Diaper Madness: How Cloth Diapers Turned One Woman Into a Raging Laundry Addict

If there was one household chore that I not only disliked, but really and truly despised, it was laundry. Oh, but I hated laundry. My procrastination was legendary, the number of loads left mildewing in the washer were embarrassing, my folding skills pathetic, my tolerance for getting dressed from towering piles of clothes on the floor ridiculously high.

So whenever someone talked about – oh, God – CLOTH DIAPERING, I probably didn’t do such a good job at hiding my horror. Clearly, I was talking to a crazy person. I once saw someone confess on their blog that not only did they not mind washing their cloth diapers, they kind of found it fun. That right there, I remember thinking, is someone who does not get out very much. When you get out of the house, you see, you no longer have to look at your laundry piles, which is pretty much the entire point.

Hey! Looky:

Laundry pile is hungry! Hungry for your precious leisure time! Feed me with your minutes and your tears! NOM NOM!

So I bought some cloth diapers, and then I bought some more, and now every other day or so I toss a load of them into our washer (cold soak! hot wash! cha cha cha!), and they later emerge from the dryer all warm and fluffy and pristine, ready to be re-assembled and folded into satisfying piles:

My OCD. Let me show you it.

And…and…I don’t know when it happened, but I found myself enjoying this task. The mindless repetitive motion of stuffing microfiber inserts into baby-butt-sized pants became relaxing. It became the thing I do during my children’s naptime, on purpose.

And then…and then…I started feeling the same way about the rest of our laundry. The piles shrank; our drawers and closets actually have clothes inside them; if you need an extra hand towel, by God, I have an extra hand towel for you.

And then…my three-year-old sat down next to me and the pile of diapers and asked to HELP.

I don’t have one of those “helpful” models of children. If I can get him to put his toys away and/or half-heartedly toss a paper towel on his spilled milk before walking through the puddle, I consider it a good day. But it turns out he’s just as entranced by the pretty colored diapers as I am, and I hand him a diaper and an insert and we stuff and fold and sort them by color together.

Yesterday he surveyed our little piles and gave them an affectionate little pat. “I love these diapers, Mommy,” he said, ever the Strangey McWeirdoPants that three-year-olds can be.

“I love them too,” I confessed, “but I think maybe you and I need to get out more, kiddo.”

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Kid Clean Up, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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