Flour sack towels

What with the dryer being broken, I'm hanging everything out to dry. Unfortunately, most of our diapers and training pants are very thick, heavy, and take a long time to dry - even in the dryer. With the humidity levels being so high, even on hot days these babies don't dry fully before sunset. I do have a dozen Dappi prefolds, which are fairly decent birdseye cotton diapers (sadly now discontinued) that line dry well, but they weren't enough. I knew I had to change things up.

I know, they're huge. They fold up small, though.

So I went to Target and bought a dozen flour sack towels! For those of you not in the know, flour sacks are what poor people use to use for their diapers, and they still work well today. They're thin, soft, and very absorbent - and best of all, since they're only one layer thick, they can dry in as little as 20 minutes on the line. Target offers a very nice 4 pack of 30" by 30" square towels for $3.99.

To use them, you can fold them up into fancy shapes and Snappi or pin them, or you can just fold them into a thick rectangle and lay it into a self-closing cover, like I do. When it's time to wash them, they rinse very clean and don't hold onto residue, and they dry in a flash. They're so thin that at first they don't seem like they'll absorb enough, but there's just something about the layers and the space between each layer that allows it to hold much more liquid than it looks like it should.

I've been meaning to get a set of these as flat diapers for a long time, to use in emergency situations like prolonged power outages or zombie attacks. I guess broken dryer counts too.  :)

If you want to know more about flat diapers and using them in extreme situations, check out Dirty Diaper Laundry.  Kim Rosas organizes an annual Flats and Hand washing challenge to both raise awareness for people who have trouble affording diapers, and to demonstrate that people can cloth diaper with or without a washing machine. I hopefully won't have to test the hand washing end any time soon, but the hanging dry is going very well!