Thank you for choosing Abby’s Lane!
A “THANK YOU”:
Jumping the gun on a little Thanksgiving gratitude for our customers 😉 At Abby’s Lane we are incredibly indebted to our customers. You have kept us going for over 7 years now, from a bookshelf of inventory in our first townhouse, to a garage and basement inventory in our next condo, to 5 rooms in a basement in our house with two employees, now to a 3200 square foot retail space and 10 employees! There are many cloth diaper stores on the net now, and every purchase is treated with integrity and honesty, no matter how big or small. We appreciate your business and thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting us.
Here is a little “Top 10” list of things you get when you choose to spend your money at Abby’s Lane:
1)Supporting 10 mamas who can work and bring their babies and toddlers with them to work, in addition to at home hours
2)Supporting Tree friendly business practices! We don’t send paper receipts, opting instead for an e-receipt, plus we store every single “archived” invoice for you if you ever need it for warranty purposes. Ourold website will always be hosted to make sure we save your records if needed. Over the course of our business this has saved approximately 90,000 pieces of paper from being used.
3)Benefiting from our first class mailers, which are completely biodegradable and reusable (and made in the US!)! Save your poly mailers for another use (they have an extra adhesive strip on them), if you do toss them, they are gone within a year in your landfill 🙂
4) Free shipping always to the US
5) 6.5% back in store credit on every order through our Abby’s Lane Dollars program
6) 5% off all orders with few exclusions if you are on this list 😉
7) Your order ships the same or next business day
8) Classes throughout the US through our Team Cloth program that educate and promote green living and money saving parenting products that we feature
9) Some of our products are made in the USA, if they are made in other countries, we do our best to ensure they are made with Fair Labor regulations. I know we cannot always avoid buying products from overseas, but I do my best with the information I have to ensure what I sell was not made by someone the same age as my third grader, in safe working conditions and with a fair wage.
10) You can know that if you email us with any issues, be it washing hurdles, product questions or help with your purchases, I do my best to get back within hours to you. Nothing is worse than feeling like you got a “lemon”, or having stinky diapers or a mystery rash and waiting days to hear back. My email is always “on”, and I will always make sure we follow up to make your shopping experience a complete one.
Again, thank you and I appreciate all of you greatly, I love what I do and I love working with all of you 🙂
Diaper Wear and Tear
Here is what we see being big culprits of wear and tear on diapers:
1. Bleach= now, once in a blue moon bleach won’t hurt anything. If you have cotton outers, they will fade, but PUL is dye fast and can hold up to a bleaching or two over time. Microfiber you could likely soak in bleach for 6 years and it would still be fine. In some health issues, bleach is needed. Yeast, staph, MRSA, and other bacterial or fungal issues will need bleach to keep your baby from being reinfected. If you are bleaching in every wash cycle, or presoaking them, or for some customers even on a weekly basis, you will wear those diapers out faster. They are cloth, and just like if you were doing this to your favorite tee shirts, you will see wear on them.
2. Stretching out elastic while it is hot=When you take your pockets or pocket AIOs out of the dryer, let them cool before stuffing them. I know you are right there and if you put them down it will be two snacks, one potty break and one naptime later before you get back to them, but this really goes a long way. Hot elastic does not like to be stretched, it will wear out faster so let them cool first.
3. Infrequent washing= Many of you are going to say “well, duh, washing wears them out, too!”. Yes, there is a line you have to walk between yuor schedules, your quantity of diapers, and how your wash cycle works in your house. That being said, letting diapers sit 3-5 days can cause a myraid of problems. One, they are soaking in ammonia for some time, which will wear down your fabrics. Second, it will be harder to get them clean after letting them stew in a warm, dark pail for that long of a time, and you usually have to resort to laundry aids, or bleach, to get them clean. Washing every other day is best, save the money you would be spending on twice as many diapers to wash every 4 days, and start building your stash for the next size up. It will be easier on you, and easier on the diapers.
4. Vinegar, oxiclean, other laundry aids=These can be hit or miss, but Vinegar will wear on PUL, oxiclean can delaminate diapers, and essential oils can cause buildup. Your wash routine shouldn’t need any of these except in rare cases of very hard or very soft water, or a tricky front loader.
Now, anytime I list things like this I will get emails saying ” I do all of those and my diapers are in pristine condition!”, and of course there will always be exceptions to the majority. If the above steps are working for you, then don’t sweat it, do what works best for your routines 🙂
Mom Rocks Monday: Every Monday when you 
It's The Cloth That Counts. 