Lately I've been thinking about you. Yes, that's right. YOU. All of you cloth-diapering moms who who have "liked" Thirsties on
Facebook and have often commented on my blogs. Ok, ok, I know I am not being PC and I really should be asking "Are you are crunchy cloth-diapering parent?" I don't want to leave dads out, but since I am pretty sure most of you are indeed moms, I'll take the risk. Now, when I ask if you are a crunchy mom, I don't mean "Do you wear long skirts, layered-tanks tops, have unshaven legs and wear Birkenstocks?" (But if you do, that's cool!) What I am really wondering is this: Are cloth-diapering families more likely to recycle, to garden, to eat organic and local, to walk or ride bikes instead of driving? Are they more likely to compost and garden, to make home-made baby food, to co-sleep, to breastfeed, to wear their babies? Or are cloth-diapering moms just as diverse as disposable-diapering families? So what I'd like is this--I'd love to hear how you compare to the stereo-typical Crunchy Cloth-Diapering Mom and if you are the polar opposite, I want to hear that too! There is no judgement here--we all have parent and diapering in common--but it's fun to hear our differences once in a while too. I'll go first.
- Well, first of all, I do shave my legs--though many a time, I've gotten out of the shower and discovered that I shaved the same leg twice because I was interrupted by a child. No one ever interrupts my husband while he is shaving. Hmmmmm.....strange.
- I don't own Birkenstocks but I used to in college...now I wear flip flops all summer and my Dansko clogs all winter (I think those are kind of crunchy).
- I rarely wear make-up because I never go anywhere very exciting and I certainly don't have an extra five minutes in the morning to put any on--but honestly, I probably should. These days I am lucky if I leave the house with a bra on.
- I am an avid recycler. I cringe when I see plastic or glass in the trash. It weighs too heavily on my conscience. In fact, we were recently out of state and went to a game a huge sports arena. I was horrified by the fact that every single bottle, can and cup was thrown in the trash. Boulder is big on recycling and it's become a bit of an obsession with me.
- We do have a small garden, we do NOT compost (I am not crunchy enough to tolerate the sugar ants it attracted even though I had in a sealed container!).
- I have co-slept with all three of my children for varying amounts of time. Cooper is finally in his own room which is wonderful because I couldn't stand the crooked neck from nursing all night any longer!
- My husband does ride his bike to work when he can, but I have to admit, I am all about the car these days. I just can't get anywhere with all three any other way.
- I do NOT make my own baby food. Again, it's the time thing--or at least that's my excuse--but I have nursed all three for a minimum of 16 months.
- We eat organic and local when we can--but it is pricey and I have to take that into account.
We CD, compost, baby wear, Co sleep, recycle, shop at local farmers markets a much as possible even during winter, made my own baby food and my second son is almost 19 months and still nursing strong. I’m not 100%crunchy, but at least half way there. I grew up with hippy parents, and everyone in my family is kind of nutty about the environment andsuch, but I’m also from just outside Portland Oregon, and we are all about green living here.
i don’t really consider myself crunchy. i nursed (more than a year), I still co-sleep with the youngest. we do recycle. my dh even more than I do. we cloth diaper of course. i wore all three as babies and toddlers. but i consider this all pretty normal. :)
Like many here, I’m part crunchy.
- I cloth diaper, but use disposable wipes. I started out with a plan to use cloth wipes and even have the wipes, but we were gifted a case of Costco disposable wipes that took us down the disposable path.
- I dry the laundry outside when I can, which isn’t all that often in Seattle.
- I recycle everything our recycling people will take. They are fussy about what plastics they will and won’t take. The volume of my recycling is probably 3 times the volume of my trash.
- I rarely shave my legs, but that’s not because I’m crunchy. It’s because I’m lazy and never wear skirts, so why bother.
- I make all my own baby food and bake my own bread. My son is 1 year and eats a no-sugar vegetarian diet so far. The only commercial baby food he’s ever had is one box of rice cereal and maybe half a box of oat cereal when we first started out. I feed him organic, where possible, but eat largely non-organic myself due to cost.
- I don’t compost and only vaguely garden. I don’t have a green thumb.
- I don’t co-sleep. I didn’t do much baby wearing.
- I recently bought my first pair of Birkenstocks ever because I found that the flip-flops I was wearing around the house were making my feet hurt. I only wear them around the house. My feet no longer hurt, so there is something to be said for them.
- I work from home, so no commute. Does that count as crunchy? I live in suburbia with no sidewalks and long distances between places, so walking to get to places isn’t practical and public transit is almost nil. That said, I only put gas in the car every 2-3 weeks most of the time.
- I’ve never been a makeup person.
- I have been known to make my own yogurt and granola, though not recently.
- I avoid microwaving in plastic. I use glass for storage and reheating. I use glass baby bottles (couldn’t breastfeed). I try to avoid using ziploc bags, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, paper towels and other disposable products in the kitchen, but those things do exist in my kitchen and get used sometimes.
You need a crunch-o-meter to tally the results.
Great question! I think I’m fairly stereo-typical, though real granola-type would consider me too preppy ;) We garden, I make most of our food from scratch, we recycle and aim for green living (www.lazygreenmama.weebly.com), I’m a SAHM… And I’m extremely frugal, which is why I cloth diaper (saving planet Earth aside)
I hope I never get labeled as crunchy. Most people I know who are a little crunchy are actually very nice, but I just don’t want to be like that. I don’t want people to be intimidated or weirded out because of the things I do.
Here are the “crunchy” things I do: cloth diapers and wipes (but I’m doing it to save money, not really for the environment), grind my own wheat and make 100% whole wheat bread (I don’t eat a ton of it, though), mostly homemade meals, I don’t have a garden but plan to when we have our own yard, I recycle what I can, eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, don’t wear makeup much (but this is only because I’m busy and forget most days), had my second baby at a free-standing birth center, ride the bus to class (but only because it’s free and saves parking money), breastfeed, wear my babies (mainly because it’s convenient, though)
Here are the non-crunchy things I do: I use Kirkland brand laundry detergent on my cloth diapers, I rarely buy organic except for bananas because my husband is allergic to the chemicals they use on regular bananas, eat meat and cheese and drink milk (non of which is organic or unpasteurized or free range), wear whatever makeup is cheap without worrying about carcinogens or anything toxic, my son is circumcised (probably won’t circumcise any of my other boys, though), buy a lot of things at Target and Kroger instead of buying local, buy things that have high fructose corn syrup and other things with chemical-y sounding names (I’ve taken enough chemistry that I can pronounce them even if I’m not sure what they are), push my children in a stroller several times a week, let my kids cry it out, very little cosleeping
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