I wasn't having much luck finally I found one that might work. It was ment for a square flat and mine were rectangles. So I tried it on a stuffed duck and I liked it. Now the challenge I set for myself is I have six flats and will need two per diaper change I have a toddler after all. So three flats changes a day. As for washing by hand that's out I would do it if I were camping but I was looking forward to line drying them. But because of weather here in Michigan that hasn't happened the really sunny days I would start out the door with my basket of diapers and turn right back around and put them in the dryer. Is been so humid I would have put them out and they would still be wet 2 days later.

I never really set my self an end date for this challenge but figured if I didn't care for it I could just use them as inserts. I was able to keep to the 3 changes a day when at home but I knew going into it that away from the house was a different matter. Jeff will not lay on a diaper deck so I have to use the diapers that I can put on him standing up so that rules out flats. one of the tings I did learn is that I don't know how they would be for breast milk bm but they were fine for a toddlers and I cen not wash my birdseye flats with my aplix diapers at all I would have a chain so quick. Even the ones with exalent laundry tabs the flats would stick to the edges of the hook tape. So I just seperated my diapers in to 2 loads no problem I normally did to small loads every other day anyway I just sorted them differently then I used to. Well I've now been using them for three weeks and I have to say I wished I had bought these instead of the primium prefolds that after shinkage don't work that well. The only folds I can use with them is to trifold or a bikini twist whoich is better suited for a girl. As for the flats I love them I don't think I would have my stash made up of just them but they are a great addition to my veried stash. I can now say I have almost every style out there. Now just to try contures. I am also thinking of turning one into a daddy flat/snap flat wrap. Directions for the fold are:
Lay diaper flat take 2 corners from the short end and fold them in so it looks like a house.
take the tip of the house fold it up to the line of the roof on the house.
now take the side fold it into the middle and do the same with the other side.
It should look like a triangle with a lot of padding up front. I know take another flat fold it in half the tri fold it then lay that in the center. apply baby and pin or snappy.

BTW I'm a Sah mommy of two great boys my hobbies are sewing diapers and historical costumes loom knitting and a host of other hobbies. My husbands says if it was a normal every day activity a woman would have done a hundred years ago I will figure out how to do it and make it work in the modern world. I'm not my families black sheep I'm the crafty hippy that they look at with a cocked head.