A Graduation Party and How I Feel About Eco-Fina

photo credit: CarbonNYC

Today my amazing husband threw me a graduation party. That's right people: I'm a Bachelor Degreed mama now! And I graduated at the top of my class in my major (Child and Family Studies), even though at the end I dealt with the deployment of my husband and the birth of our daughter in the middle the semester. I'm pretty stinkin' proud of myself. They asked me to make a speech at graduation, which I declined to do, because I didn't want to walk across the stage. All I wanted was a party... which was awesome!

Anyway, Eco-fina... Since I turned "crunchy" I decided that any parties we had I would just fill up the sink and have everybody wash their own plate so we didn't have to use disposables and nobody would be stuck with all the dishes at the end. Today, however, we had our party outside, so we used disposable plates and utensils. A lot of people complain about how companies promote how "green" their disposable products are, when it would be greener to just not use them. But today I was glad that I had the option to use "greener" disposables: biodegradeable, recycled plates and recycled plastic silverware. It's not something I do often, but I'm glad that I have light green options as opposed to... I dunno... brown options?

How does this equate with Eco-fina? Well, lately I have seen a lot of controversy about the Eco-fina bottles that use less plastic. Yes, I know... people shouldn't drink bottled water in the first place. But there are people who are going to drink it no matter what you say about the environment, and I hope that those people drink Eco-fina.

I think there are shades of green, and while it is best to be a dark, hunter green (cloth toilet paper and solar panels kind of green), some of us are a lighter forest green, and some are light green and drink out of Eco-fina water bottles. It's still better than the conventional ones.

Snappi Troubleshooting

I took pictures for this post, but unfortunately photobucket is loading really slowly today, so I'm just going to have to explain it the best I can and link to other pictures. Sorry for the inconvenience. Click on the links if you don't understand something I'm saying.

I love my Snappis,which keep me from worrying about poking Doodlebug with a diaper pin, but I will admit I have had a couple of problems with them. Here is how I solved them.

The middle claw gets in the way.
It just dangled there. I never could get the thing to truly hook on so it wouldn't come off. The directions say not to cut it or you will weaken it. So I didn't. But you can very easily pry the hard plastic claw out of the rubbery plastic so it won't poke. My Snappis just have a dangly piece in the middle with no claw, but it doesn't get in the way.

I am using cheap diapers and the Snappi pokes through.
I use Gerber prefold diapers, which are very thin and don't work so well with a Snappi. I thought I was doomed to diaper pins until I discovered the safety feature on the new Snappis. You know the little round tab on the top? When they aren't being used this pulls down over the claws to prevent poking. I pulled it down (see the second picture here) and just use it like this. It makes it not poke down so deep so it doesn't go through the diapers. You absolutely HAVE to use a diaper cover if you do this, though, because the corners of the claw are exposed.

Hopefully that made some semblance of sense with no pics. If you have a cloth diapering problem or solution, let me know. I'd be glad for the wisdom and would love to share what you know!

Soap Nuts Review

I won a free sample of Soap Nuts from NaturOli and Passionate Homemaking, so I thought I'd let you know how they worked.

They smelled kind of funny in the bag, but they worked really well. I even washed cloth diapers with them, and they came out smelling fresh and clean. I lost count of how many times I've washed with them, but it's been around five loads and they are still usable.

I checked the website and they are only slightly more expensive than my regular detergent (about one cent per load) but I can't find information about their shipping costs. I may call and ask them, and if the shipping is reasonable I may buy some.

I want to use the most environmentally friendly products I can without being budget unfriendly, so Soap Nuts may be the solution for my laundry.