It's especially easy with my washer. When I moved in with Kurt, he was renting a washer and dryer from the apartment complex for an extra $35 a month. That's a LOT of money, especially now that I think about how little laundry we did. But it helped me when I was in college because I no longer needed a roll of quarters to do my laundry. Anyhow, right before we got married, Kurt returned the rental units and I picked out a new set from Lowe's. I love Lowe's -- they gave Kurt a 10% discount because he's military, which came to almost $70. I used some of the money my parents gave me for my college graduation.
I bought a Whirlpool because my mom had a Whirlpool washer and dryer for 25 years, and the dryer had just recently given up the ghost. The model I chose has an extra rinse feature and the ability to turn off the buzzer as well. The extra rinse was a feature that my stepmother looked for when she had bought her last washer, and since I try to do things like her, I made sure my new washer had the extra rinse.
Now I am very happy I did so because it's so easy to wash the diapers now. I just dump them and the laundry bag I use as a diaper pail liner into the washer, set it to do an extra rinse, come back to add detergent and some natural non-chlorine bleach to get out the odor, and let it wash away. How much easier could life get?
And now I don't have to be paranoid about running out of diapers or wipes. But I do use disposables when I leave the house and also at night. Since Grace sleeps 12 hours at a stretch, I've decided that since cloth diapers don't wick the moisture away from her bottom like disposables do, it would be better to put her in a disposable at night.
I have found the best and cheapest diapers to be the Target brand premium ones. First, I like them because I am not spending any extra money just to have a Disney character on the diapers. Grace really doesn't care whether she has Mickey or Target's generic zoo animals. Secondly, they are very absorbent. And the best part is -- they don't smell. Sure, when she poops in them, they stink, but that's the nature of poop! :o) I bought a pack of Luvs when I had a coupon, and I am so sorry I did so. The second Grace pees in them, you can smell it. And it smells like extremely concentrated chicken broth. If I don't throw away her diaper right away when I change her in the morning, I'll come back into the nursery later and that's all I smell!! And that's even with a diaper pail full of wet cloth diapers!
It's been a rough couple of days. The sheer enormity of the responsibility of another life has really come down hard on me. I don't mind taking care of Grace, at all. But for most of her life, I've had Kurt come home in the evenings to take care of her with me. Or he would even take complete control when he came home to give me a break. Even when he has duty, I can just look forward to the next morning or afternoon, and he'd be back.
Now he's gone to San Diego until the second week of February, and it's rough. Yesterday and today were the worst so far, so I'm hoping that it will just get better from here. Grace is starting to go on a napping strike. She used to wake up at 9:30am, eat, then go back to sleep till 11am or noon. Then she'd be up most of the afternoon, and pass out again around 5:30pm for an hour. At 10pm it's off to bed for the night, and the cycle started again the next day.
Now I can't get her to take her morning nap. That was fine last week because she would make up for it by sleeping from 1pm to 4pm. The last couple of days she's fought both the morning nap and the afternoon nap. I finally got her to sleep at 1:45pm today after battling with her for 45 minutes. I tried EVERYTHING. I held her, I sang to her, I rocked her, I let her "cry it out" in her crib, EVERYTHING. She fought it tooth and nail. Finally I picked her up one more time, rocked with her a bit, and since she was so worn out from all the crying she was doing, she drifted off to sleep. Thankfully she slept an hour and a half. And later this evening, she fell asleep ON HER OWN at 5:30pm and slept another hour and a half. So I think it may get better. I'm hoping, at any rate.