The adventures of a cloth bot at childcare.

At the beginning of this term, I started sending my wee one year old to care two days a week so that I could start getting a bit more work done. I did the same at some point or other with my older two children, and had always sent them with cloth nappies, so it didn’t even cross my mind to go out and buy disposables for childcare’s sake. I set him up with a small stash of secondhand AIOs and SIOs as I figured these would be easiest (foolproof, so I thought). So off my little Leo went on his first day with a bag of cloth wipes & cloth nappies & a little nappy bin.

Third child syndrome manifests in the fact that there are no cute pictures stuck all over his childcare nappy bin. On the flip side he has the best baby book. Swings and roundabouts 😉

The first day was ok, but the second time he came home, it was with his nappy on BACK TO FRONT. How, I have no idea. That surely can’t be easy to accomplish.

Another day, someone took one of his cloth wipes, and lovingly laid it inside his AIO nappy before putting it on him. Erm, nice thought…

A few more days passed and then he came home with the trifold insert having been opened up and fanned out the legs. Most bizarre idea ever.

They seem to have gotten themselves into the ‘child in cloth’ groove now, nothing remotely interesting has come home on his cute wee butt for a couple of weeks.

Do you send cloth to childcare? Had any problems or interesting experiences? What’s your “nappy bin” set up at childcare? (I send supermarket bags in to line it, leave the bin there and just bring the bag home. I realise this is not the most environmentally friendly solution. Do you do something better? Do tell!)

Sale now on

We have a quick little “pre hunt” sale running until lunchtime Tuesday – 20% off storewide!

For the month of March we’ll have 5% off storewide with the hunt code. Don’t have the hunt code? Sign up here.

It’s nappy hunt time again!

Well nearly. The wheels are turning here at GB HQ to get ready for another crazy month of hunting.

Do you love the nappy hunt? Have you been doing it for years, or are you excitedly waiting your first ever hunt? No idea what the heck I’m on about? The Great Down Under Nappy Hunt (GDUNH) runs twice a year in March and September, and is a massive treasure hunt over hundreds of webpages – many nappy related but by no means all – with thousands of dollars in prizes.

Most sites have a mini hunt on their website to guide you around the site to find the elusive little nappy icon that you need to click to register your find. It can be a lot of fun – I hope you join us in March! Click on the nappy pic above to be taken to the GDUNH site to find out more.

And again, with the “I’m back” posting.

Oh dear, my last post was a “I’ve been so slack but I’m back now” one and here I am again with the same. In that post Hamish had just returned from seven weeks in Asia and right now he is in the middle of six weeks in NZ. Some things change, some stay the same *dramatic abandoned sigh*.

But wow, some BIG things have changed since my last post. In business, and in our Beany lives. Let me catch you up.

We had a baby! The third (and last!) (… no, really this time.) little green bean came perilously close to being born in the office at the GB warehouse, but instead made it to… the car. Haha. He arrived to the hospital like this

and has been wearing a fabulously scrumptious cloth bott ever since. Like this gorgeous minky number from Bec at Bean Sprout Bubba which is very well suited to our little Leo’s name 🙂

The day I went into labour was the day that our new dispatcher was to start work to take over from me. Ryan started a few days later instead and has been sending your orders to you ever since.

Yes that’s right, I’ve been sitting on my sweet patootie doing not much of anything (BUSINESS-RELATED!) ever since. Hamish has been doing a fabulous job of single handedly running everything and keeping all the stressy pieces entirely to himself and only telling me the sweetness and light bits. It has been FABULOUS. (A luxury I never had with either of my other two babies, straight back on the work horse with those two. So I have enjoyed lapping up this wee one so so much.) But all good things must come to an end and so I have recently started some short treks into the office. Mostly with my sidekick – because we mothers are nothing if not multitaskers, right?

We are currently rolling out an updated website – upgrading it from an old version of php to a new one, and moving it to a newer server (did that sound convincing? I am a bit in one ear and out the other still. I’ll get back into it. I’m sure.). We got HACKED over the weekend so the move to the new site has been given a bit of a kick in the pants and is happening a wee bit ahead of schedule, rather than fixing up all the ugliness the hackers wreaked, we might as well just move on. But please bear with us – and let us know – if you find any new glitches on the shiny new site.

We will be sponsoring in the Cloth Nappy Hunt again this March – in fact that is why I am blogging right now because I popped my wee sidekick into some care today and fired up my lappy ready to spend a big chunk of undiluted concentration on sorting out all our CNH chores and… their site is down. Haha. So you get to hear from me instead. Win! Now that we have a fulltime dispatcher I hope to be able to spend more time concentrating on this sort of thing. So I’ll see you again soon!

SB

Container Day. Groundhog style.

Oh gosh, how much do I suck at keeping this blog up to date! Feel free to not answer that, but here I am now, tadaa!

Hamish got home a week or two ago after spending SEVEN LONG WEEKS in Asia overseeing production runs.

We are now flat tack in Brisbane unloading said products out of their 40 foot container which arrived late yesterday afternoon. I think by this time tomorrow night it will all be in the warehouse. That which hasn’t already been shipped out that is, Hamish has been doing the heavy lifting and I’ve been doing the filling of preorders and sending it back out the door again.

And then there’s been all the lovelies schlepping over here to pick up their bulk orders. We love putting faces to the names we see on our invoices all the time 🙂 It’s a pity we’re doing it at a time when we are looking our sweaty bedraggled grime covered worst and in such a rush we can hardly string a sentence together, but lovely none the less 😉

Hamish flies out to NZ to repeat the process (except in a 20foot rather than 40 foot, phew!) at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning. So we have ONE more day to get this sorted before I’m in it up to my eyeballs on my own again. Ack. Noooo. Not that I envy his end of the bargain either, poor Hamish!

One Hamish + one Sarah + one 7 year old child labourer ÷ 2 days before Hamish flies to NZ = 13 tonnes of new stock just backing in.
READY, SET, GO.

Our oh so very kiwi truck driver stopped for a quick yarn, and then – Into It!

Helpful. Yes.

Very obscenely late on the first night.

Late dinner break tonight (night two).
(who remembers the GreenBean baby?
That’s him up there scoffing pizza! No way! Yes way!)

Just now, calling it quits for night two. Can’t see the back wall yet, but I know it’s there somewhere!

Patterned FOE now open for Preorders

Our first four FOE designs are now open for preorders! This FOE is the super soft thick and lovely stuff, similar to our 2.5cm wide Matt FOE.

We have hearts, zebra print, hedgehogs and snowflakes, all due in May but open for preordering – with a 10-30% discount – right now.

Head on over to the FOE section to check them all out.

PUL of an evening

Our PUL has been laminated!!!! And is now setting, ready to be packed.

That takes some waiting, so Hamish just went on the Suzhou Ferris Wheel – 120m tall, takes 20 minutes to complete one rotation!

(I just fed kids, supervised homework & am attempting to wrangle them into bed. Hmmm… jealous much 😉 )

The speel –
Hamish is in Asia at our chosen factory to be physically present to quality control the production of our PUL in person while it is in production, and give the final sign off prior to shipping. Our sample production run is 1,000 metres of White PUL, which will be shipped direct into Australia. Most of it has been presold to our bulk WAHMs, the rest will be on the shelves in April!

It:

1- Feels very similar – if not difficult to tell the difference – to the feel of the old Fabrite PUL.

2- Is more durable than the old Fabrite PUL. From our testing and development so far it has lasted through over 300 hot washes and 70 hot dryer cycles. This far exceeds any other product we have tested, including the original Fabrite and the “new Fabrite company” PULs, both of which have failed during our testing, while our new PUL samples are still going strong.

3- Is 210cm wide rather than the PUL norm of 150cm wide. 40% wider can mean increases in yield of up to 60% per linear meter due to an overall wider product. Factor the extra width into the equation as to price, not only in square meters delivered, but also how much yield that will deliver to you.

Limited dispatch hours for the next two weeks.

DISPATCH HOURS for the NEXT TWO WEEKS: 8 – 11am (Bne time)
Our staffer in Brisbane is leaving, but she’s kindly agreed to cover us by continuing dispatching in the mornings for the next two weeks until Sarah, Hamish and boys can move back over.

From 28th Feb we will be back permanently and everything will be as normal.

However dispatch hours will be restricted (8-11am only, Mon-Fri) for the next two weeks until we get there.

Halfway: Better than a kick in the pants.

Wash 110!

110 hot washes down, 90 hot washes to go. Plus hot dries of course… It’s rather laborious but we’re pleased with some of what we’re seeing so far, and at the end of this part of the process, we’ll be one big step closer to our new PUL supplier. Yay that!

And in the meantime, if nothing else, at least we’re keeping the detergent industry in business 😉

Odds & Ends gone live

258 new odds and ends listings have gone live today.
Hamish will be listing the rest of the odds & ends we have here from 4am tomorrow (Weds) morning, and then that cleans us right out of odds and ends, with no more to be listed until new shipments of fabric arrive next year 🙂

When the piles start closing in on us…

they’re folded, labelled and listed, with crates of odds and ends tucked in every nook and cranny, under shelves

In walkways

And all over the show

They’re priced to clear because we can’t wait to get them out of here!