Laundromat & front loaders - what do I need to know?

[faeriecurls]

I'm expecting my first in August and we plan on CDing - We are currently in an apartment with no laundry in the building, so we will be using commercial front loaders at a laundromat. We will be using a combo of PF & fitteds with a variety of covers (exposed & covered PUL & Wool)

I am not sure what I am going to need to know - all I know is that the washers have a soak cycle, followed by a wash and 3 rinse cycles. The washers have 2 soap compartments - one that is for the soak cycle and the other is for the wash cycle. The soak is not very long - the whole thing only takes 29 minutes. You can't stop them once they have started either.

We do have an option to use a diaper service and they did say they would wash our fitteds with the PFs they provide, but we want to see if doing it ourselves is an option.

I already figured out I can't use Charlie's or Allen's since it's not our washer and other people use a variety of other things. Is Rockin' Green the same or would I be able to use that?

I'm thinking of getting a diaper sprayer just because I don't want to toss even BM poop directly into a laundromat washer.

Anyone have any advice/tips on how to do diaper laundry this way? If you do this, can you share your routine?

Thanks!

[Katie T]

I have no experience but I would probably get a diaper sprayer to get all the poo out that I could at home before throwing them in the washers.Make sure they get rinsed on hot at least once after a cycle, even if that means running another complete cycle that you don't add soap to would be helpful as well.

[lalemma]

I've washed our diapers (flats, prefolds, fitteds, pockets) in public machines a few times while traveling, and I found that I had to rinse the poo out first or the diapers just didn't get fully clean. However, those machines didn't have any kind of soak or extra rinse option, so I don't know how necessary a pre-wash rinse would be otherwise.

(Actually - now I remember that I've also washed in front-loaders while traveling, too, but not the industrial type. What I did was add just a tiny bit of soap to the "soak" part, and consider it a pre-wash. The diapers did seem to get clean even without rinsing out the poo, but I only did a few washes in that machine. I don't know what it'd be like long-term - and that machine had an "extra water" button, which I think helped.)

How I did it was: remove the poo diaper, put on new diaper, put baby in safe place/hand to dad, go rinse out poo, wring out diaper, put into wet bag. I didn't get the diaper clean or anything (and this is BF poo, so it's very... uh, liquid) but just getting 80% of it off seemed to be enough.

I am a heretic on laundry soap, personally. I don't necessarily believe that diapers have to be washed with some kind of crunchy soap - I mostly use All F&C military right now (which doesn't have optical brighteners) but I've used lots of other stuff. It all works for our water/machine. I think the key is lots of water relative to the amount of diaper fabric to be cleaned.