After 5 years of being a stay-at-home mom, I found the wonder of mothering slowly starting to get crowded out by the mundane feeling. I realized our world seems to surround people with the negative, and complaining about blessings seems totally acceptable. So I decided to fight against that "normalcy" and focus only on the positive. I look back to my first year as a mom when everything was new and keeping house was fun and I aim to have that attitude again. This blog is my outlet to showcase the daily miracles that surround me in my blessed life as a stay-at-home mom so that I will never forget the wonder of it all.



Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Toilet Sprayer - God's gift to cloth diapering parents

I was cloth diapered as a kid and my mom did not have a toilet sprayer.  Instead, she would toilet slosh poopy diapers.  And diapers that were really gross got left floating in the toilet for a good long soak.  Imagine retrieving that later on.  Thanks for doing that for me mom.  You're a better woman than me!
God bless the toilet sprayer!  I love this thing.  I have to say, the first time I used it I did NOT love it.  I held the diaper up too high and turned it on too hard and in a second I felt as if I'd just sprayed invisible poop particles all over my bathroom and myself.  Once sprayed clean, there I stood with a drenched diaper a whole room away from my diaper pail.  I avoided it for a while, only relenting to it when I had a situation that called for drastic measures.  In the last year I've learned how to use it and set up a pail next to the toilet for such situations.  Now I love it. 
Basically you must have a diaper wash pail in your bathroom RIGHT next to the toilet.  Make sure it is the kind that can be opened with a foot pedal.  You will also want a stash of cloth wipes in the bathroom within reach.  Lower the diaper into the toilet so that its almost touching the water line.  Gingerly press the handle down slowly so that you don't have a sudden burst of spray.  With my pocket diapers, I rarely need to use the toilet sprayer since the fleece sluffs the poop right off.  But every once in a while, a little encouragement is needed.  A lot of the time, one little spray is all that is needed to get it all to sluff right off.  Other times, like when baby is sick, a full dousing is called for.  Once sprayed off, open your diaper wash pail with your foot and put diaper in.  If its really drippy, grab a few cloth wipes to put under the drips while getting it into the pail.  The cloth wipes will absorb the water just fine.  Everything goes straight in to the pail and you're done.
Here's a picture of the kids' bathroom (which I can't believe I'm posting online).  I wanted you to be able to see my set up.  I'm a visual learner so I always go there.  You can see my foot pedal diaper wash pail there to the right of the toilet.  Its just an old trash can with a Target bag inside.  You don't need anything huge because if you're like me, not a ton of diapers will be going in there.  Most poopy diapers get emptied in the toilet leaving hardly anything on the diaper and no reason to spray so I just take it back into Kian's room and deposit it in my main diaper wash pail.  The thing hanging off the right side of the toilet is the toilet sprayer.  I like the convenient holder.  Always on hand are disinfectant wipes.  I don't usually get water spray on the toilet but I always wipe the rim down just in case.  Not pictured is the pile of cloth wipes which are usually just sitting in a stack on the back of the toilet.  I must have taken this picture on wash day.

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