Green Bottoms

This is my two-year-old. She's nursing her baby. And she's smart. She knows every nursing mother needs to stay well-hydrated.

So this one and her baby brother are giving me a dilemma. I really like modern day diapers. I like how much they hold. I like how infrequently I have to change them. But as wonderful and convenient as they are, they are not very environmentally friendly.

I'm going to need a lot of hand holding today. I know some of you have switched partly or all the way to cloth diapers. So for all of us that are scared to death of a pile of filth we are responsible to somehow wash every day or being at the mall and having runny baby poop leak every possible place imaginable... help! Convince us!

I also need specifics. When you put "cloth diapers" in a search engine you come up with MANY options. What's the best? Is it worth it to get the most expensive? Do the cheapest ones perform badly? How many do you need? (Not how many do they recommend - how many do you absolutely have to have to avoid catastrophes?) How often do you have to change them? How often do you have to wash? Can you just throw the nasty things in the washer or do you have to rinse them out? And how do you keep rotten dogs who think poop is a delicacy from ripping them apart? (Okay, maybe you don't know the answer to that one...)

So I need lots of responses. I changed the settings so that anyone should be able to post. If you have trouble responding here, I'll transfer your facebook messages over. There are questions that must be answered so we can try to make a difference in the disgusting pile of dirty diapers that are going to eventually take over the landfills.

Commence discussion.

Going Green or Going Insane?

You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together. - Henry Ford

When MacGyver and I got married, he introduced me to recycling. I did a lot of eye-rolling and huffing and puffing and such, but I learned to go the SO burdensome trouble of walking to the garage door and throwing glass, plastics and paper in the bin to be recycled. To be honest, I really didn't think it mattered. I really did not care where my garbage went when I was done with it.

I have to say, I see things differently now. MacGyver likes to say "there's no reason to fill up the dumps" and he's right. If we can go an extra inch or two (as opposed to a mile) and save the next generation the job of cleaning up our mess, isn't that worth it?

So we have always recycled. I'm interested to go a bit further in this and try to only buy packaging that can be recycled. At least do my best. So in the next year I'm going to make a conscious effort to make our "dump" pile smaller. I'm going to look into cloth diapers, at least on a partial basis. I'm going to start a compost pile (just a pile of organic material such as apple cores, banana peels, egg shells and coffee remnants) that is left to sit and turn to fertilizer.) I'm going to attempt to use re-usable bags when I grocery shop, and I'm going to do this by purchasing one every week until I have enough. I'm also already using all natural cleaning agents and beauty products, and I hope to keep that up and maybe find some ways to save money by making soaps/shampoos, etc.

Have I left anything out? If you can think of something I'm forgetting post it. And if you have some further goals please post them here so we can keep each other accountable.