Because before there were wipes with organic aloe, my mom’s method was simple:
She rinsed cloth diapers in the toilet.
Yes. Right there. In the bowl.
No gloves. No special device. No sanitizing gadget humming in the corner.
Just a parent handling real life in real time.
She’d swish the diaper around like she was stirring soup (I’m sorry, there’s no other visual), wring it out, toss it in the diaper pail, and carry on with her day like she’d just checked off a completely normal item on her to-do list.
I shared this memory with friends recently. The reaction was instant — groans, disbelief, and one friend who dramatically declared, “I REFUSE to accept that this ever happened.” Meanwhile I’m over here thinking:
It was literally just a Tuesday.
See, back then there were no odor-locking pails. No YouTube tutorials on the “best cloth diaper fold.” No boutique wipes made with glacier water and unicorn extract. Parents weren’t comparing notes on forums or crowdsourcing advice. They didn’t have gadgets to buffer them from the gross stuff.
They had courage. They had grit. And sometimes, they had a bathroom sink that doubled as a soaking station.
And the wildest part? They didn’t even make a big deal about it. No sighs. No theatrics. They just handled the moment and moved on — usually with a baby on one hip and dinner cooking on the stove.
The older I get, the more I realize how wildly resilient parents used to be. They didn’t raise kids with convenience — they raised kids with pure determination. They kept us clean, fed, safe, and loved using far less than we have now, all while juggling jobs, family issues, and responsibilities most of us can barely imagine.
I still think about my mom standing in that tiny bathroom, sleeves rolled up, tackling cloth diapers with the kind of stamina you’d expect from a championship athlete. She didn’t do it for applause or validation. She did it because it needed to be done.
