The Ritz-Carlton Guide to Cloth Diapers, Part II- Cloth Diaper Laundry Myths & Truths

**edited because, phone blogging = technical difficulties**

So, I joined this Facebook group, Fluff Love and CD Science and it rocked my cloth diapering world. Turns out, the ubiquitous advice about washing cloth diapers is pretty much wrong, all wrong.

Cloth Diaper Laundry Myths

If you cloth diaper or have spent any time researching it, you’ve heard all these (crappy- get it?) lines:

1. Detergent build up will cause stink, so you need to use only a tiny bit of detergent.

2. You need many, many rinse cycles to prevent said build up.

3. You need to use “cloth safe” detergent so you don’t void your warranty.

4. Bleach will ruin your diapers.

5. You will need to strip your diapers every so often, using Blue Dawn, to remove detergent build up which causes stink.

6. Homemade detergent is a great way to save money and keep nasty chemicals off baby’s bottom.

No, no, no, no, no, and no.

Cloth Diaper Laundry Truths

1. Detergent is formulated to rinse clean and not leave residue behind. That’s what makes it detergent. Detergent “build-up” is a myth. It simply doesn’t exist.

A little bit of detergent ain’t gonna cut it. You are washing filthy, dirty pee-soaked poop catchers. You need the full recommended amount of a full-strength mainstream detergent.

This image pretty much sums it up:

2. Multiple rinse cycles redeposit minerals on your diapers, and that does cause build up; mineral build up. No extra rinses!

3. “Cloth-safe” detergent, such as BumGenius or Rockin Green, is nothing but softeners and boosters. It may have a teeny, tiny bit of detergent in it. This is not going to clean your diapers. If your dog pooped on a towel, would you wash the towel with a little bit of detergent or a lot? Guess what? The same principle applies to your diapers. They’re dirty. Really, really dirty. You need a mainstream detergent that actually cleans. Tide and Gain seem to be the ones people have the most success with. (If you are adamant about using a plant based or Free and Clear detergent, you can, but you need to use twice as much because it’s weaker and you must wash in hot water.)

Yes, this may void your warranty. Two thoughts on this:

First, how are they going to know what detergent you used? Clean diapers?

Second, better clean diapers without a warranty than stinky, warranteed diapers that give your little one ammonia burns or diaper rash.

4. Bleach, properly diluted, will not ruin your diapers. It will sanitize them. And PUL is colorfast so they won’t fade either.

5. If you have a solid wash routine, you won’t need to strip your diapers. Like, ever. (Sorry, I was channeling my inner T. Swift for a minute there.) But seriously, if you need to strip, something about your wash routine isn’t working and your diapers aren’t getting clean.

If you do need to strip so you can “reset” your diapers and start over, Blue Dawn isn’t what you need. It’s a degreaser, it’s not going to get out bacteria, mineral build up, and ammonia crystals, all of which are causes of stink. Blue Dawn is also a no no for going into your washing machine. It can break the machine and will void your warranty.

Full Disclosure: before I knew better, I used Blue Dawn to “strip” a couple of times. No adverse washer reactions were noted. It is my personal opinion that while pouring a cup of the stuff into your machine weekly is a bad idea, a tablespoon here and there is not going to cause a problem. That said, it doesn’t do what you need it to, so why bother?

More on how to properly strip and bleach your diapers further down…

6. There is no such thing as homemade detergent. The ingredients needed to make detergent are not available commercially. You simply cannot make it. What homemade detergent is is actually a bunch of softeners and boosters mixed together with grated up soap. This is no bueno because soap doesn’t rinse clean like detergent does. You will end up with soap residue on all your stuff. And softeners and boosters don’t clean. That’s not what they meant for.

So….how should you wash your diapers? And if you already have stink or ammonia issues, what should you do about it?

How do I strip my cloth diapers?

Start by stripping. A real strip, not a Blue Dawn “strip.”

You can use RLR packets, or make your own using 3 tablespoons each of Borax, Washing Soda, and Calgon (not the type that takes you away).

Full your tub halfway with hot water. Mix in the RLR/homemade mix and toss in your diapers. Allow to sit until the water cools completely (5ish hours) or overnight.

The strip draws all the gunk out of your diapers. This may be revolting. I had some ummm, particles, floating in the tub. I know. I’m throwing up a little bit in my mouth too. However, better in my tub than on Will’s bottom making him red.

When you take the diapers out, run them through a cold rinse and spin cycle.

How and why do I bleach soak my cloth diapers?

Now you’re going to fill your tub halfway with cold water and a 1/2 cup of disinfecting bleach. Not the splashless kind, the real stuff (on the bottle, it probably says that it kills the flu virus).

Toss those diapers back in and soak for at least 30 minutes. The strip brought all kinda of yuck to the surface so now you’re going to kill it all with bleach.

When you remove them, throw them in the washer for a hot rinse and spin. (Heat is needed to break bleach down.)

Now wash them, with a mainstream detergent, 3-5 times.

(Will takes laundry supervision duties very seriously.)

What should my new cloth diaper wash routine look like?

Your diapers are now reset and good to go!

Your new wash routine can use any mainstream detergent without fabric softeners. Generally speaking, you should do a prewash with line one of detergent, and then a main wash with the full amount of detergent.

You need to have enough stuff in the machine to agitate properly in order for your diapers to get clean. If you have a top loader, you want a stew-like consistency (not soup). If you have a front loader, you want it 2/3 to 3/4 full.

Cold vs. hot water is a personal preference unless you are using a plant based detergent, in which case you must use hot.

I am so very glad to know I won’t need to strip again and not to have stink creeping back. It seems like people try to make cloth diapering and wash routines complicated, when in reality, all you need to do it use enough detergent that actually works. I am kind of starting to seem like a crazy person, going around preach the Fluff Love Gospel all over the place, to Theresa and Kate and Michelle, among others, but seriously- life changing. I’m not an expert, but happy to answer any questions if I can. And if I can’t, I recommend joining Fluff Love & CD Science. (Well, I recommend that anyway.) The admins there are super knowledgeable and can answer really specific questions about your washing machine, water, diaper brand, and detergent preferences.

Once your diapers are clean and ready to go, you have the pleasure of seeing a cute little fluff butt cruising around:

Seven Quick Takes- A Day Late

1. Will’s sleep is just…no. He has started waking up again. It started with once a night, and then was up to three times a night. Little man, you are almost one. I just cannot have this. Having established that nothing is actually wrong, he just wants to party with his mom, the husband declared we are not going back down this path and we need to re-sleep train him. God help me. I do not have the fortitude for this. Sleep training makes me insane.

2. Along those lines, the other day he woke up at 1:00, 2:30, and then decided he was up for the day at 5:15. Awesome. After nursing and breakfast, I tossed him in the stroller and we went for a run. Because if you’re deliriously sleep deprived and don’t feel like listening to your child shriek at you across the living room, you might as well get a work out in. He was thrilled, as you can tell:

Tough luck, kiddo. Try doing some sleeping and you won’t be in for quality time with the BOB at 6:30 am.

3. Given Will’s sleep striking lately, I haven’t been getting up at 5:00 to run. It just isn’t happening. There’s been a lot of stroller running. (I guess it’s a good thing the weather is cooling off so this is even an option?) While stroller running is not what I’d call the great love of my life, I have to admit it is making me a lot stronger. I despise looking at the pace on my Garmin while I’m pushing the stroller because it’s so depressing. However, on my run this morning (sans stroller), my pace was in the 9:xx for most of the 10 miles. That hasn’t happened since BW (before Will).

4. It’s fall festival season- I love me some good fall festivals. Last weekend we took Will to our neighborhood’s Fall Fest and he dug on the food trucks, especially the sugar laden lemonade we let him drink. He also enjoyed flirting with the ladies running the empanada truck we got our dinner from.

 

5. His current favorite activities include chasing the dogs (which they just LOVE, as you might imagine), drinking from their water bowl, and playing tambourine with their food bowls.

6. I know I am the only person in the world who cares about laundering cloth diapers (and other items), so bear with me here, but O.M.G. I’ve had a laundry breakthrough! I was getting some ammonia/stink issues with my diapers. I guiltily concluded that this was likely because I am cheap and don’t use the fancy “cloth diaper” detergent. I asked a question about bleaching in my local cloth diaper group on Facebook and someone referred me to the group Fluff Love & CD Science. This group is amazing! They’ve got all kinds of documents giving instructions for diaper stripping, bleaching, and washing. The documents explain the science behind laundry in general. In a nutshell, it’s not because I’m not using the CD detergent. In fact, those detergents don’t even actually clean your diapers adequately. But it is because I wasn’t using enough detergent. I am such a loser so excited about this stuff that I am going to write a whole post about it. Here’s the teaser

I started off my stripping my sheets. And damn people, they look brand spanking new, white as the day I bought them.

7. Apparently the laundry obsession is genetic:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great weekend! Go see Jen for more and better takes!

The Ritz-Carlton Guide to Cloth Diapers

I read Theresa’s post about cloth diapering for non-crunchy mamas and I was like, “Yes, that is so me!” And then I read Jenna’s Ronald Reagan Guide to Essential Oils (um, best title for a blog post ever) and I decided to do my own little mini-series about some crunchy parenting stuff for people who do not wear hemp sandals. We cloth diaper too, and do some other “crunchy” stuff like babywearing and co-sleeping (well, we actually just moved Will to a crib but we used to co-sleep) but I am so not crunchy. Hello, I camp at the Ritz. Duh.

I’d like to just preface this with the disclaimer that I have one child and he’s about 7 months old. So, you should probably not listen to anything I say, or at least also listen to people with more and older children.

So, why does someone who is definitively not crunchy choose to cloth diaper?

1. I’m cheap. Or I can be cheap about things that I perceive as not adding value. (A couple thousand dollars, per child, from birth to potty training, to buy things that catch pee & poop and then go in the garbage? No thanks.)

2. Cloth diapers are so stinking cute. Look at that little monkey butt:

3. Disposable diapers have yucky stuff in them that can be toxic to dogs. I have two dogs who have about two brain cells between them. But I love them and would like to keep both of them, and both their brain cells, around.

4. Although I don’t really consider myself an avid environmentalist, disposable diapers take forever to break down in a landfill and I’d like to be a good steward of natural resources, so….cloth.

Before Will was born I spent a somewhat obscene amount of time researching cloth diapers.  It can be overwhelming at first- all the different types of cloth diapers, the prepping/washing/stripping routines, the no-nos, etc. But it really is one of those things that is a lot simpler and easier than it appears from the vantage point of too much time on the internet. If you are thinking about cloth diapering and are worried that it’s too complicated, it’s not. I promise.

There are no cloth diaper stores in Atlanta (which I think is bizarre for a metro area of more than 6 million people) but there is one in Athens, GA so before Will was born I went out there to talk with someone who knows what they’re talking about. Allison of The Natural Baby was really sweet and helpful and spent a lot of time with me, discussing options and helping me set up a registry. I ended up choosing some AIOs (all-in-ones) and pocket diapers. (More details about that in a bit.)

When Will was born we did disposables for about two weeks. For one, I don’t know that anyone needs to worry about diaper laundry when they have a three day old. Two, meconium and cloth diapers aren’t BFFs. Yes you can get it out with scrubbing but again, who wants to be scrubbing diapers when you have a newborn? Three, I waited for the circumcision to heal because it required a little gauze pad with Vaseline on it and Vaseline and cloth diapers are not BFFs. (If I’d had a girl I probably would’ve broken out the cloth stash after a week or so.)

So, little Will was two weeks old and I busted out the newborn size cloth diapers a friend lent me. The one size cloth diapers claim they fit all babies but they lie. Maybe if you have a big baby they’d be okay on a newborn but Will was 7 lbs. 0.5 oz and they definitely did not fit him. The leg holes were gaping and you know that story doesn’t have a happy ending. My very generous BFF lent me some BumGenius AIO newborns and some prefolds with Thirsties & Bummis covers.  We used them until Will was about 7 or 8 weeks old and at that point he could wear the one size diapers.

My Stash

Now my daytime stash consists of BumGenius Freetimes All-In-Ones and Blueberry Simplex All-In-Ones. I love all-in-ones because they are quick and people who aren’t familiar with cloth diapers can easily change them. They do take a long time to dry and are the most expensive type of cloth diaper. However, since they’re still way cheaper than disposables I don’t really care.

At night we use pocket diapers, which just means a shell that you stuff with inserts. Pockets are in a pain in my….which is why I don’t use them all the time. However, you can easily add absorbency to them and since Will was peeing through the all-in-ones at night, we needed something with more absorbency. We use the Kawaii Baby Goodnight Heavy Wetter. I also put an additional Best Bottoms Overnight booster in there too because little man can pee and mama doesn’t appreciate wet sheets at 3 am.

For a diaper pail, I just have a couple of Planet Wise liners that I stuck in a trash can (with lid) that we no longer needed. I also have a couple of Planet Wise Wet Bags for when we’re out and about, although I’m finding they’re also great for wet swimsuits!

At home, I use cloth wipes but when we’re out I just use disposable wipes (but stick with the cloth diapers). The reason I don’t use cloth wipes when we’re on the go is that I keep the solution in a small spray bottle and I am just not hard core enough to tote a spray bottle around with me. I’ve got several cloth wipe brands- Blueberry, Charlie Banana, Thirsties, and some other random ones. The Thirsties are my favorite but it doesn’t really matter. Shoot, you could cut up old wash cloths or towels and call it a day. As far as solutions go, there are “recipes” all over the internet. I use about 2 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of castile soap, a little lavender oil, and a little tea tree oil.

Wash Routine

I wash every other day, or sometimes when I’m lazy, every third day. Shh- don’t tell.

Now that Will is 7 months old and has started eating solids, his poop does need to be sprayed off. Up until a month ago, I got to skip this charming step because breast milk poop is water soluble but now we rinse. I have the BumGenius diaper sprayer attached to my toilet. So, after rinsing, the diaper goes in the pail. (Only poopy diapers need to be rinsed.)

The whole pail (liner, diapers, and wipes) gets tossed in the washer and on a cold rinse cycle, no detergent. After the rinse cycle is up, I add 3/4 scoop of Country Save powdered detergent and start a hot wash cycle. After the hot wash is done, one more cold rinse, no detergent. I hang my diapers to dry on the drying rack:

Once, the husband was watching me hang diapers to dry and he said, totally deadpan, “Babe, the only thing that would make you greener and more hip, progressive, and open-minded right now is if you took Bubby’s turds and composted them in the backyard to fertilize your urban homestead.” He cracks me up.

You can put them in the dryer, and I usually do put them in there for 10 minutes at the end just to make sure they’re good and dry. I line dry them because I want them to last, but this is the most time consuming step so if time is an issue this is a good place to simplify and throw them in the dryer.

After they’re dry, I fold them up and put them in these little drawers that are the perfect size for them. I probably take an excessive amount of pleasure in seeing the diapers folded in drawers.

Not as much pleasure as Will takes in filling those diapers just as fast as he can, though!