If someone asked me five years ago if I knew of any menstrual product alternatives I might have recited the different brands available at the grocery store….Kotex, Tampax, etc. I may have known in the back of my mind that cloth pads existed but it was not an alternative I was willing to consider. I can say with some certainty that I would have probably laughed at the proposition of using and cleaning reusable menstrual pads.
It wasn’t until I began to use and subsequently fell in love with cloth diapers for my babies that I began to think about menstrual alternatives. After all, I was using cloth diapers in part for environmental reasons and – just like disposable diapers, disposable pads are adding to the enormous volume of garbage that goes into our landfills. In most cases they don’t break down, nor are they recycled. I wanted to lighten my environmental impact so I decided to bite the bullet and give cloth pads a try.
After the first hour wearing a cloth pad from Gladrags I knew that I would never again buy paper and plastic disposable pads. Why? They were comfortable and cool to wear, they didn’t irritate my skin, and I found them to be no less convenient then their disposable counterparts. I was so infatuated with this new found product that I immediately went online to purchase more. While I was surfing the Internet I found other menstrual products that I had never heard of before, like menstrual sponges and menstrual cups.
By now I was happy to explore new options so I ordered a Diva cup. Words cannot describe how much I loved this product. It was so comfortable to use I would actually forget what time of month it was. There was absolutely NO leakage whatsoever and I didn’t even need a panty liner (cloth or otherwise) to use along with it. The Diva cup gave me a sense of freedom that I had never felt before. I simply used the cup for a few days, rinsing between uses and then washed and stored for the next month. There is nothing to throw away and the cost savings was immediate. The menstrual cup has proved to be the best solution for my pocket book and my planet.
Now I have forgotten all about the “conventional” menstrual products and I find it unimaginable that would ever have a need for them again….and that is just fine with me.
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