Hand washing with ease! Day 5 of Flats Challenge

First, check out the rules and regs for the Flats and Hand Washing challenge over at Dirty Diaper Laundry

I've done it!

Hooray!

I've hand washed our diapers, in less than an hour without scrubbing my finger skin off or using too much elbow grease! I've even done it without a bucket and plunger, or a bathtub!

Hooray!!!

How?

With a tupperware container!

So.... I rinsed all of my diapers out to get release some of the ammonia and I scrubbed off the excess poo. I filled my sink with hot/warm soapy water and let the diapers sit there soaking over night. In all reality, they sat there from 2am til 8pm. Then I wrung them and rinsed them and set them to the side.

I got out a very large tupperware bowl with a lid. We happen to call this the "bulgogi bowl" in my family because its what we use to make bulgogi in. My mom's mom is Korean, bulgogi is a Korean dish, thinly sliced deliciously marinated beef that we grill to perfection. Mmmmmmm. Man I'm hungry now. Moving along...
I got the bowl out, added some laundry soap and shot it with hot/warm water til about half full.

I washed the covers first because they take longer to dry. I put the two weren't using right then into the bowl and closed the lid. I probably could have washed 3. Once I sealed the lid, I shook the bowl with might and furry!! Haha, really, I shook the ever-loving-day-lights out of this bowl for 5 minutes.
After the 5 minutes of shaking the bowl from different directions, I removed the lid, wrung out the covers, and set them in the sink which I had filled 1/4 of the way with cool clean soap free water.

I placed 2 flats into the bowl. I shook the ever-loving-day-lights out of the bowl for 5 minutes. This was starting to be a work out! Not the I want to rip my arms off work out I was getting from the hand scrubbing I was doing previously. Nope, this was more entire upper body and cardio! Wooo! I could even isolate muscle groups by shaking the bowl differently =)
Once the 5 minutes was up, I wrung out the flats and placed them in the clean water. Got 2 more flats... you get the idea.

I should mention, after the 5 minutes of shaking, before I wrung out the flats I would inspect them for stains. I only found 1 diaper with poo spots and was able to easily remove them with a very small amount of hand scrubbing.

Once all the diapers were shaken clean, I rinsed them through twice to get rid of the soap, including a quick swish bath in standing water between rinses. Then I wrung them out and hung them on my drying rack. Done! I think I washed 10 flats and 2 covers and it took me just under an hour total. I could cut this time down if I could come up with a better way to rinse. Hmmm....

As I've mentioned before, we have 12 flats. So, saying that I washed 10 meant we only had 2 flats left. Uh-oh. No worries though, we ended up using receiving blankets which I found are possibly more absorbent, though a tad more bulky. My little sister actually came to town and was watching Turtle-Love while I washed diapers. She had to change him, with a receiving blanket, and rather than have me show her the "easy way" she wanted to try wrapping him in one on her own. Ha! she felt so bad about the way it turned out on him, she let him play naked on top of a fleece blanket with her. She figured, if she was going to get wet because she didn't wrap it right anyways, she might as well let him be naked since that is what he wanted. =) He didn't pee on her, but he did sit up by himself for 3 whole minutes!

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to share today. I will get pictures tonight tho, and hopefully a ridiculous video of me shaking the dang bowl =/ Its for a good cause right?

Big thanks to Diaper Junction for supplying my flats!
Also, thanks very much to Simple Little Baby for suppling us with 2 snappis!

Link up everyone! Check out how other bloggers embrace the challenge!