And The Winner Is...

The winner of The Great Cloth Diaper Stink Experiment Laundry Soap Giveaway (brought to you by CrunchyMoms and All Things Diapers) is...........

TRESHENNA!  (Ms Polka Dottie) :)

Congradulations!

Treshenna will be receiving a package of Charlie's Soap Laundry Powder, courtesy of All Things Diapers.

The Great Cloth Diaper Stink Experiment :: Experiment Wrap-Up

After a long hiatus due to the Holiday Season, a broken computer keyboard, followed by a broken computer, followed by a major flood of our bathroom, kitchen, and basement (installation of our new BumGenius diaper sprayer didn't go so smoothly), Crunchy Moms is finally back in the blogosphere!  To celebrate our return, we're wrapping up the Great Cloth Diaper Stink Experiment!

It was a hard decision, and one I poured (gallons and gallons of water) over (stinky diapers) for over a month!  I couldn't decided how to finalize the experiment so I just decided to give you my results and opinions straight and bluntly. 

• After using the Thirsties for only a week, I realized that my diapers were still stinky.  When they were wet out of the wash, they smelled horrible.  Out of the dryer they weren't so bad but once they got wet, stink city!

• The Rockin' Green cleaned my diapers fairly well, but I realized I needed to do a couple extra rinse cycles to get the extra suds and the oily residue from the fragrance oils out of my diapers.

• Charlie's smells like windex, but it cleaned my diapers fantastically.  I looked up the material safety data sheet for the laundry powder, as I had heard concerns about toxic substances in the all purpose cleaner.  The MSDS didn't list any toxic chemicals in the laundry powder, so I feel comfortable recommending it.   And of course, the real point of this experiment, with Charlie's: The stink was gone! 

So Charlie's Soap Laundry Powder is the W I N N E R !!!

I will note, however, in our household, we have decided to use a mixture of Charlie's and Rockin' Green on our diapers.  I love the scents of the Rockin' Green detergent and I love the cleaning power of Charlie's.  I've always been a bit of a tester and a mixer of cleaning agents, and I've found that this combo cleans our diapers wonderfully and makes doing diaper laundry fun!

Tonight I will chose the winner of the contest at random.  The winner will receive a package of Charlie's Soap Laundry Powder, courtesy of All Things Diapers!

If you haven't already entered the contest, you still have time!  The contest will close at Midnight (CST) tonight, Friday, January 6th, 2012!  Go to our first post in this series to find out how to enter!

Which diaper would you pick?

 

I found this on Facebook, and it is the property of Blissful Booty Cloth Diapers. 

This definitely makes you think twice about using disposables.

Healthy & Homemade Pet Food

Dylan (left) and Squishy (right)

wait impatiently for their lunch.

Today we ran out of pet food.  We're short on money until Monday, so I went to my wise uncle who always has all the answers to every question I could possibly need to ask.  Uncle Google told me that I could make my own pet food out of meat, eggs, grains, and vegetables. 

So I grabbed the steak Nate bought months ago out of the freezer, cooked it up to a nice medium rare and added brown rice, hard boiled eggs, and carrots.

Voila!

Tasty, healthy, high protein pet food! The best part is that you actually know what's in it, unlike with some of the discount pet foods at the grocery store. Considering my cats jumped up on the counter and started eating the food as I was stirring it all together, I would say it was a hit! My dog finished his bowl in record time and we had to put him outside so he wouldn't eat the cats food too.

Here is the recipe I used:

• 2 pounds beef steak cut into small pieces and cooked medium rare.
• 8 eggs, hardboiled.
• 1 can sliced carrots.
• A medium sauce pan full of brown rice (cooked).

I put everything (except the rice) through a blender until it was the consistency of a grainy mix.   I blended half of the rice into a rough puree and then mixed the non blended rice with the blended rice. I then mixed half the rice with the rest of the ingredients. You need to make sure you mix it well as some animals will pick the pieces they want and leave the rest. 

I gave some of that mixture as is to the cats and added some of the extra rice to the dogs bowl as dogs need more grains than cats. I refrigerated the unused portion. Make sure you cover it well as partly rare steak and eggs do not smell good together.

NoCans.com has some great cat and dog food recipes, as well as recipes for treats.  I checked out their recipes to get the basic idea (as well as their list of foods that pets can't have) and then created my own recipe using what I had on hand.

I think we will be making more home cooked meals for our pets as its healthier for them and I will actually know what's going into my furbabies mouths!

Plankton sleeping off his

large bowl of yum-yums.

PS:  He's totally a Momma's Boy

Lush Aromarant Deodorant Review

My first video for the Crunchy Moms YouTube channel is a review of Aromarant Deodorant by Lush.