My diapers cost what?!

So, here we are, T-2 days until the movers come. With two kids and a husband home there seems almost no point to cleaning up/making sure everything is in its place until the movers get here. We have started to pack up some stuff (like my Pottery Barn mercury glass-I insist on keeping the boxes and repackaging them when we move, I just feel better about it) and I have been taking down shower curtains and washing all the rugs and adding more and more items to our list of stuff that is coming with us. We went to Lowes today to get new blinds because Henry has destroyed 3 of them here and they will charge up $20 each to replace them. Ridiculous I know, when they cost about $5 each. Talk about mark up! I don't even want to think what they are going to end up charging us for the paint on the walls because it is flat paint and there is chalk, banana, and scratch marks from the end of a paintbrush Henry used on the walls. Also, I am attempting to get cat pee out of one spot in the carpet where they seem to keep going. I will let you know if it works, so far it seems to be working.

The other think I did today was buy disposable diapers. This might not seem like a big deal to anyone else but if you know me, you know we do cloth around here pretty much 24/7. I hate the thought of spending money on something I am throwing away (and yes I feel that way about other disposable items too, I have tried to cut down or stop using as much as possible or find a reusable substitute). Plus, with the reports you see on how bad the chemicals in them are and you add to that the fact that most of them don't biodegrade for 500 years well, you can see why we chose to go with cloth and why it would be a big deal for me to buy a pac of dispoable diapers. However, my husband has talked me into buying a box of them for the move so that I don't have to worry about finding a place/time to wash my diapers while we are moving and it can be one less thing to worry about while we are packing, driving, being nomads for a few days then unpacking in a new house. I understand the logic so I went ahead and bough a box of Pampers because I had two coupons for them from Sunday's inserts. It was still a big chunk of change for those diapers ($26 for 102 diapers-that is 25 cents a diaper-I am currently MAKING 25 cents off each diaper I use now, yes I am making money off my diapers, they have long since paid for their initial investment) and I was slightly sick to my stomach thinking I had just spend almost $30 on diapers that I was going to throw away. That I should have just sucked it up and found a way to deal with the laundry (and who knows? Maybe I will still do that and end up returning the diapers in the end anyway). I don't know how people pay for diapers all the time, I really don't. I can understand why some moms would leave their child in a diaper for longer than necessary to "get their money's worth" out of them. There are quite a few people in America who have to choose diapers over food, and if food wins out they wash out the diapers and reuse them. And I won't be one of those people who will say "oh they should use cloth, it would save them money!" because I realize that those people also don't always have a way to wash those diapers (if you can't afford food, water, electricity and soap could be hard to come by too). I wish there was a better solution. I wish diaper companies would make a better product, a safer product for the environment and that they could be affordable for everyone. I know that is asking a lot, especially from companies whose bottom line is to make more money for themselves. They know diapers are a need and they take advantage of that. It is very sad to me. I am just thankful that we have the ability to use cloth and save that money, and not put so much more waste in the landfills. Maybe by the time my kids have kids there will be a better solution out there. I hope so.