Tag Archives: potty training

Finishing Off Cloth Diapers

We’re in the middle of potty training my youngest. I can hardly believe that soon I won’t have to deal with diapers anymore. Diapers have been a near constant thing in my life since my oldest was born 9.5 years ago. I am so glad we finally discovered cloth diapers so we could cut down on the waste.

Now my youngest is really starting to get it with her potty training. She has enough accidents that we aren’t ditching the diapers yet, although I think we could if we wanted to just deal with the occasional mess. Even nights are getting close to done, although it’s harder to predict when nighttime training will be complete. Now we have to decide what to do with the cloth diapers once we’re done with them.

By done, I mean we aren’t having more kids, so no need to save the diapers for the next little one. If we were planning on having more kids, keeping them would make sense. We’re not, so it’s going to be time for the diapers to go away.

One of the great things about cloth diapers is that even if they’re in a condition where all you feel you can do is throw them out, they break down faster than disposable diapers. Depending on type, it may be a few months or a few years, but they’ll break down, much sooner than the estimated 250-500 years for disposable diapers. But before you just throw them out, consider donating them to charity. Sometimes they have uses for old cloth as rags or someplace they can send them.

If your cloth diapers are still in generally good condition, however, you may be able to sell them or give them to a family who needs them. There are sites such as Diaper Swappers for selling cloth diapers online.

Some types of cloth diaper lend themselves well to repurposing. Just how you repurpose them depends on the type you get. Some are good as burp cloths or dust rags. Some cloth diapers use microfiber inserts, which can be good for a variety of cleaning jobs. Obviously you want to be sure you’ve cleaned them very well indeed before you reuse any cloth diaper for other purposes, and you may still gross some people out with the thought of it.

Of course, the same goes for your cloth baby wipes. They’ve done one job; now you can come up with a new job for them.

Working on a Bit of Early Potty Training

Much as I love my cloth diapers over disposables, I do sooooo look forward to being done with diapers altogether.

I mean really. I’ve been dealing with diapers almost continuously since my oldest was born, about seven and a half years ago. Small breaks between each baby, but not enough. Really, not enough.

How I wish we had discovered the delights of cloth diapering sooner.

In the early days, my husband wouldn’t hear of it. It was a tv show about how much waste the things we use produces that showed it for disposable diapers that finally got him on my side. Now he wishes we had done it throughout.

But I’m really ready for potty training. Selene may be only 10 months old, but we’re doing some gentle work with it.

What got us started was noticing that she tends to pee after she and I take a shower in the morning. Bringing her in is just easier than waiting for her to nap, and I obviously cannot leave her in the charge of her older brother, who is only 4, and my oldest daughter is generally at school at the time, and really not ready for that responsibility either.

So, noticing a trend, out came the potty training seat.

She promptly quit peeing right after a shower for a few weeks.

But now she’s doing it again, and yes, in the potty. She doesn’t have it down yet, but she is becoming more aware that her body is doing something and that she gets praised for it. She gets a bit of praise just for sitting there, of course. But I’m getting some awfully big grins when she realizes that she has done something more in there. And she claps for herself.

We’re not aiming for complete training at this point. With three kids it would take more time than I’m up for to do a complete job. I’m just aiming for a relatively young potty training with her getting comfortable with the idea now.

I hope.

My mother likes to talk about how my grandmother always had babies trained by six months old. Of course, disposable diapers weren’t so common then, and I would imagine washing diapers would be a bit more time consuming. That would certainly be motivation, no matter the number of kids.

People do potty train young like that still, and I understand it works. The currently popular name is elimination communication. But I wasn’t ready to go for it then, and am still not ready to go for it now.