4 Reasons Fluff Love Fustrates this Blogger

I’m tired of laying in the shadows trying to fight the spread of Fluff Love, it’s time to start talking about our complaints, and about the issues, the cloth diaper community has because if we don’t, we will perish. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but you get my feel. 

Read 20 Common Complaints about Fluff Love University.

Learn about an early history of how Fluff Love University came to exist.

disclosure: this post, if you can’t tell, is entirely my own opinion. I’m not connected with any brand or retailer.

Why does this blogger have a love-hate relationship with Fluff Love University?

I can’t talk for all the bloggers, but I can talk for myself.

1. They came in like a wrecking ball and left very little in its wake. While, the online cloth diaper community was likely small, and they’ve exploded it to great size, they’ve left little room for others to grow and flourish in its path because of their tactic to refer everyone to Fluff Love.  This leaves small cloth diaper communities struggling to build community as people get referred elsewhere and FLU grows to a size incapable of building tight-knit communities many mothers need. That’s why it’s great to see some cloth diaper groups reemerging on Facebook to build these communities.
2. Scare Tactics, Misinformation, Censorship and lack of evident growth and evolution with time. These are just a few things Fluff Love does on a regular basis to turn me off.  From deleting comments that go against their files to refusing to budge on positions such as rinses, water softener, and detergent build up, this is a group that is stuck in the past. While I can understand the need to do this to maintain integrity, I wonder where  we can go to openly challenge Fluff Love and get them to rethink, reconsider, and re-research many of the concerns I have, retailers, and manufacturers have about their suggestions. They seem to be stuck in 2014, and just be getting more intense with every year with their stance on how to use Mighty Bubbles, to now measuring washing machines.
   • Can we also talk about how they aren’t open to their information about who runs the organisation, finances, and the like? We don’t know who decides and how they decide which routines work best, and opinions on new detergents. Yet these are matters taken very seriously by the general public. You can find some outdated information on their website, but this is a supposed group trying to gain non-profit status but lacks serious transparency. Who are the people making the decisions, and how do you connect them beyond a censored Facebook group?
3. Cloth Diaper Laundry isn’t science. It’s just laundry and no matter how many emails you send me about the “science of laundry”, I’m still going just going to say you are trying to overcomplicate something that we’ve been doing for decades, and you still can’t get a degree in it by any recognised University. Fluff Love is merely run by people with science backgrounds and continually real scientists, chemists, and people with degrees in water, rocks, and detergents come forward and say “hold up, that’s bat crazy.” I wish I could link up those comments, but they happen in closed Facebook groups and not on blogs, or even websites. But, the mob control of FLU means you can’t question anything without some pseudo-science thrown back in your face that I find often lacks the logical train thought I would follow. Technically, I have a background in Science, as well as an Arts Degree in Environmental Studies.
   1. Detergent Build Up is Real. Tide said so, and they manufacture this stuff. Why are we going to believe parents with science backgrounds over the chemists who make this stuff?
4. It’s all about those cheapie cloth diapers. In their early days, Fluff Love lead some serious smear campaigns against cloth diaper manufacturers for taking advantage of people and I think this really destroyed an important relationship with cloth diaper brands and this massive group. Because they said bums over warranties and aggressively suggested cloth diaper brands were out against people, we have the beginning of a serious split. I know there other reasons the cheapie market has taken over the industry, but I’m not going to ignore this early division.
   

   This is just one of the graphics that really put a damaging lens on the cloth diaper industry. Making this statement is very bold, and continues to be a theology held by the group. Is this why they recommend cheapie because they don’t offer the important 1:1 wash routine advice that could be make people successful with a FLU routine fails?

   

This isn’t about the end of Fluff Love University.

This about mixing up that conversation and allowing space for choice. Right now Fluff Love University dominates that space and the space for peer-to-peer laundry recommendations is non-existent. There’s little evidence of homegrown knowledge, and critical thinking left in many cloth diaper communities, and I want to make that happen again. I want to start questioning the need for accuracy in cloth diapering. I want to question why we are softeners at such an alarming rate, and why suddenly we should test a water softener strip over the studies down by our city supply lines. I don’t want the answer they’ve been regurgitating for 4-5 years since the days of Kate and Compendium. I want to the know the answer based on 2018 science.

I want your local or small cloth diaper group to suggest recommendations that work for them based on their own cloth diaper journey, not because FLU said so. I want you to learn to think about what’s going in your washing machine and laundry basket and think about how you could fix it. I want you to be able to go on vacation and figure out your cloth diaper routine on your own without the assistance of an admin from a mega cloth diaper group. This is about empowering women to be own their own intelligencence.

Because cloth diapering knowledge is not limited to the some 20 admins and the founders of Fluff Love University. For an organisation based in science, I’ve seen very littel change in their opinion over the past 4-5 years. It would be nice if maybe they were science based they would continue to challenge and consider the alternative options people are talking about instead of shutting it down.

I’m not scared of Fluff Love University. I’m just a small blogger. I work with a few brands, but not enough to pay my mortgage. If this bites me in the ass, and I’m destroyed, so be it. My kids are potty trained. I’m not scared to call light into the dark, and let’s keep talking about the censorship and control of cloth diaper knowledge by this mega group.

If you want to share your opinion, let me know. I’m not going to share your pro-Fluff Love voice, but I will if you are opposed. I understand many people are scared of the giant that they are but don’t worry, I got you.