Cloth Diapering: Day 1

The holidays are over, meaning we are traveling less; and Elias is now two months old, which means there are less poopy diapers in a day (actually he is down to just one a day). 

That also means one more thing: We are now officially cloth diapering! 

Today was a success. We even made it through a poopy diaper without too much of a hassle. 

Some interesting facts about cloth diapers we learned today: 

1- Elias doesn't get so mad about them being wet. With disposables he can't stand for them to be even a tiny bit soggy, which made for us going through probably 15-20 diapers a day. Today we only went through two cloth and one disposable diaper. That pleased this money-pinching momma. 

2- cloth diapers make my baby's bottom huge! It isn't a problem, just laughable at times, because he is such a small guy. 

3- I am so thankful to have a bum genius diaper sprayer! 

It hooks up to the toilet's water line and makes cleaning diapers a breeze. No diaper dunking in the toilet! 

So far so good with cloth diapers! We'll see how the next year or two goes. :)

Saving Money Tip #1

This med student wife is determined to live on the prescribed budget allotted to our family for the semester.

One way I'm doing it is baking my own bread in our nifty bread machine. 

I simply place the 1 5/8 cup of warm water in the bottom (that's free - or very close to free)

Then add 2 cups white flour ($.15 when considering I buy a 5 lb. bag of flour at Aldi for $1.59)

Add an additional 2 2/3 cups whole wheat flour that I've ground with a wheat grinder. (This could be considered cheating since the average person doesn't have a wheat grinder and wheat berries to grind)

Then 1/3 cup brown sugar (that figured out to $.63 based on a $1.49 32-oz. bag of brown sugar from Aldi).

A yeast packet costs ~$.33 and then a teaspoon of salt comes out to be so minimal I hardly count it ($.00269/tsp.)

TOTAL = ~$1.12

That makes this med student momma happy.