So you’re a peer advisor for the largest cloth diaper group on Facebook? What does your normal day look like? Well, for me it starts at about 5am. I get up and get ready to go my normal everyday job. I’m a Materials and Corrosion Engineer for an oil refinery. I answer phone calls and emails, attend meetings, perform failure investigations and take walks out in the plants. My normal work day is about 10 hours and far too often longer than that. I usually get home after 6pm and have just a couple of hours to eat dinner and spend time with my little girl before we start our bedtime routine. We play, take a bath, read, have a bottle and it’s off to bed for her. I try to hang out with my husband, pick up, clean the kitchen and do at least a load of laundry before I call it a night around 11pm. If we’re lucky, the little one will sleep all night. If we’re unlucky, you’re likely to find us awake about 3am for a diaper change and bottle. Then back to bed to await the alarm clock.
When do you have time to be on Facebook with all that going on? I make time. During work when I need a break, I cruise the wall posts to answer simple questions or check my notifications so I don’t lose track of members I’ve already been helping. At night while I’m playing with the baby, I check in again to answer questions, PMs and make sure my ‘snowflake’ machine owning members don’t need special attention. It gets really serious when I settle in next to my husband on the couch after the baby is down for the night. With my phone near me for easy graphic posting and my computer in my lap for easy searching, I spend the rest of my evening diving into problems, troubleshooting routines, clarifying recommendations and educating members. While doing all of that, I’m working on a database of washing machines detailing the best wash routines and making note of quirks for our peer advisor group so we can provide better advice and in turn, more members can be successful. I watch videos of washing machines agitating and read owner’s manuals to better understand what will work and what won’t. I’m an engineer who loves a puzzle. Part of my every day work involves determining how components in our refinery have failed. Troubleshooting wash routines is very similar to this; it’s about gathering evidence and finding what needs to change to avoid future issues. Because of this, I’m becoming known as the queen of the weird machines. Who knew my college degree would be so useful!
Why in the world would you want to spend so much of your free time doing this? A good number of reasons. As I said before, I love a good puzzle. But the more I’ve thought about this, the more I realize it’s because I love babies and I love helping other families. This has been a great way for me to volunteer and give back. We’ve all chosen cloth diapers over disposables for some reason, whether it is environmental, monetary, health, the overall cuteness factor or a combination of any or all of those things. The key to being able to continue making that choice is the ability to get things clean in the easiest way possible. You’ve seen what my typical day is like, I don’t have time to strip and bleach monthly and nor should anyone need to. That alone is a trigger something isn’t actually working. I was lucky to have found this group before my little one arrived. We’re going on 10 months with no issues. I don’t want other members’ success to be about luck. I want it to be the norm.
Our members put their babies’ welfare in my hands. They’re asking me to help them protect their children from rashes and burns. The admin team selected me as a peer advisor because they felt I was up to that challenge. I take this responsibility incredibly seriously, how can I not? This is why I read washing machine manuals. This is why I have notes on my phone and computer about different machines and why I’m learning what ingredients are in laundry detergent. This is why I take time, out of what precious little I have at the end of the day, to help members. Because every cloth diapered baby deserves a stash that is safe to wear.
Sara Parten is this week’s Guest Blog Post Contest Winner. Want a chance to be highlighted on FLU and win a free Glow Bug cloth diaper? Send your blog post submission to fluffloveuniversity@gmail.com. Try to aim for a post between 750-1000 words. Photos are welcome as long as they are not of other people’s children and uphold copyrights and FB community standards. Open topic! Feel free to be creative, we can’t wait to see what you have in store! Weekly entries are reviewed every Sunday and the winning post goes up Monday nights!