My washing routine is washing a diaper load every other evening. Currently, when I wash, Gabriel has gone through approx. 14 diapers. I keep a 5 gallon, dry bucket, beside our changing table. When I change him, I plop the diaper in the bucket. I do nothing fancy. I don’t rinse it, dump it, swoosh it, soak it, etc. It just goes in the bucket and the lid goes on.
When we are out-and-about I carry a few plastic grocery bags to throw any used cloth diapers in (as I said, nothing fancy). By the 2nd night when I wash, I dump any solids in the toilet. If it’s the AIO diapers I’m washing, I pull out all the inserts along with all the AIO covers and put them into a hot pre-rinse in the washer. If it’s the padded/prefold (old fashion) diapers I’m using I wash them the same way.
After they’ve rinsed once, I put my settings on HOT wash/COLD rinse, add 1 cup of baking soda and 1 cup of my homemade washing detergent (read about that here). I also add 1 cup of Vinegar in my fabric softener dispenser. The baking soda breaks down the Uric Acid and the vinegar restores the pH balance. DO NOT add the baking soda and vinegar together, or else you’ll have cool science in your washer 🙂 The vinegar could go in your Downy ball also (it’s also does a great job cleaning your washer hoses.)
Once the wash is complete I put all the diaper inserts and prefolds into the dryer on medium heat. All of the AIO shells are hung to air dry on a drying rack. Once the diapers are dry it’s simply a matter of stacking them back on their shelf.
That in short is my washing system. We’ve been using cloth diapers for four months, wish it was the last ten years. We have yet to have any difficulties with diaper rash, which seems to be what most people ask me about. Pretty easy to me….and sooooo nice to not buy diapers anymore!
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Does the homemade detergent not affect the absorbency of the cloth diapers?