For the past 5 years, cloth mamas have shown the world there is an economical and practical way of diapering our babies and infants. You don’t need to have fancy expensive modern diapers, and you don’t even need access to the luxuries of washing facilities.

Dirty Diaper laundry originally hosted the Flats & Handwashing Challenge as challenging cloth diapering mama’s to use flats, wash them by hand and talk about it. This challenge sets out to showcase a very straightforward and reasonable means of keeping our babies dry and healthy when we are faced with challenges that may not allow us access to modern niceties such as washing machines and fancy diapers, cloth or disposable.

The Flats & Handwashing Challenge is now hosted by the Cloth Diaper Podcast starting in 2020

Why Me? Why the Flats Challenge?

Because I’m crazy, that’s why.

I’m crazy addicted and passionate about cloth diapering babies. My cloth diaper addiction runs deep into my environmental drive to cloth diaper. I hope that by cloth diapering my baby, I’m helping reduce waste and helping make an environmental difference.

I believe cloth diapering is for everyone and anyone, no matter the circumstances at play. However, I understand that not everyone has a disposable income for exclusives and fancy cloth diapers. But, there are other options, more affordable and practical options. I must admit, that while I preach about these affordable options, I’ve never tried them.
I belong to a really amazing internet-based cloth diaper community, and the mama’s in there they talk about these great options – flats and receiving blankets, flour sack towels and more. I should practice what we preach. I need to try and share my experiences.

I’m participating in the Flats Challenge because I want to humble myself. I want to be able to back up my words and I want to stand behind ideas I support. Of course you can diaper your baby on a budget. So, tomorrow, when you see my stash, you’ll see I’ve chosen a variety of different products, at different price points and affordability to try out this week. I want to make it work, and I want to show you that it can work. Because diapering your baby doesn’t have to mean fancy AIO diapers, it can be a means for survival, and a means for stretching the budget.

Why Else? Cloth Diapers for Emergency Preparedness.

I’m participating in the Flats Challenge because there is a mama in my online cloth diaper community who talks about the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. She talks about being without power and resources for several weeks. Naturally, in these weeks access to any and all goods was limited and in short demand. But, lucky for her, she was a cloth diapering mama. She was able to use her skills, knowledge and stash of flats to keep her babies bum dry, clean and healthy during the aftermath.

In my area, we recently saw a mass evacuation of Fort McMurray due to a wildfires. Many were forced to leave home with very little, and for babies needing diapers this could be a tough situation.This very real, and possible emergency, has my husband and I talking about emergency preparedness. After this challenge, unless I fall in love with flats, I’m placing my flats, receiving blankets, and some covers in our grab and go bag.Flats will be the prefect thing in an emergency. The perfect way to keep my baby healthy and happy. The easies to wash. And easily accessible.

We never know when tragedy will hit. We never know when we will be faced with the unthinkable. I’m also taking this challenge to better prepare myself. I’m taking this challenge to teach myself about what I need to know to help my family in the face of the unknown. And hopefully, with these skills I can help other mama’s and share my knowledge in my community so that our babies can all be clean and healthy.

Not even 50 years ago, this very basic skill of washing clothes and diapering babies would have been passed down from generation to generation, but in the era of washing machines and modern luxuries, we have forgotten.

Have you considered Flats? Would you know how to diaper your baby or toddler if disposable diapers weren’t available? Will you join us in the Flats Challenge?

About Me <3 

Before we begin this challenge, I also want to introduce myself. My name is Bailey, and during this challenge I’ll be cloth diapering my 9 month old son, Walter.  We live in Northern BC, but we will be flying to Vancouver to visit family during our trip. We will continue to cloth diaper on this trip, and I’m excited to talk about it during my adventure.

I feel like I should disclose the following information: We have been cloth diapering since week 1, and we almost exclusively use all-in-one diapers. I am very grateful that I am to afford and splurge on diapers. I am a bit of a cloth diaper addict and follow the trends and the changes going on with major brands.