Cleaning Cloth Diapers

There are a lot of misnomers about cleaning cloth diapers.  Evidently it used to be popular to dunk your dirty cloth diapers in the toilet and flush repeatedly to get the poopy out (?!?).  Gross!!  If that's what was needed, there's no way I would've ever went with cloth.  Another myth is that you have to have a pail of water to drop the diapers into in order to release stains.  People who use this method also put baking soda into the water.  This is still a popular method, but you don't absolutely have to do it.  I have no desire to use this wet pail method because it makes no sense to me.  Here's why:  Having a wet pail means you have cloth diapers.  Having cloth diapers means you have kids.  Kids + Wet Pail = potential for a mess of water and poop all over the floor.  Yuck!  No wet pail for Gabby!

The method I use for washing our diapers is probably one of the most common methods among cloth diapering moms.  The reason a good washing practice is so important is because the inserts are so incredibly absorbent that they often absorb small amounts of detergent over time, leaving you with detergent buildup in your inserts.  That will lead to stinky inserts or inserts that aren't as absorbent as they should be.  If you have a buildup problem, you'll have to strip your diapers.  I know very little about it, so if it's an issue you run into, google it--I can't really help you there.  

Here's our system, step by step:

1. All used diapers go in a plastic grocery bag that hangs on the closet door, right next to the changing table.  
2. At bedtime, I take the diapers and dump them into the washing machine.
3. Diapers are given a cold rinse.  Really, only poopy diapers need the cold rinse, but it definitely doesn't hurt all the diapers to be rinsed.  It helps the diapers and inserts release the filth.  
4. Add detergent and wash on a hot cycle, on the longest wash cycle.  
5. Hang pocket diapers on an inside clothes line and dry inserts on high heat. 
6. Once a month, I dry all the pocket diapers on high heat as well.  This helps the PUL fabric stay sealed at the seams.  I do this at the end of the month, just for the sake of my memory.

Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. 

It's very simple to follow and doesn't take too much time.  Ideally, I would love to have a separate trash can in the nursery for cloth diapers or have a reusable hanging diaper pail, but this has worked for us for 8 months, and I haven't decided exactly what I'd like to do.  If you dump all solid waste into the toilet as soon as you finish a diaper change and remove the inserts immediately as well, then all you have to do is dump all of this into the washer, so you have as little contact with the dirty stuff as possible.

A bigger issue is detergent.  Some detergents don't wash out of the diapers well or leave residue in the inserts and diapers.  Sometimes this can even a cause a rash on your baby, but most often, it will lead to detergent buildup.  I used Purex Free and Clear when I first started using cloth, and it seemed to work well, but after about a month, I noticed suds in the washer at the end of the load.  That's not good!  It means the inserts still had detergent in them.  I had to do a little mild diaper stripping to remove the detergent buildup, so I just washed them without soap over and over again until they were suds free at the end of the load. 

I began looking into cloth diaper friendly detergent and came across a few charts that helped me make my choice, one on Diaper Jungle and another on Pinstripes and Polkadots.  I also saw that Snap-EZ recommends Allen's All Natural detergent.  After really analyzing the charts, I went with Allen's, and I ordered it directly from Snap-EZ because it was the cheapest price and Allen's doesn't charge shipping if you order through Snap-EZ.  That's huge--shipping on a gallon of laundry detergent would be expensive!  My husband just about choked when I told him that I paid $50 for laundry detergent ($46.50, $4.40 for a dispensing pump to go with it).  Then I showed him the detergent bottle.  To wash one load of clothes, you only need 1 oz. or less of Allen's detergent, so one gallon of detergent will wash 128 loads.  BUT, if you have a high efficiency washer (this includes front load washers like ours), you only need less than 1/4 oz. of Allen's.  One gallon of this $50 detergent washes 512 loads of laundry!  That's less than 10 cents per load!  I bought the detergent in September of 2009.  Six months later, we're still using the same gallon!  I used it to wash all of our clothes up until a month ago, but now I'm back to my Purex for the rest of the laundry.  The $50 detergent was worth it, but probably wouldn't have been if we didn't have a front load washer.          

We haven't seen an increase in our water bill since starting cloth diapers.  Having a front load washer does help because it uses less water, so it also uses less energy to heat up the water.  Don't be discouraged if you have a normal washing machine because I've read that normal machines actually wash diapers better than front loaders.  Plain water is one of the best things for keeping diapers clean and preventing detergent buildup.  Front load washers usually calculate how much water to put in the load based on the weight of the clothes--it's automated, so I can't select a small, medium, or large load.  If you have a top load washer, you can use plenty of water, which is really what's needed for properly cleaning cloth diapers.