Blog Review - Inspired

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For the next few Mondays I am reviewing a few of my most favorite blogs.

These blogs inspire, encourage, entertain, and hold me in their thrall.

I recommend you brew some coffee or tea, or get a tall glass of water

because once to start reading, you won't want to stop.

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 Inspired is written by Melissa: "Wife. Mama. Naturally living life to the fullest through simplicity."*

She is a Stay at Home: knitter, seamstress, cloth diaper, baby wearer, chef, baby chaser, Mom. She writes about being a Mom, crafting, knitting, sewing, cooking, and about what inspires her. 

She says on her blog: "I'm inspired by the blogs I read, to do more blogging myself."* and "Living simply is important to me, and unnecessary clutter is my nemesis."* I think those two lines sum up her blog in a nutshell. I can see echoes of other blogs in her writing with WIP-Wednesday and {This Moment}-Fridays which are seen all across the web in blogs all across the wold. I also can see that she lives her life simply through the photos she takes and the moments she shares about her and her family. 

Melissa inspired me to make a few changes in my own life. 

Mostly: cloth diapers.

When I was ten my Mom had a baby and she used cloth diapers. I was appalled by the potential of not only sticking my little brother with a safety pin, but then dunking the dirty diaper in the toilet to remove the solids! Ugh! Disgusting! Then, a few months later my cousin (a much older cousin) had a baby and she did cloth diapers, but she had made her own To me (being at the wise old age of um, 10) they didn't look like they worked well.

Fast forward 19 years (give or take). I come across the blog of my "Wedding Buddy" (we got married on the same day of the same year and we have some of the same friends) and she is preparing for the birth of her first child. In her preparations she is knitting and sewing up a storm, to make covers for cloth diapering.

Cloth diapers? How backwards of her! What is she thinking?

Then I got to thinking about it. About the cost of putting disposables on any child I might have. The cost to the environment and to my wallet. When I really got to thinking about it, it made sense to me. We are now, proudly, a cloth diapering family mostly due to the encouragement of Melissa and her blog.

I continue to read her blog because she challenges my way of thinking and pushes me to do more for my environment. I know that she and her family are just "regular" people doing the best they can with what God has given them. I know that if they can do it, then so can we.

If you have been thinking about cloth diapering, stop by her blog and read everything she has written on Cloth Diapers (check it out under her label cloud) to see how far cloth diapering has come in 20 years (believe me, they are not your mothers cloth!).

If you too would like to be encouraged and challenged to live life more simply, then stop by her blog and read, read, read. I promise you will not be disappointed.

*quotes and photos used with permission