I sent this email to my sister this morning and I just wanted to share it with you all over here too because it really makes me happy.
God has blessed us with our financial situation and the ability to stay afloat through good budgeting (even with some mistakes) so that I can stay at home to raise our two (almost three) girls. Along with choosing the budget and for me to stay home, comes gradual financial decisions and less of the "eggs all in one basket" whims. While the later method sounds foolish, there are some cases (like purchasing a vehicle) where "eggs all in one basket" is really the only choice.
One way to "cut back" and be more financially responsible in our spending has been to cloth diaper over disposable diapers. One helper of that decision has been Abi's skin sensitivity, but another has been the obvious money saver.
I must confess, I have been slightly jealous of those with duel income or at least a greater nest egg that have been able to make the cloth diaper switch all at once, purchasing their whole stash in one big chunk of a withdrawal.
But the reality has been for us that the slower building of our stash and adjusting our stash method has been the piece by piece and most responsible approach for us.
This may not sound like too much of a sacrifice until you see the behind the scenes of that picture. Adding 1-4 diapers per month to get to a 3 day washing schedule for Abi and build our stash for a newborn has involved hours of research, trial/error, craigslist hopefuls and failures, waiting on 3 week difference international postage, and much strategy of mine and the girls' allowance money over an eight month period.
That being said, I give you my email to my sis this morning and share with you my domestic joy:
"So I'm dorkily excited because my last shipment of cloth diapers came in
today. I got 6 more. I have been slowly picking at adding cloth diapers
to our stash for the last, seriously, EIGHT months and we finally have a
full stash from birth to potty training. I'm SO EXCITED to no longer be
looking at, sewing, altering, and fussing with cloth diapers to build
up our stash. As it is our newbie baby stash has me washing every 2
days, for the 3month to 18 month phase I'll be washing every 2-2.5 days
and for the 18month plus phase I'll be washing every 3 days. YAY! This
just gives me a REALITY washing experience (cause washing daily is not
on my agenda along with managing 3 kids/nursing/house
work/wifehood/outside of our house ministry oh yeah and eating,
breathing and sleeping).
So as I wash the "fresh from the factory" 6 diapers, adjust our diaper
bins to fit our new diapers in, and settle into the new washing machine
routine just know that this domestic-happy me is smiling.... big time.
And after next month's allowance money spend on 3 wetbags (one for
Hannah's diaper bag [since Sundays/Wednesdays Abi and Hannah will be
separate and I'd like a "catch the dirty diaper and lock out the smell"
bag for each], one for the living room changing table [new baby =
CONSTANT changes] and one for the nursery changing table), I will
happily put the cloth diaper thoughts aside and just coast through
diapering 2 kiddos. [Sure some of these things are not needed, but there also is a "convenience" factor of diapering two kids 2 years apart that plays into my success on minimal hours of sleep. - Just being real.]
On our registry there are still 3 covers/prefold sets for the 3m-18m
phase that could be quite helpful to add to our stash as night diapers
(prefolds/covers are the only thing we've found that can hold a HUGE
amount of pee and not leak all over the bed while the child does
aerobics in the night), but nothing we couldn't live without. So it's
possible that in the future I may purchase 2-3 more diapers, but it's
just nice to sort of close the door on the "building our stash to
actually work for our lifestyle" phase and move on. =D
If we were Mr. and Mrs. Moneybanks, we would have dropped the money all
at once (up to $300 - and that's on the cheap side!), but that's not the case with
us, so purchasing primarily 1-2 cloth diapers from overseas and waiting out the 3
week difference between purchase and receiving we have done... for eight
months. And now.... YAY! We're done! YAY!
The washer never sounded so good.
=)
- delighting in domesticity. ;)"
Our financial situation is really good due to my husband's hard work and great budgeting. So please do not think for one minute that I am complaining or in any way feeling oppressed. We are blessed beyond belief to be able to sponsor two (soon to be three) World Vision kids as well as serve the Lord in many ways with our finances. I'm just happy to see the fruit of our budgeting coming to a close in the world of cloth diapering. =D
- Thanks for sharing in my joy. =)
No comments:
Post a Comment