One of my new favorite things!

***The subject of this post is a menstruation product. If that totally grosses you out, stop reading now.***

I hope you are not all freaked out now. Let me explain. I started thinking about menstrual products last summer, when I attended a great relief society meeting on food storage. One thing that was emphasized was that we should not just store food, but should think about the other things we might need in an emergency, i.e. diapers, toilet paper, hygiene products, and menstrual products. The mention of menstrual products concerned me because I knew that if there ever was an emergency, with my luck it would happen during my period. Garrett and I live in an itty bitty apartment, and we don't have a lot of room for our regular food, let alone food storage, but I have at least been working on us having a 72 hour kit and a little food storage. Problem is, boxes of pads or tampons take up a lot of space! And what if I couldn't store enough and ran out?! If there ever were an emergency, the last thing I would want to be worrying about was having enough tampons!

My first thought to solve this problem was to sew some reusable pads. But I was kind of turned off this idea when I started thinking about how much work it would take and envisioned trying to wash them out during an emergency. Gross! Thank goodness I came across the menstrual cup! Most people don't know about cups (I didn't), even though they've been around since the beginning of the 1900s. I think the reason that they are not well known is because disposable pads and tampons have been such big business, while a reusable option does not generate the same kind of huge repeat business. Here is a picture of the brand I chose, the MeLuna:

A menstrual cup is a cup, usually made out of silicone, that you fold and insert basically like a tampon. It holds more than a tampon. You can't feel it when it's in. Most people only have to empty it every 12 hours (awesome!). When you empty it, you rinse it out in the sink, wipe it out with a piece of toilet paper, or (think in a dire emergency situation when you don't want to waste your drinking water) can even pee on it (I know it sounds gross, but we're talking major emergency and pee is sterile) to clean it before you re-insert it. And best of all, you can use the same cup for 10 years! Here's a picture of what one looks like folded:
So instead of packing boxes of tampons, I only have to pack one little cup. That's it! And even though I bought the cup as a back-up, once I started using it, I loved it. I will never use tampons again! Most cups cost between $20 and $40. Although the initial cost seems a little steep, once I added up the amount I could spend on tampons over 10 years, it is definitely worth it. There are several brands. Before choosing one, I suggest checking out this comparison website and this forum. Here is a website that sells many brands (don't be scared b/c it's a UK company, they ship here and there's a button to change all the currency to dollars), and if you decide you like the MeLuna, you can get a slightly better price from the MeLuna website (it's a German website, so click on the little British flag to see the website in English). The MeLuna is one of the cheapest, has great colors, three sizes, and four different types of stem so you can really choose the exact one that you think would work best for you.
I hope I haven't grossed you all out, but this is an item that I really love. It works better than a tampon, is better for the environment, is better for my checkbook, and helps me be more prepared in an emergency. I hope you all check it out!