How to Cloth Diaper by Nailing Your Wash Routine
One of the biggest hangups parents have when it comes to cloth diapering is washing dirty diapers. Whether it's fighting to get rid of a musty smell, not being able to balance your diaper stash and wash frequency or just the daunting thought of cleaning off poo over and over again, the wash routine is essential when it comes to starting your cloth diaper journey.
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Washing Cloth Diapers
When my husband and I first decided we were going to cloth-diaper our little one, I quickly learned from other cloth-diapering parents that a wash routine was essential for cloth-diapering success. This was a little intimidating considering that at the time we did not have a washer or dryer, so I tried to learn as much as I could up front about washing cloth diapers before my little girl was born. Fortunately, I saved myself a lot of headaches and trial and error by doing this, but since I know many parents are in the same boat as I was six months ago, I want to share what I do so that hopefully, you can be successful with your cloth diapering experience. As a quick note, this method should work for virtually any type of cloth diaper (besides wool) but some cloth diapers have specific guidelines from the manufacturer so if you are concerned about whether or not this will work for you, please check with them.
1. Remove Poo
Probably the obvious first step, but the first thing you do when the baby goes, is remove the poo. And I recommend doing this as soon as you change your baby's diaper, but I know in some cases this isn't reasonable, so I have a small wastebasket of poopy diapers that I get to at the end of the day. Now exclusively breastfed baby's poo is water soluble, but I want to give you some advice about poo in general because this made it much easier for me. Even though my baby's poo was exclusively breastmilk poo pretty much until a week or so ago, I still always removed the poo before washing my diapers. I did this for a couple of reasons. One, although yes breastmilk poo is water soluble, that doesn't mean that one wash will remove all of the poo from the diaper, especially if you have a bit of a bigger load. It will wash most of it, but if it's really caked on there then sometimes the poo can get embedded into the seams of your cloth diaper which can make it really hard to clean fully. Also, there's the issue of stains. Not that stains can't be dealt with, we'll look at that in the tumble dry / sundry section, however, it does help prevent stains from happening in the first place. And lastly, meconium poo, which is your baby's first poo I did not find to be water-soluble. I actually recommend if you do not rinse cloth diaper poo immediately at least do so in this first stage because you will be saving yourself a heck ton of heartache. Some parents use disposables or disposable liners during this stage and I definitely would consider that if you do not think you will be able to deal with meconium poo immediately. The only reason I'm saying this is because no one had told me about this when I first started and so as this newly postpartum mom just barely keeping it together I spent the time I could have spent resting scrubbing hour-old meconium poo from newborn diapers and it was just a huge mess to deal with. Once the poo starts turning greenish yellow, you don't have to worry as much, but for those first few poos, it's essential you get those rinsed off as soon as possible - just for the headache. And if you want to make it even easier on yourself, I recommend purchasing a diaper sprayer to spray off the poo before putting it in the hamper.
2. Cold Rinse Cycle
After you have removed the poo and are ready to do a load of laundry for your diapers I recommend doing one cold rinse first. This is of course not required, but it is one extra step in preventing stains. Besides, it just helps remove any additional waste I might have missed during the poo-removal stage. I do not put any soap in, just set the washer to a cold water cycle. I typically do the quick rinse cycle on the washer but I've heard of people doing a long cold water soaking cycle as well.
3. Hot Wash Cycle
As soon as the cold water cycle finishes it's on to the first true wash cycle. At this stage, I add-in my soap and set the washer to the hottest delicate wash setting. I do the delicate because it prolongs the life of my cloth diapers but also because it is often the longest wash setting for most washing machines. You may want to check your manufacturing guidelines for which cycle is the longest. The soap I use is Tide Free and Gentle Powder detergent, although sometimes it is hard to find so I substitute with Tide Free and Gentle Liquid detergent. Your soap is really important here, and its important how much you put in. Be sure to look at the recommended guidelines for how much detergent to put with what sized load. Ordinarily, I wouldn't pay much attention to this at all, but with cloth diapers, too much detergent can result in buildup on your diapers over time that will prevent them from being absorbent, and too little detergent will not fully clean your diapers. So it's important you pay attention to the recommendations. Tide's detergent comes with a little scoop or cup that makes it easy to measure the exact amount of detergent. See more on choosing your soap towards the end of this blog post.
4. Tumble Dry / Sundry
And once your diapers are washed, it's time to dry them! I tumble dry my diapers most of the time because that's what's easiest. I place the diapers in the dryer and set the settings to delicate. Now, because I have a lot of bamboo, cotton, and hemp inserts, I need to do at least two dry cycles if not three. This mainly depends on my load size. However, the very best option for drying your diapers which I would like to start incorporating now that it's getting warmer is sun drying. Sun drying has many benefits for your diapers, so let me name a few. For one, this is the most effective method of stain removal. The UV rays from the sun break down the stains on the cloth diapers leaving them spotless! Additionally, the same UV rays that help break down stains, and eliminate bacteria, meaning this can help if you are worried about yeast or other bacteria in your cloth diapers. Sun drying is also a great way to air out your diapers, and I have heard many parents say this got rid of any musty or anomia smell they were dealing with. And lastly, sun drying is infinitely better for your diapers than tumble drying, meaning you are prolonging the life of your cloth diapers even more! So if you must do one, sun dry, but I know that's not always possible so don't worry if you need to do a quick tumble dry cycle instead.
5. Striping
Stripping cloth diapers is a common phrase coined in the cloth diaper community for various reasons. Parents strip their cloth diapers for many reasons, but the most common reasons include thrush (yeast infection), buildup, buying secondhand, and maintenance. Now, stripping to remove buildup and stripping to sanitize a diaper are two very different things, however too often I see the same method of bath water bleach to solve any and all cloth diapering problems. This is NOT the solution and can actually ruin your diapers. There are really only two ways to strip your diapers.
First, we'll talk about the scariest one, and the one that is the most of a necessity when it comes to stripping diapers, and this is sanitizing diapers. For the purpose of making a difference between sanitizing and removing buildup, however, I'm referring to sanitizing as sanitizing and removing buildup as stripping. If your baby has had a yeast infection or you have bought your diapers secondhand and do not know if that baby had a yeast infection, UTI, STD, etc. you will need to sanitize your cloth diapers. How do you do this? With bleach, unfortunately, this is the only way, and therefore it must ONLY be used in these circumstances. Below is the recommended method for bleaching your cloth diapers. You will want to follow all of these steps to ensure that there is no bleach left on your baby's diaper by the time you go to put it on your baby. Leftover bleach can damage and irritate the baby's skin and also accumulate buildup from the bleach that will make your diapers less absorbent. This is one of the reasons why bleaching your cloth diapers because of buildup is a bad idea, because not only does it wear on your cloth diapers, but it just adds another additional layer of buildup onto your diaper.
Ingredients:
- 1/8 Cup to a 1/4 of Bleach Depending on your Load Size (do not use more than 1/4 cup of bleach)
- 1 Pod of Grovia Mighty Bubbles
- Your Regular Cloth Diaper Detergent
Instructions:
- Place your diapers in your washing machine on a cold rinse cycle with bleach. No matter the size of your load never put more than 1/4 bleach in your wash.
- Optional: when the wash ends do another cold water cycle to ensure all the bleach is rinsed off.
- Do a hot cycle with one pod of Grovia Mighty Bubbles to "strip" the diapers of any bleach buildup.
- Follow this cycle with your regular wash cycle
- Tumble Dry, Hang dry, or BEST Sundry
Now for stripping your diapers because of build-up, this will look similar to the above instructions, minus the bleach. Common reasons for buildup is due to hard water, too much detergent, ammonia buildup from a heavy wetter, and buildup from poor diapering routines (such as over-bleaching your diapers, using dawn dish soap, using plant-based detergent, not washing your cloth diapers frequently enough, etc.). In order to strip your cloth diapers you will follow this method, which is the recommended method by the cloth diapering company Grovia.
Ingredients:
- 1 Pod of Grovia Mighty Bubbles
- Your Regular Cloth Diaper Detergent
Instructions:
- Do a hot cycle with one pod of Grovia Mighty Bubbles. Depending on the level of buildup on your diapers, you may have to do more than one wash cycle with a Grovia Might Bubbles wash pod.
- Follow this cycle with your regular wash cycle
- Tumble Dry, Hang dry, or Sundry
Although you may not have any cloth diapers by Grovia, Grovia Might Bubbles was created to be used to strip any type of cloth diaper (excluding wool). As far as I know, no other company has taken the time to create a formula that works on all styles of cloth diapers and attains the same level of cleanliness. I have used this method on numerous styles of cloth diapers besides just my Grovia diapers, and have always been very impressed with the results. In fact, Grovia recommends this product on anything that has buildup, including sportswear, smokey camping gear, musty linens, and more! Better yet, this is the only proven safe way to truly strip your cloth diapers without harsh treatment or additional buildup.
Resources
Some mention resources. This can be products, articles, sources, curricula, etc.
- Tide Clear and Free
- Grovia Might Bubbles
- Grovia Learn Page for Laundry
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