Does anyone use coin-op machines to launder their diapers?

[AmaraMonillas]

My husband and I are expecting our first child and it looks as if we will be moving into an apartment (we currently share a house with several people). It is highly unlikely we will move into a place that has a washer and dryer in our unit, so we will be using an on-site laundry room. It will probably cost $1ish per wash or regular dry session. We have been planning on cloth diapering and I would love to hear if any of you have this laundry situation and your thoughts.
Right now I am not great at keeping up on laundry, and money is very tight so those are two things I am a bit concerned about.

[ChetMC]

Doable

It's certainly doable, but I would definitely use flats or prefolds. I would stay away from AIOs and microfiber. If your LO has issues with wetness you can make fleece liners out of an old blanket or something.

Flats and prefolds will wash the easiest and dry the fastest. With separate covers you can stretch out your laundry longer (with an AIO it's like washing a cover with every diaper change when you don't need to).

I would also own a lot more diapers if I had to haul them to the laundromat and prefolds would definitely be cheaper than a large number of fitted diapers.

[LightForest]

I do!

Like the other poster mentioned, flats and prefolds are a good choice if you're using a coin-op machine because they're easier to get clean and dry quickly.

I have 18 prefolds, 12 flats, and 8 cotton fitteds for my 2 month old baby. This number of diapers lets us wash every 3 days and line dry. A wash load in my building costs $1.70, so I rinse poopy diapers by hand in the bathtub to avoid paying for an additional pre-rinse load.

So it's completely doable. I was worried about the effort and expense too, but so far it's been no big deal (and definitely cheaper than disposables).

[tallulahma]

i did- but i had all pockets and they are repelling water now

the people in my complex use way too much softner. i tried washing towels first and putting my dipes in the same machine after the towels but still got buildup.

i just moved and left the prefolds/covers in storage.... bummed.

so id be careful.

[chel]

if you still plan on nannying, maybe you could get some laundry privileges.

[lunita1]

Originally Posted by AmaraMonillas

My husband and I are expecting our first child and it looks as if we will be moving into an apartment (we currently share a house with several people). It is highly unlikely we will move into a place that has a washer and dryer in our unit, so we will be using an on-site laundry room. It will probably cost $1ish per wash or regular dry session. We have been planning on cloth diapering and I would love to hear if any of you have this laundry situation and your thoughts.
Right now I am not great at keeping up on laundry, and money is very tight so those are two things I am a bit concerned about.

I haven't done the math, but I suspect that using a diaper service may be more cost effective if you want to use cloth in that situation.

When my oldest was a baby, our small apartment had room for a washing machine in our kitchen. We didn't have room for a dryer, so I hung them to dry on the balcony or went to the laundry room with the heavy wet diapers to dry them in the coin-operated machines.

[clovergirl]

We did, when we first started with cloth almost 10 years ago! Like the previous posters mentioned, prefolds and flats are your best bet. The clean up the best and dry the quickest. I also used some quick dry all-in-ones.

I normally rinsed poopy diapers in the sink. I alternated doing one hot wash with soap with doing one with soap, one without to make sure the diapers were being rinsed enough. So one day I would do one wash, the next time I would do two. Usually one hot dryer cycle was enough to get everything dry, but we did get a drying rack that we used if anything came out slightly damp (worked well on our clothes too!).

Using the coin-op machines can add cost to cloth diapering, but if you go with prefolds/flats and plain covers your initial investment will be pretty low. It was definitely still worth it to us.

[AmaraMonillas]

Thanks for all the feedback folks!

[treeoflife3]

I did it with KL0s and BG3.0s for a couple months. I had no problems. I tried to wash a load of clothes before washing the diapers and same for the dryer but I couldn't always. I usually had to run 2 wash cycles though.. one to wash and one to rinse.

You could always try hand washing (probably easier with prefolds/flats) or at least drying in your apartment if you have space to save money on using the machines and avoiding machines with yucky stuff in 'em.

I definitely give my vote to flats though. I use them almost exclusively and they definitely wash and dry the easiest and actually aren't that hard to use, although I started with prefolds and on a squirmy older baby so mabye I was ahead on the curve? you can just fold them like prefolds though but the origami folds aren't too hard to learn, its just practicing the right fit really. Folding in thirds works too in wrap style covers!

ETA: I wasn't so great on keeping up on laundry either, especially as kiddo was still new and I was still adjusting to having a kid AND we had just moved, but I found that I'd usually make time for diapers even if everything else was dirty. Washing diapers required going to another building, but not to the store like sposies would. I figure we also used some of the money we would have spent on sposies on the machines. We just budgeted out quarters and took them out right away before we could spend that money on something stupid. Money was tight for us too but we managed since we planned to spend that money ahead of time.