Going Green with Triplets

By Jennifer Jordan
BBA Contributor

With Triplets we've had to cut down on our spending. A LOT. It made no sense for me to return to work after having the babies; what I made would have ONLY paid for daycare for Triplets. Living off of one income is hard. Very hard. Money was always an issue, just not a big one. Two miscarriages, TONS of testing, five months of fertility treatments, triplets and one income later, it matters now more than anything.

The two miscarriages and fertility treatments really racked up our bills. While looking into how to cut our costs, I found out Going Green was the way to go. We chose to cloth diaper our triplets and, luckily, I already had most of our cloth diapers.

I was so overwhelmed when they came home (after 38 LONG days in the NICU) I just couldn't deal with cloth diapers. Then my husband ran to the store at about 8:45 at night (and everything in our small town closes at nine) and spent about $50 on diapers. They lasted less than a week. That was it. I wasn't going to throw away that kind of money. We cloth diapered from then on and are still going strong. With the help of my mother, we spent about $600-800 on diapers and they will last until potty training.

I also found out that cleaning Green cut our costs a lot. Vinegar cleans anything and has many uses. It is cheap at about $.99 a gallon. Add in some baking soda, borax and soap and there you have it! These ingredients can also be used to make your own laundry detergent. I found Clean House, Clean Planet and it goes into detail about why we should cut out commerical cleaners, not only for health reasons, but for money savings. No more harsh chemical smells in my CLEAN house.

To cut costs even more, we hang dry everything and made the switch to energy efficent lightbulbs. By simply not using our dryer, the power bill dropped almost $50 a month. Going Green does not have to mean spending a lot, but it sure means saving a lot!

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