Diaper Liners and Hydroponic Details

After the firestorm that yesterday’s post created in the comments section, today’s is going to seem pretty mundane.  I’m happy to report that I cleaned the living room Frugal Zeitgeist style.  I moved the couches, cleaned up all the dust bunnies and dog hair, dusted everything, put away all the clutter, and it looks like a magazine picture.  Now to keep it that way…  So that’s one room done.  We have nine rooms in our house, so eight days from now my house should be sparkling.  Of course eight days from now the living room will need to be redone.   But that’s the nature of cleaning I suppose.  Anyway, it feels good.

I made a couple of fleece liners for my son’s diapers.  I bought a large fleece sweatshirt in a thrift store for $2.50 a while ago, and I’ve used it as the inside section of three diapers.  I love how it stays nearly dry to the touch even when the soaker layer and outside of the diaper are wet.  Fleece is definitely good diaper material.  The third diaper liner was pieced together because I didn’t have a big enough section of the shirt left to make it all in one piece.  And after that I was left with just the sleeves and some small scraps.  So I cut 12 inch lengths off of the sleeves, sewed them shut (so I have two layers of fleece sewn together), and now I can lay them inside one of his non-fleece diapers.  Perfect for overnight.  I think I’ve gotten my $2.50 worth out of that sweatshirt!

One of my readers commented on another post asking for more details about our hydroponic garden and where we got the materials to set it up.  My husband did a lot of research online before we started.  He ordered some stuff online, but most of our original setup came from a local hydroponic store.  We bought hydroponic-specific reservoirs and plant trays that don’t degrade in the intense UV light of a hydroponic garden.  We bought a few different grow lights (different spectrums are needed for leafy plants versus flowering plants – we have one light on our greens and another light on our peppers and tomatoes).  And we had to buy a range of stuff for testing and fixing pH and adding nutrients to the water.  We cut costs wherever we could: we made our own reflective surround for the garden by attaching mylar sheets to old shower curtains and hanging them from the joists around the garden (you want as much light as possible to stay in the garden).  My husband cut little circles of mylar to go around each plant and keep the light out of the pots and away from the roots (you can buy pre-cut mylar circles, but it’s more expensive that way).  We needed water pumps and bubblers, which he found at a thrift store in the aquarium section (again, you can get them at hydroponic stores, but the thrift store was much less expensive and fish tank equipment works just as well).  If you’re interested in hydroponics, I’d suggest using google as a resource and learning the ropes before you buy any equipment or set anything up – that way you’ll know what you’re getting into beforehand.  Our experience was that forum-type sites were the best places to find detailed information.  Good luck!