Periods & Puberty: All You Need To Know

Cloth Pads, All You Need To Know

    How could I?! I entirely forgot about cloth pads. Yes, you heard me. Cloth pads. Cloth pads are actually a pretty big business, some cloth pad brands are hand made while some brands use sewing or embroidery machines to make their pads. I really don't know too much about cloth pads, I only have two or three cloth pads that I was given by a friend. She bought them and never used them, so since she knew I was doing a chapter on them she gave them to me. They are a discontinued brand called Wild Candy, I am on my period right now so I am testing them out and I really like them. Wild Candy was a small, small business that my friend's cousin actually started, she handmade all of the pads, but then she stopped selling them because she had a family crisis and didn't have time to make all of the pads. After that she never got back to making them. Anyways, I am going to start with what cloth pads are usually made out of, then the average price, then the standard styles or absorbency, and then some brands I recommend. I also will be adding a bit about how to wash them, and how to store them.

        Now, for the inner core of cloth pads usually cloth pads have Terry Cloth, Hemp, Bamboo, toweling, or Cotton. For the outer layers of fabric there are many fabrics, some are water-proof and some are not. The most common fabrics are Fleece, Cotton, Cotton Jersey, Terry Cloth, Velour, Hemp, Bamboo, Wool, Polarfleece, Microfleece, Suedecloth, Chamois, Minkee and PUL. No matter whether it is patterned, or plain, thick, or thin, your pad is always absorbent. Some cloth pad fabrics are specifically made to wick the blood away from your body so you feel more fresh and clean. Most reusable pad brands are centered entirely around being organic and Eco-friendly, so they don't add any perfumes or chemicals to their products. Unlike disposable products, which have many chemicals added, and sometimes perfume.

        There isn't really an "average price" for cloth pads. Some people only charge two or three dollars for a cloth pantyliner while some charge ten for a standard cloth pad. Usually it depends on how much time, effort, and money was put into making them. You may look at the exact same style of pad from two different brands and there might be a six or seven dollar difference in price. But what you might not realize is that one pad might have been just manufactured off of an assembly line so it didn't take much time, while the other pad might have taken one or two hours to make because it was sewn by hand. Or that one might just be a plain Cotton pad while the other might be made out of Minkee. There might be many tiny differences that you don't realize that contributes to the overall price. Cloth pads can range anywhere from three to twelve dollars, depending on the make, fabric, and overall product quality.

      Cloth pads have three styles/ absorbency levels that you will find at any (good) cloth pad store you go to. The first one is called a pantyliner, or sometimes a light flow pad. These usually have one (maybe two) layers of whatever absorbent fabric is inside of them and I don't really suggest them for periods unless you have a super light flow. The next step up is basically a regular pad for regular flow. They have anywhere from two to three layers for the inner core depending on what fabric it is. Keep in mind these are the three most common cloth pad absorbency levels. Anyways, the biggest pad goes by two different names, some companies call it a postpartum pad and some companies call it an overnight pad. I myself usually use this kind of pad all the time because my flow is so heavy. All cloth pads come with wings that usually have some kind of Velcro, button, or snap at the edge of the wings to connect them once they are in place on your knickers. 

     Finally, the brands I recommend! I definitely, a hundred percent, recommend Precious Stars Pads. I started out by watching her videos on YouTube (you will notice I have a lot of her videos posted) and then I started buying her products. Not only is she well educated about RUMPS and doesn't spout off ignorant comments, her products are of amazing quality. She ships all over the world and you can visit her site http://www.preciousstars.net/ for more info on that. Precious Stars Pads is my top recommendation, you just don't get more top notch than her. Another brand I recommend is Earthshine Luxe, I really like some her products and her prices are reasonable. I don't suggest her though if you don't have a Facebook because currently she only sells on Facebook. She has so many cute designs, some of them even look 3-D! Some other brands I suggest are Party In My Pants, Novel Red, Essence of Eve, and Homestead Emporium. All of these brands have good products, and reasonable prices.

       For washing cloth pads I am going to start out by hand washing. I myself hand wash all of my cloth pads because even though our maid has offered to wash them for me I don't want to make her do that because it's just... gross. I don't want to scrub someone else's vagina blood, and I imagine neither does she. Anyways, to hand wash a pad (this method may not get out all stains, but if you clean the stain early enough or let it soak long enough it does) depending on how long the pad has been sitting around before you decided to get off your butt you might want to soak it. I never let my pads sit longer than twenty four hours so I just soak them in plain cold water for maybe ten minutes. If your pad has been sitting around for longer than that I suggest soaking them with some stain remover and cold water for ten to thirty minutes depending on how deep the stain is. 

     Once it is finished soaking I kind of rub it together a bit, rub it with my fingers (I wash my hands afterwards, calm down,) then I'll rub in either some plain hand soap or laundry soap (usually hand soap because I do this in my bathroom.)I keep rubbing until the stain is either entirely gone (and this is also with the occasional dip under running cold water if needed and clearly I rinse out the soap,) or about as good as it gets and the I will either hang it up, or place it on top of my mini fan to dry. This method also works for getting stains out of clothes.

       For washing the pads in a washing machine there are several different things you could do depending on how picky you are about stains. If you aren't picky at all then you can just toss the pad in the washer like a pair of pants and hope for the best. If you are you can use a stain removing stick to rub the stain, or you could soak it in stain removing spray and let it sit. Another way is getting a sponge and putting soap on it and just rubbing at the stain before putting it in the wash. I also suggest air drying your cloth pads or setting them over a little desk fan, I don't know the exact reason (I haven't ever dried my pads in the dryer because Bree from Precious Stars Pads says not to and she is my RUMPS guru) why you shouldn't dry your cloth pads in the dryer but I know there is a reason!

      Now, last but not least is storage. The most common way of storing your RUMPs (Re-Usable-Menstrual-Products, or in this case Re-Usable-Menstrual-Pads) is using a wet bag. A wet bag looks like an over sized plain cloth bag, except on the inside it has a water proof lining and it is made out of fabrics that let oxygen flow inside of the bag so there isn't a strong odor from mildew. Some wet bags have two pockets, one for used cloth pads, and one for not yet used cloth pads. They can come in many different fabrics and sizes. Some girls keep their products in there for their entire cycle and then empty and wash the products at the end of their cycle, while some (like me) prefer to empty the bag and wash the products as soon as they get home from whatever event they were at that day, or just at the end of the day if you did nothing. Another way is putting all your pads in a bucket (which you can either empty when it gets full, at the end of your cycle, at the end of the day, or whenever you feel like it,) you can either fill the bucket with cold water which is called wet storing, or just let them sit which is called dry storage. Those are the main types of storage for RUMPs, if you can think of any other ways then tell me. Please comment, or PM me if you have any questions!