I tried sea sponges this month, but I didn’t really take to them. I think I wet them too much, which made them all drippy and uncomfortable. Also, they tended to disintegrate a bit too rapidly and they stain! I’ve currently got 4 redish-brown bruised-looking sponges drying on my shower tidy. They look a bit uninviting sitting there, like bacterial traps. I know they’re clean, but they don’t look clean. They also make menstruation much more visible than it normally has been for me. Usually, menstruation is something that I think about, rather than actually do, because while I’m doing the actions associated with it (changing tampons, etc) I’m thinking about something else.
I did notice, though, that after using sponges for a week, tampons suddenly seemed very unnatural. Dry and much too absorbent, they left me feeling very uncomfortable and wasteful. I also got very worried about cotton fibres.
My Keeper should change all that though. Its a groovy brown cup that catches menstrual blood and is totally resuseable (woo!). Its smaller and more flexible than I could have imagined. I thought it would come in a giant box-type parcel, but it arrived in a plain yellow envelope with a nice letter from The Natural Company to welcome me into the new world of the Keeper, and to tell me that my life was about to change for the better. I can’t wait to try it out!
Wikipedia has a good article on menstrual cups.
