29 Diapers

You all know I have been on a little adventure greening my household cleaning products, and even making them myself when possible. “Why bother?” some of you asked. Well, part of it is just for fun and to see how much I can reduce my grocery bill, but when a good cleaning product comes along that is eco-friendly, natural, and cost-effective, I just stock up and don’t worry about making it. See? 29 Diapers can be so practical sometimes.

Kiyomi D. and Kimberlie Tiegen!

Congrats, ladies. I have emailed you. Please contact me within 72 hours to claim your prizes.
Announcing a New Way of Announcing Winners

How have you guys liked using the Rafflecopter widget for entering giveaways on 29 Diapers? The feedback so far has been pretty positive, so I’m thinking I will keep using the tool to moderate and post giveaways. Rafflecopter also allows me to announce the winners of my giveaway with the click of a button, but they are posted on the original giveaway post, so from now on you will need to check a giveaway post after the giveaway has ended to see the winners. Hope that works for everyone. I will do my best to post winners in a timely manner, which should be pretty simple because it’s so easy to pick a winner with this new system. I will still email winners directly, as well, so if you are dying to know if you won a giveaway, check your email!

I ruffled a few feathers a few months back by saying that couponing isn’t green, because coupons tend to only buy processed packaged foods and not the organic fresh foods I want to feed my family. It’s getting harder and harder to feed a family nutritious food on a budget, though, so I then reached out to my friend Mandy, who originally turned me on to cloth diapers and home birthing. She gave us a lot of good tips for stretching a food budget in her post, including joining a food co-op. So, when her mother Sherry told me she has managed to replace nearly all her grocery shopping with her food co-op, I decided to check it out.

Here’s something I have avoided on this blog up to this point: greening your period. But I recently had the chance to test both Luna Pads cloth pads and the Diva Cup silicone tampon alternative, and I know many of you are interested in hearing how they stack up compared with the disposable alternatives. After all, cloth vs. disposable is an issue most of us have faced already in choosing how to diaper our kidlets, so isn’t this just an extension of the same thing?

I recently started making my own laundry detergent, to see if there really is any secret weapon in natural detergent or if I might actually be able to make a better detergent myself. A few years ago I would have been too nervous to go rogue like this, but now I have discovered I make a better foaming sugar scrub than any I have bought, and that most household cleaning can be done with baking soda and Dr. Bronner’s castile soap. So, a few of you suggested when I posted my first homemade laundry detergent recipe that goat’s milk soap might work better than Dr. Bronner’s castile soap at cleaning without leaving a residue. How did it turn out?

Not so long ago, I tested Rockin’ Green’s Funk Rock for this blog, and I wasn’t sure what to say. It didn’t seem to do much for my diapers, but I didn’t really have an ammonia problem, so how could I tell if it was working or not? Well, I just had the chance to test it, big time.

Not on my diapers, but on my bath mat. I have a cat that has taken it upon herself