A diaper service gift certificate was the ultimate seventies’ baby shower gift. It meant someone else would be taking on a chore you dreaded, leaving you more time to spend with your new baby. Like many things old-school and retrospectively “green,” cloth diapers are making a comeback. Why not a diaper service? It strikes a perfect balance between modern convenience and the green life many families are trying to live.
How Diaper Service Works-
Before the baby is born, the mother-to-be or a person making a gift of diaper service calls a local company to place an order and make payment arrangements . If the service is to be a gift, the person can designate a specific time period: weeks, months, or even a year. The company provides a gift certificate which can be presented to the mother at her baby shower.
After the baby is born the new mother makes a phone call to initiate the service and set up a weekly delivery date, with the first delivery usually scheduled before the new mom and baby arrive home. When the baby soils a diaper, the mother rinses it and pitches it into a plastic lined, deodorized hamper. On her scheduled diaper delivery day, she lifts out the bag of soiled diapers and leaves it outside her door. The diaper service replaces the dirty diapers with a bag of clean, sanitized, and freshly folded diapers.
Cotton Diapers – The Good and The Bad-
Before disposable diapers hit the market, diaper duty was a necessary burden of motherhood. A newborn went through nearly a hundred cloth diapers a week. They were hard to clean, and even more difficult to keep white, but with a whole range of products made specifically for those purposes, women certainly tried. For families willing to pay the cost of having someone else perform the task, a diaper service was a welcome reprieve from household drudgery.
A clean cotton diaper has many uses, especially the thick, pre-folded variety delivered by diaper service companies. Pre-folded diapers are actually several layers of cotton sewn together, making them soft and absorbent, perfect for diapering a baby. Cloth diapers are great for cleaning stray food from your baby’s face, wiping baby spit-up, or throwing over your shoulder to keep milk from dribbling down your new silk blouse as you burp your baby
Diaper Service = Landfill Relief-
As a Whole Earth Review article, “The Disposable Diaper Myth,” explained, many see the term ‘disposable diapers’ as redundant. Consumers purchase an estimated 18 billion disposable diapaers annually. While they have always come with instructions that advised rinsing the waste, flushing away the dirty inner fibers, then wrapping up the plastic and throwing it away, few have ever followed or even noticed those simple instructions.
A typical diaper-changer rolls the soiled diaper into a ball and tapes it together; then, waste and all, they pitch it into the garbage. That process may seem logical for a ‘disposable diaper,’ but it has meant decades of untreated human waste deposited in landfills. An added problem is the plastic outer wrapping, which may not biodegrade for an estimated 500 years. Cloth diapers are reusable and won’t add to the landfill burden, a better solution for a world with green aspirations.
Diaper Service – Green and Convenient-
As disposable diapers became the norm, the use of cloth diapers began to fade. But in light of a host of disposable diaper environmental issues, cloth diapers are making a comeback. They are showing up in online stores, home-delivered catalogs, store shelves, and other outlets where green inventory is a priority.
The dilemma for mothers who want to live greener lives is that many have professional careers not available to women even a few decades ago. They are not likely to go the route of their mothers and grandmothers, adding rinsing, washing, disinfecting, and whitening cloth diapers to their list of things to do. For many of these families, a diaper service is the logical solution.
The Cost?-
Compared to disposables, a diaper service has always been an economical alternative. According to the National Association of Diaper Services, the cost of diapers delivered to your door is comparable to that of purchasing a supply of disposable diapers. Considering the convenience and the opportunity to raise your baby in a greener environment, a new diaper service transition to old-school cloth diapers may be easier than you think.
Sources: National Association Of Diaper Services:
http://www.diapernet.org/
Article The Disposable Diaper Myth:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n60/ai_6642692/
