[related-post align=”right”]So there are some people who are a little embarrassed to hear about, um, well…ahem, “feminine issues.” This is not an article for them. This is an article for the other people who like to get all in other people’s personal business, but understand that because of the constraints of polite society, they can’t always ask all the questions they like.
There’s this thing called a menstrual cup! You may have heard of it. It’s a reusable alternative to pads and tampons in the form of a cup that fits comfortably up in your vagina and collects rather than absorbs menstrual blood. Different brands are available in both silicone and rubber, but it’s not my purpose to endorse any particular brand, just to tell you about the ways switching to a menstrual cup had a positive impact on my housekeeping.
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Bathroom storage
I have a tiny bathroom in an old building where storage is at a premium. A big box of tampons would take up approximately 60% of all hidden bathroom space I have. Having a single menstrual cup has allowed me to free up that area for toilet paper storage, hair products, the boyfriend’s shaving accoutrements, and bathroom cleaners.
Sleeping in
I love sleeping in. It’s one of my greatest joys and greatest talents. But if I wanted to sleep in on a heavy flow day, tough luck! I had to get up to change my tampon, or my bed sheets would pay the price. I have not conducted rigorous scientific double blind studies, but my menstrual cup has never failed me in this regard. If I want to be a lazybones who sleeps for 12 hours straight, I can without staining my sheets.
Money
A menstrual cup generally retails for $20-$30 making it a little pricier than a big box of tampons right off the bat. But your box of tampons will run out. I will never have to buy another menstrual cup unless a) lightning strikes my current one or b) I decide to have kids, in which case I’d have to move up to a different model. I’ve been using my cup for 6 years, and I’ve saved tons of cash.
Trash
Blood gets stinky really fast. Ask anyone who works in the restaurant industry, and they’ll tell you, their least favorite job is cleaning out the tampon boxes in the bathroom. Since a menstrual cup collects blood, rather than absorbing it, I can just pour it out and flush it. My trash still smells like regular trash, which isn’t great, but is a world better than decaying tampon smell.
It’s reusable!
After a simple cleaning with hot water (and soap if you like), a menstrual cup is sterile and ready to be used again, as opposed to a tampon which goes straight in the trash with the thousands of its brethren that the average woman will go through in her life. I know that if there’s one thing all our offbeat homies seem to have in common, it’s that they care for our global home.
And for extra bonus hippie points…
Gardening
So apparently menstrual blood is an amazing plant fertilizer. I know, it sounds gross, but let’s put that aside and just think for a moment. It’s a uterine lining. Your body was planning on growing a frickin’ baby in it. So it can probably grow some plants, right? I don’t have a garden to try this myself, but I have friends with menstrual cups who have done this, and swear by it. Many people might have knee jerk reactions to this — hell, I do and I’m the one who brought it up — but blood decomposes quickly, which makes menstrual blood seem pretty innocuous, especially considering some of the chemicals that commonly turn up in commercial fertilizers.
Have questions? Now is your chance to ask things you’d be embarrassed to ask about in person, through the magic anonymity of the internet!
Isn’t it dangerous to wear tampons to bed? I was always told to wear a pad/napkin to bed instead… Not that it helps with the heavy flow any better, you just have to make for the toilet fairly quickly once you’ve sat up :p
Not to be nitpicky, but rinsing the cup in hot water or even with soap will not make it sterile. It’ll be pretty clean, but absolutely not sterile. If you want a not-chemical way to get closer to actual sterility, you should boil it before inserting it (silicone only, other materials probably can’t handle the heat). Most vaginas are pretty tough, so not being 100% sterile is ok for most ladies, but if you are crazy sensitive you need to get cooking.
Agreed. There is a difference between sanitized and sterilized.
I didn’t read all the comments above but i’m so sad I CAN’T use a menstrual cup; 2.5 years after my son my pelvic floor still cannot hold it in and it just slips out if i’m not sitting or concentrating really hard 🙁
As a woman who loves loves LOVES her diaphragm as a non-hormonal backup to condoms (I know, I know, a 30-something feeling the need to have a backup for condoms is crazy…. but I’m just not ready to be a mother), I feel like I’d be a shoo-in for a menstrual cup. Does anyone know if insertion is similar to a diaphragm?
No personal experience with a diaphragm here, but years and years with a cup. I remember when my Mom and I first got cups together, she said how similar it was to a diaphragm, which she always used before she had kids.
I’m 49 and have had heavy periods my whole life. How can I have never heard about the cup before? I had no idea there was an alternative to tampons. I’m amazed! Truly, this could have been life changing if I had known about this years ago. But now I’m getting close to the end of my menstruating years, I don’t know if I should try to make the switch. I don’t understand why this kind of product is widely known about.
HPV also makes these very ouchie and uncomfortable. D:
I have a IUS now but before that I loved my mooncup. It took a little time to get the hang of it but when I did it was great. Like has been said before it is great if your flow varies and if you want to have a lie in because it can hold just a little or quite a lot. I took it travelling with me, so much easier than packing loads of pads or tampons or trying to ask for them in another language. I almost miss it! (I certainly don’t miss pulling out pads thinking it is my purse.)
OK this may be weird but my dogs like to get in the trash and eat my tampons. I’ve been considering the cup and wondering about how pouring it in the garden would attract animals. Anyone know?
I had a question in regards to the cups themselves. Are they especially difficult to put in or remove? I’ve noticed in the last 3 years that tampons are becoming a problem as they cause me a great deal of discomfort and downright pain, and pads are difficult for me cause I’m disabled so my underwear never necessarily fits me right which means the pads never sit right all the time. The reason I ask about the cups is that my hands do not have much strength and are disfigured from the disability so I wondered if they’re hard to get in and out if you don’t have perfect hands. Also, I was wondering if there’s any good resources on how to maintain and clean cloth pads? I know cloth diapers can build up smell so I’d be worried about that in regards to my household(I currently live with my family and there’s 5 of us here — some who are very squeamish about this even though they’re female). I’m just looking for alternatives at this point and I see some cloth pads come with buttons on the wings which seem more reliable than the crappy sticky stuff on disposable ones.
I have just started looking into cups and washable pads, after buying a diva cup, and some washable pads, and then realising I didn’t know what I was doing 😀
I found this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/preciousstarspads
She is only a teenager, but she has video’s on so many different cups, pad reviews, how to use them, wash them (including one on how to use cloth pads discretely so family members don’t know).
I’ve been suggesting her channel to others since I’ve found it so helpful, it’s like the beginners guide to reusable menstrual products.
I never knew how much thought you should put into which cup you choose (like figuring out how high or low your cervix is), so if you’re interested, I’d suggest start watching her videos 🙂
I hope that helps you find the answers you’re looking for 🙂
“She is only a teenager” sounds terrible, I meant that I was surprised she is a teenager as she is so open, direct, and knowledgeable.
After reading through many comments, I noticed some people suggesting trying a different brand or size or what-have-you because they were having problems with the one they had. One comment also said there’s 20 brands. So my question is how do you decide which brand/size/type do you choose when doing your shopping? $20-$30 (plus shipping?) can be a fair amount for some of us, and I’d rather not waste that money on “Oops! Wrong kind, guess I’ll try again!”
a lot of the cup companies have full money back return policies for unsatisfied customers, even if you’ve cut the tip or whatever because it isn’t like they will resell them. and a lot of the brands are country specific, so that might help narrow down your choices.
there are bunch of charts that compare the sizes and shapes of the cups, though I suppose you won’t know what you’re looking for. but you can also see that they are largely just a couple of designs, so you don’t need to feel like you’d have to try ALL of them, y’know?
If I were you, I’d just pick one of the cups with the money back guarantee and try it out. then you can return it if you don’t like it, plus you’ll have some idea of what you didn’t like about it. I’m lucky since there was really just the one option when I first picked up my rubber keeper and it turned out that was the best shape for me. I now have a silicone one that has the same dimensions and design. I tried the Diva cup and it was just all wrong for my vagina/hand combo.
I commented further up, but I found this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/preciousstarspads
She reviews the cups and tells you what to consider to find one for you.
There are other review on youtube by others as well, I just found she had a lot of reviews and explained how to use them, insert them, stop them leaking, and remove them (all things I am trying to figure out myself 🙂 )
Anybody know if you can use the cup after you have the 6-8 week period after having a baby?
I was actually doing some research on whether diva cup(discrediting really) could grown onto your hymen. (which is asinine to me)
this blogger girl is funny. I doubt anyone is going to be reading past this of the miles of comments.. but I am gonna chime in here and point out a couple of mistakes.
1. Tampons are about as sterile as it’s gonna get. nothing that goes in your vagina is sterile anyway. My husband is a corpsman and uses tampons for bloody noses, they can plug small puncture wounds-and the tampons can be cut into discs-fucking handy.
The penis.. a vagina’s intended occupant.. not so sterile. And the whole reasons have periods is tto trry and dump pathogens.
Which brings me to (too two tutu)
2. I am a biomedical student studying prosthetic chemicals. Most shit intended to shove up your snatch isn’t product tested to be super-heated. Somebody up there was right.. but further her point. Once you heat shit, it starts releasing nasty chemicals. No Bueno for the cupcake areas.. really
3. and third. Bunny’s, bird’s and bug’s poop all over your garden so I am under no germy phobic angles here. The biggest mistake of the article is that blood pathogens die quick. They do so if it’s dry.
Hepatitis C can live for three days out side the body. It can transmit the infection for 16 or so hours. Long enough for that stupid dog to drag it all over the place. Ecoli, hep.. staph infections.. are why we don’t put meat in the compost and garden. ..
Not judgy-just pointing this out.
I started using a diva cup almost two years ago and I’ll never go back! I especially love it during Faires, festivals and the like where “real” bathrooms may or may not exist. One less thing to worry about!
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I have a question. I’ve thought about switching to a cup and understand that between uses you can just rinse it out with hot water and put in in again, but what about when you are working? If it was just an 8 hour shift it wouldn’t be a problem(I imagine i could just wait to get home to empty it since I don’t really have that heavy of a flow), but sometimes i work 15 hour shifts and i can’t imagine waiting until i get home to empty it out after that long. I also think it would be really gross to everyone else to come out of the stall to rinse it in the sink there in the bathroom at work. Is there a good solution to this or would it really be okay to wear the cup for shifts this long?
My first choice is to be able to rinse it out, but in public bathrooms I’ve always found it easy to just wipe clean with toilet paper and reinsert it.
I use disposable ones. I guess that somewhat defeats the purpose, but it’s a good compromise from tampons. Instead of rinsing, you just insert a new one. But I have a hard time changing it in public bathrooms. I think it depends on your body and your experience, but I have to strip from the waist down to get the right angle to get a new one in. If I have to change it while I’m out and about, I just switch to a tampon for a few hours until I can get somewhere more private.
This sounds really interesting. Here’s my issues, maybe someone can tell me which brand to look at.
I have a retroverted uterus. Would that be a problem?
Also, all my life used pads. Tampons HURT. I’m sensitive everywhere. Now that I know about the retroverted, I think that might have been part of the problem. I think I was sticking things in the wrong angle.
How far in does this go? All the way up inside like a tampon? with the bell shaped kind of “outside” but in the folds? I’m going to google a picture of this on insert. I think I’d be happier with something soft and not so far up inside like a tampon.
I’m seriously considering a cup, for loads of reasons but right now because I’m getting awful rashes from wearing pads all the time!!!! (Started when i had aunty flow over for 12 weeks straight).
But I’d really like to know how you go about emptying/changing/cleaning/whatever when you need to pee and are out of the house? I can’t imagine being in a bar and taking it to the wash basin, rinsing it, then waiting in line again to reinstert it…
You don’t have to remove it to pee. It should stay in place if it is inserted correctly. you probably only have to empty it 2-3 times a day so prob not going to have to empty it if you are just out for evening anyway. if you do just have some wet wipe type things and do it in the cubicle or wait for the disabled one to be free so has a sink in it.
this is a super old thread, but I just wanted to say that I love my diva cup, and swear by it, and preach the menstrual cup gospel to all my lady friends.
Two other advantages not mentioned in the article that I think are important are that I found myself to get more familiar with my flow and more comfortable with my vagina when using a menstrual cup. Also, if any one is an international traveler, taking your cup with you means never having to worry about finding tampons in another country and as a long distance hiker, it means I don’t have to make sure I have packed enough tampons when I leave for a trip, and don’t have to pack out used tampons (because always pack out your trash).
I will say that the article alludes to using one menstrual cup for six years, and I found after about three mine was looking kind of grody no matter how much I washed it so I got a new one.
I started out with disposable menstrual cups so that I wouldn’t have to make the investment if I didn’t like it. Same concept, but cheaper materials and you throw it out after one use (12 hours). I love it. Way more comfortable than tampons and better for long days – no more worrying when I have a long work day in the field or changing a tampon in a Porto-potty at a music festival. I plan to switch to a reusable cup soon and keep the disposables for travel.
My only issue is that they are hard to change in a public bathroom. But with a 12 hour hold time, that’s rare. If it comes to it, I just switch to a tampon or pad until I can get somewhere private to insert a new cup.