Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Dirty Diaper Laundry

I am a cloth diapering mom, and so with cloth diapers, comes dirty diaper laundry. But it's not as scary as it sounds! Here's my wash routine. Every cloth mama has a different routine that works for them, and this is what I found is working for us at the moment. It has taken some trial and error, but I have finally succeeded.

Here's the dirty diapers. I take them and dump them into the washer machine. My pail liner is also washable, so I wash it every other time I do diapers. I do diaper laundry every 2-3 days.




I then set my washer to HOT and LARGE load. I do a rinse cycle, a wash cycle and another rinse cycle. For my rinse cycles I set the washer to heavy express and add a Tablespoon of baking soda. (Before I added this small step, I had some stink issues. I have hard water, and this fixed it!)
 


Then for my wash cycle I set it to HOT and LARGE load. Then heavy regular wash. I add 1 Tablespoon of liquid Tide ORIGINAL, and let my washer do it's magic.

And then 1 last rinse cycle which is exactly the same as the first, but WITHOUT baking soda.

Now the diapers are all nice and clean, and ready to go in the dryer. Remember to dry them on LOW to protect the waterproofing.


ALL CLEAN!!





Now I go through and sort the inserts and diapers, and group them together by brand.





Let the stuffing begin!!!




ALL DONE!!!





Now as for the wipes situation. You can use cloth or disposable wipes. I made the wipe on the left out of cotton flannel and surged the edges together. The one on the right shows what happens when you wash a disposable wipe. And to think, I kept wasting my time throwing them away each time. 



Now that they are washed and clean, you can re-purpose them! Anyone with a 2 year old knows you are constantly wiping things off and cleaning up after them. I was going through 8-10 paper towels a day doing this. Now I use washed wipes for this! You can also throw them into a wipes container, wet them, and reuse them as wipes again! I wouldn't recommend re washing them as they will then start to leave lint on your diapers.





But yeah, that's it! That's all there is to it. This was about 4 days worth of diapers. I washed 2 days worth, but had 2 days waiting to be stuffed when I did this load. Took me a total of an hour's worth of work with a 2 year olds's (not so helpful) help, but when you are saving the planet and $.35 for ever diaper washed, it's totally worth it. Plus they are SO DARN CUTE!


1 comment:

  1. Did you have to clean these at all right after you took them off the baby? I have heard there is a lot of maintenance with cloth diapers before you wash them

    ReplyDelete