Affiliates Cloth Diapering Flat Diapers Flats Flats Challenge

I Signed Up For the 2nd Annual Flats Challenge!

flats challenge

In case you missed the announcement, May 21-27 is the 2nd annual flats challenge, hosted by Dirty Diaper Laundry.

I did not participate last year. It is the week of my son’s birthday, and I was also pregnant/sick/exhausted. The idea of mastering flats & hand-washing diapers for a week made me feel nauseated (more so than usual, hee-hee.) When Kim announced that she’d be hosting the challenge again this year, I immediately thought I’d support it, but wouldn’t participate. No way, no how! After all, it is again my son’s birthday week, and I have two super-soaker boys in diapers now! My little guy is 4.5 months old right now and still wants to be held/worn all the time. I am honestly struggling with meeting his needs, while also meeting my older son’s needs (mostly constant feeding, LOL!) and getting my daughter to and from school and activities, getting her homework done etc. I am completely overwhelmed with keeping up with junk cleanup, dishes, cleaning and the constant laundry. Washing diapers for 2 is a lot, even with a washing machine. The other day my husband remarked that the laundry room looked empty without diapers hanging, LOL.

I also don’t have enough flats to use, and I assume I’d need to use my tub to wash, which would be an extra hassle to deal with the kids and running up & down the stairs. I don’t know if I even have enough places to hang up that many flats! Excuse after excuse, I know! It sounds crazy, but the idea of using & hand washing flats for a week ramped my anxiety up 10 notches and made me feel physically ill.

Then I started thinking about what it would be like if this was my reality and it made me want to try! I took a deep breath, hit the submit button on the sign up form, and ordered some flour sack towels to use as flats. Eek!

Since then, I found out that we are allowed to use a diaper sprayer this year (it wasn’t allowed last year) and we’re not limited to the # of covers we use (the limit was 5 last year.) I only have a couple of wipeable covers, since I sent what I wasn’t regularly using to my friend. I was concerned about keeping covers clean, and I was also concerned about my older son freaking out that he couldn’t have the diaper he wanted!

I’m going to try to limit the # I use, especially since I don’t need more to hand wash! I have a utility sink in my laundry room that also has a sink sprayer. So I figure I will just be washing flats constantly, all day every day that week. However many I can fit in the sink at a time.

You’re also allowed a night time diaper of your choice, but you’re encouraged to make flats work for you. So, I ordered two hemp babies flats to use inside a pocket diaper at night. Hopefully that will be enough absorbency!

I’ll be writing more about my thought process as I imagined doing this out of necessity, and I’ll also be posting about the hemp babies flats and flour sack towels I bought, as well as comparing them to the Diaper Rite flats I’ve already posted about.

I’ll be tweeting with the hash tag #flatschallenge, and I’ll be blogging daily about my experience! Want to join me? Read about the challenge and sign up!

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Maria
Maria is an aspiring "fit mom" of 3 children, writing about cloth diapers, going green, and her life as a single mom. Maria works with many companies within the cloth diaper industry and beyond, providing social media management, product development, and other services.
7 Comments
  • May 21, 2012 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    […] you’ve read my posts on Facebook, or my post after I signed up for the flats challenge, you know I was full of excuses why I couldn’t participate. Yet […]

  • May 8, 2012 at 12:18 pm
    Reply

    I signed up too! I wish I had a big utility sink. I think I”ll be using the bathroom tub and just locking the door to the bathroom to keep kids out if at any point I leave things to soak. I don’t like the idea of having a tub with water in it and kids being able to get to it!

  • May 8, 2012 at 9:01 am
    Reply

    […] feeling OK about the Birdseye flats and flour sack towels I bought for the flats challenge, but I was worried about how to make flats work at […]

  • May 3, 2012 at 10:16 pm
    Reply

    […] you may already know, I signed up for the flats challenge and I needed more flats. I’d never used a flour sack towel as a flat cloth diaper, and […]

  • May 1, 2012 at 4:34 pm
    Reply

    […] The birdseye inserts absorbed very well, and I’ve used the cover over flats also. It will definitely be the first cover I grab during the flats challenge! […]

  • Heather M
    April 26, 2012 at 3:43 pm
    Reply

    I think after you complete the challenge you’ll realize just how ‘easy’ life was before! It should give you a whole new perspective.

    I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed lately as well.
    The first couple months, my excuse was that I had a newborn. But now that I can no longer use that, when I see the sink full of dishes, the counters dirty, clean laundry that’s a week old etc piled up I think how overwhelmed I feel… I can’t imagine adding in washing flats daily to that ritual! Power to you, Maria!

    I almost had a nervous breakdown the other day while making dinner. Baby was screaming, Fiancee was just sitting on the computer not even flinching and I just kept thinking how overwhelmed I felt. He doesn’t pitch in often so it’s all me and it was driving me batty.

    • April 26, 2012 at 7:03 pm
      Reply

      So glad I’m not the only one! 🙂

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