Friday, May 9, 2008

A good idea down the toilet

Recently the little woman and I had to travel to Las Vegas for a few days. If it was a shorter trip or we had easy access to a washing machine we'd bring the cloth diapers along, but instead we thought we'd give gDiapers a try since we're supposed to be diaper experts and have never used them.

Now the theory is good; Make a diaper that is more convenient than cloth but not as environmentally unfriendly as disposables. There's a cover holding in an absorbent pad that dissolves in water. You rip the pad in half, dump it in the toilet, swish it around a bit to break it up, then flush.

Unfortunately it's somewhat lacking in execution, especially when bowel movements are involved. The flushable pad can't keep in the mess, so the covers get pretty gross. The pads also don't dissolve very quickly so you're stuck stirring a toilet full of poop forever. In theory you can simply throw the pad in the trash but there's no good way to bundle up the pad so, again, you're in trouble if the pad is particularly messy. I was only mildly annoyed with the system while we were in our hotel room, but dealing with a diaper change in the airport restroom was a nightmare.

Halfway through our stay I ran out and bought some disposables. Not my proudest moment, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

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