My Blog

Well winter has settled in Melbourne. The heater is going now and the woolley socks are out, and it's prompted us make conscious decisions about which nappy we put on our daughter next.

Two winters ago we made it through the whole winter with two kids in cloth nappies and no dryer - just lots of clothes horses over our central heating ducts. But as we're seeing more and more innovative cloth nappies coming out on the market, getting nappies dry in a cold Melbourne winter isn't so bad.

I think the fastest drying of all nappies still goes to the Bum-Ware Extreme nappy. It's all microfibre and dries within a couple of hours of coming out of the wash. Another favourite is the Tots Bots EasyFit in microfibre - while the extra bamboo booster takes a while to dry, the main microfibre nappy suits our light wetters fine.

What do you find is the easiest nappy to get dry over winter?

Jess.

There's been such a good spate of excellent drying weather here in Melbourne, which has meant that we now have our entire nappy stash clean and dry at once. It has made us realise though, that we have a bit of a nappy problem - there are sooo many!

So how many nappies do you think makes up a good sized stash?

My recommendation has always been 24 as it means that you don't have to wash every 2 days (unless of course you have a mega wetter) and you don't have so many that they take over the house (like mine have). I first started with 15 and it was a real struggle. I had to wash every day in the early breastfed-only-poo stage, so we pretty quickly ramped up the stash. Clearly we now have too many, so somewhere in between must be the ideal.

Write in and tell us how many nappies you think makes the perfect stash, and really informative responses will be acknowledged with a $20 Cotton Bottom gift certificate.

I'm sitting here in my garage with the laptop, while watching my dear husband paint a whole lot of Ikea furniture white. He's probably thinking "How on earth did I get ropped into this?" while I'm thinking "Wow this is going to look fantastic on our stand at the Baby Show!".

So I think we're nearly organised... We've had lots of wonderful customers contact us and offer to help on the stand, which is just fantastic to see. We spend so much time conversing with our customers via the internet which is so impersonal, and so I get really excited when we can actually meet you face to face, and really understand your cloth nappying experience.

I'm getting really excited about the new product that we'll be launching at the Expo - POTION. It's a washing powder made by Tots Bots in the UK, which is specifically designed to sanitise cloth nappies at low temperatures, and it's gentle on nappies and babies. Mention you saw this blog at the Expo, and we'll give you 25% off a packet!

We'll start packing up all the stock and loading the trailer tomorrow, and then Nick has a thrilling 10 hour drive to get to the Expo on Thursday. Meanwhile, I'll fly up with our daughters to rendez-vous there Thursday afternoon, and get it all set up!

We really look forward to seeing heaps of you there, and please make sure you introduce yourself and say G'day.

Jess.

Well, it's that time again dust off your riddle solving and treasure hunting skills and explore the many great Australian cloth nappy websites.

Here at Cotton bottom we are proud to be an extreme sponsor of the seventh semi-annual Cloth Nappy Hunt. Make sure you register at www.diaperdecisions.com to qualifiy for random prize drawings and to access the hint forums.

We have put together a mini hunt which is challenging, yet logical, and hope you have as much fun with it as we had putting it together!

Well it's all fun and learning over here at Cotton Bottom... Nick and I are redeveloping our Cotton Bottom website!

Hopefully we will be in a position to launch the new website really soon, and we'll be in touch with all our fabulous customers to describe some of the new features - such as this Blog! We'll be using this blog to chat casually about what's happening here at Cotton Bottom and provide some of our insights and experiences into the world of cloth nappying.

We hope you enjoy it.

Jess and Nick.