Stinkerpants

In my last installment of “being a hippy mama” I talked about cloth diapers. A lot of the things we’ve decided to do to “be green” are beneficial for us as well as the environment: we’re saving ourselves some serious green, which is a huge motivator. Choosing to be kind to the environment can sometimes be expensive (there’s a reason they call Whole Foods “Whole Paycheck”). However, one of the 3 R’s is reuse...which is what I’m going to talk about today.

Most of the larger ticket items I’ve talked about in my recommendations posts have been purchased secondhand, which has saved us a lot of money. We buy a lot of our stuff used, but baby stuff in particular is very easy to find for very little money - at some point every parent gets sick of having loads of plastic crap in their house, and they often just want it gone (which means they list it for cheap!).

In most cases we’ve recouped the money we spent by reselling the items after we’re finished with them; in some cases we’ve actually made money. Here are just a few of our purchases, all found on Craigslist:

Fisher-Price Papasan Baby Swing - Retail $159.99
Purchased $40, sold for $40

I had a hard time justifying the purchase of yet another large plastic baby thing that I wasn’t sure we’d actually use (as it turns out, this swing saved my sanity - to the point where we bought another one for the living room!). The swing was in great shape and looked clean, but I was still able to remove the padded part and wash it - good as new! We sold this sucker for exactly what we paid.

2007 Uppababy Vista Stroller - Retail $679.99
Purchased $275, sold for $350

I bought the Uppababy Vista when I was pregnant, thinking I would love it (after all, everyone raves about it!). As it turned out, I didn’t. As a bit of a tangent, Uppababy is a great company that really improves its products year after year. Thus, the 2007 Vista is not nearly as awesome as a new one, and I think that’s most of the reason I didn’t love it. But I digress. As I mentioned above, I purchased this stroller for $275, and sold it for $350. How did I make money on the Vista? It’s all about timing. When I was looking to buy on Craigslist, there were a ton for sale. I was able to negotiate with a motivated seller. When I decided to sell it, mine was one of two listed (the other was nearly brand new and twice the price), and I wasn’t in a hurry. I found a buyer who was very excited to take it off my hands. Win-win, as they say.

Fisher-Price Activity Table - Retail $50
Purchased $20

This was a recommendation from a friend. At this point, we’d already realized that we shouldn’t buy any popular baby toys new. Charlie loves this even still, so we haven’t sold it.

2005 Bugaboo Frog (now Cameleon) - Retail $979
Purchased $250

I’m a little bit of a stroller fiend. I thought I couldn’t be pleased, but this bugaboo has stolen my heart. It’s amazing to me that a 6 year old stroller could be far superior to brand new strollers. And with such a great deal, I am thrilled with my purchase.

These are just a few of the many, many things we've bought on Craigslit (including the office chair I'm sitting in right now!). A couple of items we haven’t purchased on Craigslist, and why:

1. Car seat - did you know that car seats expire, and if they’ve been in even a small accident, you need a new one? We didn’t trust people on Craigslist to be honest - after all, you truly risk your child’s life if you put them in a faulty car seat.
2. Stokke tripp trapp - we would have purchased this on Craigslist, if we had found it on Craigslist. But again, this is about the timing - right now there are a lot of tripp trapps on our local Craigslist, so I'm sure we could have gotten a better deal if we'd been willing to wait.

Tips for buying baby stuff used:

1. Look for stuff used. I know this seems obvious, but I truly think most people don't even think to buy stuff used. They think whatever they find will be gross or that finding it will be too much work. Hopefully I've convinced you that buying used is not too much work.
2. Be patient, if time allows. In an ideal world, you should start before you need the item, so you’re not desperate and can afford to negotiate. Sometimes (as with the Vista or the Tripp Trapp), timing is everything.
3. If you're looking for something specific, set up an alert on Craigslist. Check out how to do that below.
4. Don’t just check Craiglist: local baby swaps and yard sales are great resources.
5. Resell it when you're done with it, so you don't have a ton of crap around your house (and you have more money to buy other, age-appropriate toys!).

How to set up a Craigslist Alert:

Craigslist alerts are a great way to find items that aren't posted very often. I have ongoing alerts set up for this Melissa and Doug shopping cart, and medium/large gCloth inserts. Neither of these items are easy to come by on my local Craigslist. Here's how to set up an alert yourself:

• Go to your city's Craigslist, and click on "baby+kids." Then enter your search term(s) and (if you want), what you're willing to pay. When you're done, click "Enter."
• Scroll to the bottom of the page. You'll see an orange button with the letters RSS. Click on that button. You'll see a whole page of code in your browser window.
• Copy that page's URL and paste it into your feed reader. Now you can be notified via your feed reader every time an item is posted on Craigslist that meets your search criteria.

I also recommend (if you're serious about Craigslist) the iPhone app "CraigsPro" which has the ability to set up alerts in the app, and also makes searching from your phone really easy.

That's about it for me! Got any other tips?

In case you couldn't tell by our obsession with hybrid vehicles and backyard chickens, Y and I try to be as "green" as we can. Things were obviously no different when it came to having a baby. Lucky for us, we're finding that being environmentally responsible with our baby stuff is actually saving us a LOT of money, too. So I'm going to share with you guys what we have been doing, starting with a little summary of our diapering methods.

 

Before I start, I have to address an issue that irritates me a lot. There is some amount of controversy about whether or not cloth diapers are truly better for the environment than disposable diapers. I honestly think this is a huge load of crap. We do an extra load of laundry per week in a high efficiency washer - there is simply no way that’s as bad for the environment as 50+ disposable diapers in a landfill - I just don't believe it. And to be honest, that discussion boils my blood, because I’m pretty sure the people who say cloth is as bad as disposable are just trying to make themselves feel better. But I digress.

 

We use gDiapers with a combination of cloth and biodegradable inserts.  Because all of the terms I'm going to use can be kind of confusing, I've got a couple of little image guides for you, the first of which is here:

 

There are a bunch of different kinds of cloth diapers, but I'm only going to cover what we use. I'm not an expert on everything, mmkay? So. There are a few different parts that make up a gDiaper. Here's how it works: you have the gPants, and inside the gPants is a waterproof pouch, which snaps into the pants. The cloth or biodegradable inserts fit inside the pouch. The gPants come in three sizes: small, medium and large.

 

When Charlie was a wee tot, we bought a whole bunch of small gPants and gCloth inserts from Craigslist (note: small is an easy size to find used, because babies only wear it between 8-12 pounds). I fell in love. Chuck’s little butt looks so darn cute in gDiapers, and they are very easy to use.  I have tried all-in-one diapers a few times and have had nothing but troubles (leaking and such), so I consider myself a loyal gDiapers fan. I especially love that you can use either cloth or disposable (biodegradable!) inserts with them.

During the day, we mostly use cloth, unless we're going out (more on that below). If you're doing cloth with gDiapers, you have two options: pre-folds or the gDiapers brand gCloth. Pre-folds are really cheap, and all you have to do is fold them in thirds and stuff them in the gPants. However, they make for a really big bum, whereas the gCloth is much more streamlined (it's basically flat, but really absorbent). We used gCloth when she was in size small gDiapers (I found them on Craigslist), and we now use pre-folds (because I'm cheap - gCloth is REALLY expensive).

 

At night time, I find that the cloth isn’t absorbant enough. Thus, we use a biodegradable gRefill, which is more absorbant. To soak up the extra night-time pee, you can either use another gRefill folded in half underneath the main gRefill (which gDiapers recommended), or you can stick a couple of cloth “boosters” underneath the gRefill, which is what we’re doing. Once again, this has a lot to do with our pocketbook. We use Amazon's Subscribe & Save for gRefills, but they still aren't cheap.

 

If I take Charlie somewhere in the car, I generally put her in a gRefill (for some reason, the car seat makes this kid poop almost every time - there's no greater laxative, I swear!). Although we have a wet bag for carrying around dirty diapers, it's just easier to get rid of the poop and put the gPant in the wet bag if it's dirty.

 

For most people, dealing with the poop is the part that dissuades them from cloth diapering. I'm not going to lie to you: there will be poop. But the poop is honestly not that bad. We bought a diaper sprayer for our guest bathroom, which helps with clean up - no scraping off the poop. Next to the toilet, we have a Simple Human trash can (because it's pretty and you can open the lid by stepping on it) with a PlanetWise diaper pail liner in it.  If there's poop, you hold the diaper in the toilet, spray the poop into the toilet, then toss the dipe into the pail. Done and done.

 

 

The vast majority of the diapers, though, are pee diapers (did you know that a lot of babies only poop once a week?). We have another can/liner set up next to the changing table, and I mostly just pull the pee diaper out and throw it in the can. End of story. When it's time to do the laundry, we just turn the bag inside-out into the washer, and voila! You didn't even have to touch it.

 

I mean, really, people: the honest truth is that babies poop. Sometimes, they poop everywhere. Their clothes (and, let's be real here: your clothes too) will get poop on them, especially if you use disposable diapers (which tend to cause "blow outs"). So if you're afraid of poop, you'll probably get over it. If you're afraid of having poop in your washing machine, take comfort: after you spray the poop in the toilet, there really isn't any left on the diaper to go in the washing machine anyway. If you really don't want to spray the poop, I've heard good things about diaper liners, but I have yet to try them.

 

Now, onto the wipes.

 

Reusable wipes are such a no-brainer, I can't believe more people don't use them! Even the people I know who use cloth diapers usually use disposable wipes. When Charlie was about a month old, I was horrified to find that we'd gone through a huge box of disposable wipes, which cost about $75. Bad for the environment and bad, bad for the budget.

 

 

Reusable wipes are just washcloths. The best kind are thin and small; we have three brands, two of which I love (Gerber and Imse Vimse. Stay away from Spasilk - they're scratchy and don't absorb well). When it comes time to change a diaper, I squirt some diaper solution onto a wipe and wipe her butt. Then I throw the dirty diaper and the wipe into the diaper can. Easy peasy! We use squirty bottles like these, filled with water, a little bit of baby shampoo and almond oil, plus a drop of tea tree oil (other recipes here). We have disposable wipes for the diaper bag (and I admit I use them on especially nasty poops).

 

A few tips: