DeeJay Mizzell, a young mother of four, says she hasn’t used her dining room table for months.
Her children, ranging in age from 2 to 8 years old, have become accustomed to eating in the kitchen in their Signal Mountain home because the dining room is packed floor to ceiling with diapers, she said.
Mizzell, a former jewelry-store manager turned stay-at-home mom, has spent much of her spare time in the last year organizing a charity for families who can’t afford diapers.
Interestingly, most government poverty programs, such as WIC (a nutrition program for women with children) and food stamps, do not cover disposable diapers. Many poor and displaced people don’t have the means to clean and sanitize cloth diapers properly, Mizzell said.
Experts say nearly one in three families with small children in America may have trouble affording diapers. As a result, some families try to reuse disposable diapers, a practice that can cause painful diaper rash and infections in children.