A few years ago I wrote Talking about Periods with Daughters and Sons. A good part of that was dedicated to my daughter's and my choice to find sustainable menstruation solutions. But I never imagined we'd one day arrive at...
OK so here's what happened: Quite a few years ago I visited a home where my sister was house-sitting, and discovered a box of little tiny washcloths beside the toilet, and a bucket underneath. Huh? There was also toilet paper, so I used it, and asked my sister about this oddity. "They're for wiping your pee", she said. Like it was nothing. Heh?? Gross?? "No. No poo. Just pee. I think. You can just use the toilet paper."
I took that experience with me and thought about it for a few years.
Well, in these few years, our world has started burning, people. Our forests and oceans are our greatest hope for saving ourselves from climate change, and the forests are burning away before our eyes, taking a little town, a few hundred cattle, or a bit of a city here and there along with them. And like we're just hacking blindly at our own feet, we're cutting them down to make paper to wipe our butts. Insult to injury?!?! Being one of the blind and selfish masses, myself, I mulled on this thought for a few years, until the wastefulness hit my finances. It was time to have the septic tank pumped.
I mean, it's not that expensive, but anyone who lives rurally, as we do, likely has some kind of septic tank that needs pumping, periodically. The liquid runs off the tank into the septic field, feeding the environment like any good pee and poop should do. The solids stay behind in the tank and get pumped out every year or two or three and hauled off to a sewage treatment plant where they are no better than your average city waste. Except they required a gas-powered poop truck to take them there.
Think about it, though: "solids". That means poop and toilet paper (nobody with a septic tank would dare flush anything else). And although it's a noticeable bit of money to be spending to have ours taken away, I'm more troubled by the environmental ramifications.
So, we decided to try pee wipes. To be more precise, I decided to try pee wipes, and a couple of my family members thought it was a good idea. My son, however, doesn't want them washed with his laundry. That's OK. We all have our boundaries, and a few years ago I might have said the same.
So, like we did with the period panties, we've tried out a few different types of wipes, now, and figured out a few tips and pitfalls, and now we can share them!
What type?
We all have different preferences. Some of us like those big colourful two-layer cushy 8x8-inch organic cotton cloths that make sure no pee will touch my hand (oops--OK fine I confess it's me). Some are happy with the smaller wipes, and use those little baby washcloths. We have some mixed fibre/polyester ones, and some organic bamboo that frankly are no more absorbent than the cheap ones. Some of us just think it's really disturbing to wipe with teddy-bear prints.
Washing
You need to wash the wipes every few days, and we're using washing soda with a bit of dry laundry soap. It's not a big deal. I just throw them in for a pre-wash small load, and then after the first cycle I add some more laundry. They're so small they dry easily on the line, too--especially those cheapo little teddy bear wipes...
I am really not a big fan of grossness. It was essential to me that our pee-wipe-bucket not only looks good in the bathroom, but hides the used wipes in it, keeps them from smelling, and is easily washable. So I opted for this lidded glass jar, and painted it with glass paint to hide what's inside it. I glued a felt pad on the bottom, and it lives on the floor beside the toilet. Putting a used wipe in is very easy: fold the wipe so the pee is inside it, open the lid with the other hand, and put the wipe in. Close the lid. When I take the wipes out to wash, I get a clean wipe, dampen it in the sink, and give the jar a quick wipe before throwing that wipe in the washing machine with the others. The jar never holds any smell, but every week or two I give it a proper wash, anyway.
Poop!
And periods. We just use toilet paper instead. Nobody wants stained and awful-looking pee wipes.
The Pitfalls
Well... there's the literal pitfall, where at some point most or all of us forgot we were using washable wipes and dropped or nearly dropped the wipe into the toilet. But we learned quickly. There was the trial-and-error phase, where we weren't sure which fabrics would work best. And honestly that's all I can think of. Even the one of us who doesn't use the wipes seems to have grown accustomed to having them around, and we're happy with the change we've made!
Try the pee wipes, people, if your life and circumstances allow. It's one more small change we can make to save our future.
