General Care and Washing Instructions
Choosing a Detergent
Front Loader/HE washers
Specific Brand Care Instructions
DOs and DON'Ts
Prepping New Diapers
Care of Wool
Stains and Odors
General Care and Washing Instructions
Caring for cloth diapers is usually as simple as doing a couple extra loads of laundry a week. We recommend you start with a simple routine, then if you have problems, start trying variations. Your water, washing machine, and climate can make a difference in what works. NOTE: These instructions apply to everything except wool. Here is the basic routine:
- Put wet and soiled diapers directly into a dry diaper pail. (We do not recommend wet pails.) Some people choose to line their pail with a pail liner. If you are past the exclusively breastfed stage, shake off any solids into the toilet, or rinse with a minishower.
- Wash every 2 or 3 days.
- Do a Hot Wash cycle with an extra rinse. If you use a pail liner, throw it in also. Use half the amount of detergent recommended by the detergent manufacturer. (See Choosing a Detergent below.)
- If you have a bag or liner in the load, take it out before the final rinse, as it can hold water and prevent everything from rinsing completely.
- Put everything (diapers, covers, wet bags, liners, wipes, inserts*, doublers, pockets, all-in-ones) in the dryer for 60-80 minutes. You may wish to run a shorter dryer cycle, remove wet bags, covers, and pocket diapers (since they'll dry quickly) and then continue to dry everything else longer. Alternatively, hang everything outside for fresh air and sunshine!
*NOTE: Microfiber inserts will stay absorbent longer if line dried or dried on low.
Choosing a Detergent
The only thing less convenient about using cloth diapers today as compared to 20 years ago, is that detergents all have so much *stuff* added to them that doesn't react well with diapers. Our favorite detergent is Country Save, but if it's hard to find environmentally-friendly detergents in your area, Tide works well on diapers for most people. Note for Des Moines area people: Country Save is available at Little Padded Seats in Valley Junction, both in sample packs and 10 lb boxes.
Click here for a summary of choosing a detergent from Happy Heiny's.
If you want to see if your current favorite detergent will work, check out these charts for top loader and front loader machines. Formulas change, so always look at the ingredients. You want the simplest detergent possible, which happily is often the cheapest.
Ingredients to avoid:
- optical brighteners
- fabric softener
- bleach, including color safe
- enzymes
- fragrance
Front Loader/HE Washers
High Efficiency washing machines are wonderful for the environment. The irony is, they're not optimal for washing cloth diapers. If you look inside a load of regular clothes in your front loader, you'll see 2-4 inches of water sloshing around the bottom of the drum. If you look in a load of diapers, chances are you will see no sloshing water. When you put in a load full of absorbent diapers, they tend to soak up a lot of the water, then they're just flopping around in there instead of washing!
What I first got my new front loader (the salesman told me I was nuts to want a new top loading machine, so I caved), I had to learn how to wash diapers all over again. Here's what I learned:
- Load diapers into the washer, then run a "rinse and spin" cycle on the delicate setting, or with "no spin" at all if you have that option. Cold water is fine. This will saturate the diapers. When you start with diapers already soaking wet, the water the washer adds when you run the main wash cycle, will be enough to actually wash the diapers!
- Then I add detergent and run a normal hot cycle with an extra rinse (and extra fast spin to minimize drying time).
Many front loaders have a Sanitary cycle with extra hot water. We don't recommend using this every time you wash your diapers, as it will shorten their useful life, but using it once a month or so will keep your diapers smelling fresh.
Choosing the right detergent (see above) is extra important with HE machines to avoid smelly and repelling diapers.
Specific Brand Care Instructions
Click on these links for instructions specific to these products:
Baby Beehinds
Babykicks
Blueberry
bumGenius
Bummis
DryBees
Fuzzi Bunz
Happy Heinys
Kissaluvs
Knickernappies
Lana Wool
Stacinator
Thirsties
DOs and DON'Ts
DO fasten hook/loop closures onto fold back tabs to prevent diapers from getting stuck together into a "diaper chain". Diapers and covers that do not have fold back tabs should be turned inside out and fastened closed.
DO use the highest water level available in your machine to help rinse diapers completely.
DO unfold/unstuff diapers before placing in the washer to allow complete cleaning.
DO smell your diapers after washing. If they smell stinky out of the washer, you need to use more detergent, or a stronger detergent. If they smell like detergent, do another hot rinse to get all the detergent out.
DON'T use bleach or fabric softener on any diapering products. Beware that "baby" detergents and "free & clear" or "natural" detergents can contain oils that leave a coating and affect absorbency.
DON'T use natural soaps, as the natural oils can leave a residue on microfleece causing it to repel liquid.
DON'T use Desitin or other diaper creams containing zinc oxide, as that is very difficult to wash out of diapers. You can use our olive oil-base Healing Salve safely with cloth diapers, or if you need to use stronger medicated creams, use a flushable liner.
Prepping New Diapers
All new diapers need to be washed before use. Everything except new prefolds only needs to be washed once.
Brand new prefolds will be flat and stiff, not soft and quilted as you might expect. Don't worry, they will soften up! Bleached prefolds need to be washed in hot and dried on high 2 times before use. Unbleached prefolds need to be washed and dried 4-5 times to remove the natural oils and waxes in the cotton.
Hemp products can be used after one wash, but they will continue to become more absorbent through the first 8-10 washes. They also may shrink about 10%.
NOTE: The first few times you wash hemp products or unbleached prefolds, you should not wash them together with microfleece products (like liners or pocket diapers). The natural oils in the hemp and cotton may stick to microfleece and cause it to repel moisture, which will cause leaks.
Care of Wool
Caring for your wool products is easy with LANA Lanolin Soap. The high lanolin content, 20%, is higher than in other wool-washes, and will help keep your wool products incredibly soft. Wash as seldom as possible, only when the wool begins to feel stiff, or has odors, or is soiled. With diaper covers, this may be only once every 2 weeks or so, or longer if they are not in constant use (only used at night, for example). Simply hand wash wool products in lukewarm water with just enough soap to make the water sudsy. Do not rinse out the lanolin soap. Roll the diaper cover or nursing pads in a towel to squeeze out excess moisture, then hang to dry.
If you do not use LANA Lanolin Soap, you will need to re-lanolize your wool every third washing or so. After washing with a mild soap in lukewarm water, melt about 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of lanolin per cover (out of a tube like Lansinoh) in some hot water. Add the melted lanolin to a basin of warm water, along with a drop or two of baby shampoo, then add your covers. Let your covers soak for at least 15 minutes, then roll in a towel and hang to dry as above.
NOTE: We recommend using lanolin or lanolin soap in a basin, then emptying the water outdoors. Over time, lanolin used in a sink can create a wax build up in your pipes.
Stains and Odors
For diaper pail odor, try deodorizer discs, a few drops of essential oil, bumGenius Odor Remover Spray, or simply sprinkle baking soda in the bottom of the pail.
Some people don't mind stains, as these are diapers, but I find it very easy to avoid stains with the help of the sun! As I am moving diapers from the washer to the dryer, I check for stains. I take any stained diapers outside and hang in the sun (this works even on cloudy days). Usually the stain is gone in just an hour or two, then I throw it in the dryer with the rest of the clean diapers to fluff it up. Even in the winter, I have a drying rack that I put out on our deck and lay stained diapers on. Sometimes the rack sits in several feet of snow, but it's still out there!
Ammonia smell is a common problem with cloth diapers. (Urine gradually turns into ammonia as it sits.) The best remedy I have found for ammonia smell is bumGenius Odor Remover Spray. The first month I used the odor remover spray, I sprayed a few squirts on every diaper I took off my baby, before putting the diaper in the pail. No more odor! After that I just sprayed overnight or poopy diapers.
As you take diapers out of the washer, hold one to your face and take a big sniff. If it doesn't smell clean, then you need to use more detergent, or a different detergent, or hotter water. Check our tips on choosing a detergent above. If you have a front loading washer, read our HE washer tips above.
If your diapers smell fine out of the washer, but smell awful when your child urinates, the detergent may not be rinsing out completely. Double check the detergent information and front loader/HE washer tips above. If you have very hard water, you may have good luck adding a little Calgon into your rinse cycle. If you change detergents, you may need to try stripping your diapers. This simply means running a full hot wash cycle without detergent, repeating until the water is free of suds. Then dry as usual.
If you're not sure what to try, contact me and I'll help you figure out where to start.
Finally, if you are struggling with smelly microfiber inserts, it may be cheaper in the long run and less work to replace your inserts. Microfiber starts losing its absorbency after about a year of hot water washing and drying, so for a small investment, you'll get an absorbency boost (which may help if you have leaking diapers) in addition to fresh-smelling diapers!
|
