I still can’t believe this was normal.
When I was a baby, disposable diapers barely existed. We had cloth ones—big, heavy, pinned with actual safety pins. And when they were dirty? My mom didn’t just toss them in a bin.
She carried them to the toilet, dunked them straight in, swished them around (yes, in the bowl), squeezed out the mess with her bare hands, then dropped the rinsed diaper into a pail with some borax until wash day.
She did this multiple times a day. Every day. For years. For three kids.
I told this story to friends recently and they looked at me like I grew up in the Stone Age. “She put it IN the toilet?!” Yes. That was standard procedure in the 70s and 80s.
No diaper genies. No scented bags. No wet wipes. Just a mom, a toilet, and a whole lot of determination.
We laugh now, but honestly? That level of toughness deserves a medal. Today we panic if the Diaper Genie is full. Our parents were out here literally wringing poop out of cotton like it was nothing.
So tell me—who else had a mom or grandma doing the toilet dunk? Drop your most “wait, that was normal?!” parenting memory below. Let’s give those badass old-school parents the respect they earned.
