Works For Me Wednesday - Menstrual Cups

Please note - if you are a man you probably don't want to read this (and would have no need to anyway).

I found out about menstrual cups quite by accident on a review site. I can't remember what I had been looking for when I happened upon them but they sounded like a good idea for a number of reasons (which I will list later). I later came across them on a green moneysaving forum and decided to buy one. I bought the mooncup because this is the only one easily available in the UK (and is manufactured in the UK) however I believe in the US you can also get hold of the Diva Cup or the Keeper.

The most obvious benefit is that it saves a lot of money. My mooncup cost £20 and they last for 10 years which makes £2 per year whereas I would expect to spend at least £20 every year on disposable tampons and pads.

Another benefit is the reduction in waste/environmental impact. Over ten years the waste from all those tampons and pads would be massive compared with the mooncup. Lots of energy and materials will have been used to produce them and to transport them to the shops and you will have expended time and effort purchasing them. Once they are used, they then have to be disposed of and sit around filling up landfill sites. In comparison, the mooncup uses very little raw material and transportation and because you just empty it down the toilet and reuse it, it does not produce massive amounts of waste to sit around in landfill for years.

Those two benefits are the main reasons I chose to buy a mooncup however there are other benefits too:

• you don't have the hassle of buying more supplies all the time;
• you don't have a huge stash of sanitary protection taking up space;
• if you are out and it needs emptying, you don't have to try to discreetly take a replacement with you into the toilet;
• they need emptying less frequently than pads/tampons need changing;
• they do not dry you out or interfere with your natural secretions;
• no risk of TSS;
• duration of period tends to be shorter;
• can be put in in anticipation of a period.

They do take a little bit of getting used to at first both practically and psychologically but I think it is well worth it. They are not for everyone but it works for me.

Wonderwash

NB for those who don't know, here are the posts about the wonderwash/how we came to be using one:
Living without a washing machine
Making progress
Wet washing

So far we've had the wonderwash for a couple of weeks now I think but I have still not made my mind up about it. I will try to do a comparison between the wonderwash and handwashing in the bath:

• It does get the clothes cleaner than I expected but I think that the work involved is probably similar in quantity to washing in the bath but more difficult because it is concentrated in turning the crank with your arm and it is harder than you expect.
• Possibly less water is used but this is difficult to judge as the loads are smaller and I usually find I have to do 2-3 rinses rather than 1-2.
• The loads you can do at once are much smaller which means you have to do more frequent washes and be more organised about it.
• Each load is fairly quick to do however because the loads are smaller I think it probably works out similar total amount of time spent.
• The wonderwash is enclosed so you do not have a steaming bath creating condensation everywhere. (Although I did decide I was washing with rather hot water so I'm trying to do it with *warm* rather than *hot* water.)

Actually, now that I've written that list, I would probably say that for the most part it is easier just to wash your clothes in the bath. I do think it is useful for times when you want to wash a small amount of particularly dirty stuff (like when we went to a friends house and Baby Girl crawled around the garden getting mud all over her clothes and managed to get strawberry all down her front because I forgot to take a bib) but for large quantities of washing which is of average dirtiness I think washing in the bath is easier.

Now that I'm using warm rather than hot water I've started using Brandy's method of washing which is to get in and stomp on the clothes. It's much easier and more effective and it makes me think of wine pressing. I don't let her climb in to help but Baby Girl loves to "help" with the washing mainly by throwing all of her bath toys in with the clothes: