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Originally Posted by viviensmama  I'm seriously considering cloth diapering our baby. Unfortunately the only people I know who cloth diapered their children did so 50+ years ago. And everything I read on the internet references things I don't get.....
When you soak a cloth diaper what do you soak it in? For how long?
For poop diapers, do you have to wipe the poop off first? (I know this is probably a dumb one)
What are the best diapers to use?
Do you wash them in normal soap? Use something special to get the smell out?
Help a girl out here.  |
I don't soak diapers. I also don't do anything special with the poop. While baby is still getting only breastmilk or formula, nothing at all needs to be done with poop. It's water soluble, and it'll all come out in the laundry all by itself. Once baby starts solid foods, the poop will start to look more like real-people poop-- just roll off the solid part into the toilet, and the rest will come out on its own.
I wash them in normal detergent. There are all kinds of opinions out there about which detergents are best, and a lot of mamas who swear by them. A lot of people will insist you need a special natural detergent. I've used almost anything they sell, in four and a half years of diapering, and I've found that the ordinary conventional detergents work just fine, and there's nothing in them that bothered my kiddos or the diapers, except I did find that Tide was a little harsh and bothered DD1's skin. The natural detergents never seemed to work as well, over time, for us. But try them if you want to.
Here's what I do:
1. Put wet and dirty diapers in a dry pail with a bag liner. You can get a nice nylon bag or two, and just wash it with the diapers. For a pail, just use an ordinary kitchen trash can with a lid. If the lid fits loosely, that's best-- the diapers can dry out a bit, and won't smell. I keep my pail in my bathroom, and it only smells if I wait too long to wash, like more than five days.
2. When the pail is full, dump the bag's contents into the washer, and throw the bag in too. Run a cold rinse cycle to get most of the yuck out. Then do a long hot wash cycle with an extra rinse, using your chosen detergent. Don't use too much detergent, or it won't rinse out clean. The extra rinse is to make sure the detergent is all rinsed out.
3. Don't use fabric softener. It can make your diapers less absorbent. (Avoid rash creams, for the same reason.) Bleach is all right occasionally, but it's a bad choice environmentally speaking, and over time it makes your diapers wear out faster. Some people swear by baking soda, vinegar, or any number of other additives to the wash. Try them if you want. I've never found them necessary.
4. Take a diaper out and smell. If it smells clean, it is. If it doesn't, run another wash.
5. Dry in the dryer. The elastic on your covers and/or pocket diapers will last longer if you hang those to dry, but the dryer is fine too.
If you have hard well water, or if you choose diapers made of synthetic fabrics, the process can be more fiddly. In that case, you experiment with detergents and with your wash cycles until you find what works.
Don't fuss about stains. They don't mean the diaper isn't clean, and they are a fact of live with poop. If the diaper smells clean, the stain is just a stain. If they bug you, try hydrogen peroxide. Oxi Clean is great. You can also wet the diaper and lay it in bright sun, and the sun bleaches the stain out. But you can also just have stains. That's what I do.
