I woke up this morning and wasn't quite sure what to write about-I knew I should write; both for myself and possibly someone interested in cloth that stumbles upon my blog someday...
I looked around my house and realized that all of my pocket diapers are hanging to dry on anything that will stand still! (I may just make a trip to bed bath beyond for one of those drying racks this evening....) So I figured why not talk about washing diapers? It's what everyone asks first when you tell them you use cloth: "what do you do with the poop? do you shake it off behind a tree??" I'm serious, I've had multiple people say those exact words to me...
I have about 10 pocket diapers currently and i always use them at nap and overnight plus whenever we're out of the house etc. In addition to pockets ( I love bumgenius 3.0's and their newer diaper, the 4.0) I use Indian cotton prefolds and stay dry doublers, which are a couple layers of microfiber topped with fleece to wick moisture-I have around 10 of those, all of which are never used up when it's time to wash-but it's great to be prepared. The purpose of telling you how many diapers I have is to lead up to the explanation of my diaper pail. I don't have multiple kids in diapers and i don't have a newborn that goes through 10-15 diapers a day, so all I need to make it every 2-3 days for laundry is a large paint bucket. You know the kind, they live in the home improvement section of walmart and sometimes fall out of work trucks and splatter the highway with white! Yep, those. They cost all of 4 dollars with lid included and come with a handy dandy handle to cart to the laundry room.
So, now that we've discussed the business of storing the stink, I'll move on to washing it up! Bumgenius manufacturers recommend using 1/4 the amount of detergent yours says to use. I say save yourself the horror of detergent residue, rashes and stripping diapers and go with a laundry soap from their website www.cottonbabies.com. I like Nellie's Natural Laundry Soda right now, but I really haven't tried any others besides Biokleen, which was horrible. Bumgenius has also recently started manufacturing their own powdered detergent which I'll probably try when I'm out of Nelllie's!
The tags on my Bumgenius say one cold wash, one hot wash (both with detergent) and an extra rinse. Personally, I rinse out overnight diaper pee because it stinks something awful, so I think that one wash with detergent is more than sufficient. I start a hot load, add my 1 tbsp. of Nellie's and every few washes 1/2-1 scoop of OxiClean Free and then toss the diapers in. I let the first cycle run, then run another hot cycle to really rinse any residue away. If I happen to be doing just prefolds adding a cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle really softens them up!! I hang dry all of the covers and pocket diapers and dry prefolds, inserts, doublers and cloth wipes on high. It's a good routine :)
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