Travel

[jamie79]

Hi,
I will be traveling to my parent's house in a couple of weeks with my 3 children. They live 800 miles away, so I'll be there about 2.5 weeks. We cloth diaper and I am very particular with the cleaning of the dipes. I use only Charlies Soap, made sure to run our washer several times empty to rid of any enzymes that may have been present from the 7th Generation I was using while preggo. In short, I'm trying to get the most life out of these dipes and absorbency. With my 2nd DD, I wasn't as fastidious and we had a lot of leakage issues. This time around, no problems.

My dilemma: my parents use a LOT of chemicals (think Tide, Arm&Hammer, etc) and other cleaning supplies in their washer. I don't want any of that to come in contact with our dipes when we are there.

My question is: do I just not worry about it? Will the dipes be ok if I just bring my charlie's soap and wash them as usual? Or am I stuck buying the unbleached sposies while there? I'm even willing to try a diaper service while Im in town if it's comparable to the sposies pricing.

Anyone else out there have experience with this? With my oldest, we used sposies and then with the 2nd we used sposies while traveling. Now, I'm a lot more environmentally conscious and don't want to use them at all.

Any help is greatly appreciated

[octobermom]

Well I'm no help I used tide on my diapers and have zero issues so I' just wash them.

Deanna

[Eliotsmum]

Ditto. I personally wouldn't worry about what was left in the machine. Even if there is some residual you could always do a strip wash if you start to get leaks. I travelled with my CD and just used a small amount of what my in-laws and parents were using and didn't notice any difference. Sorry if that isn't very helpful!

[chase_mommy]

I would just wash them in their machine. My parents/brother are all chemical loving detergent people and I have used their washer (and a laundromat) when we travel to see them. I have never noticed any difference in our diaper performance there vs home with our normal wash routine that is chemical free. My whole thought process is... worse case scenario you may see a slight difference in absorbency but you can always strip (which you will prob do anyway when ya get home ) and get your diapers back to how they were. That way you don't have to mess with the sposies and no matter what your cloth will be fine.

[Beauchamp]

When we traveled and washed in my mom's washer, we ran a hot cycle with just bleach first, to clean out the machine, then we did our loads. And we were just doing our clothes, not dipes. I guess I am paranoid. I just always heard/thought that my small amount of natural detergent would go to work cleaning the machine's gunk out and not have any left over for my clothes. Don't know where I heard that...?

[cc_mama]

I'd just wash as best you can and then maybe plan on stripping your dipes when you get home.

[cristeen]

I'm very chemically sensitive... so this is probably what I would do (which may be overkill, but oh well).

Pick up a couple large white bath towels. They can be cheapies. If you have some already, bring them with. Run a hot wash with 1/2 a c of white vinegar in both the wash and the rinse and the towels through the machine (the towels will scrub the walls of the machine). Run the towels through the dryer (same premise). Then I'd go ahead and use the machine for the dipes. If your family has a clothesline, then I'd sun the towels afterwards, since some of those chemicals break down in the sunlight. It'll suck, but repeat this each time you have to wash your dipes. At the end of the trip, just realize those towels are liable to be well coated in chemicals and will need some TLC when you get home (and since they're white, they're bleachable).

I'd totally rather do this than sposies, though.