Diaper Care

Lately our overnight diapers (happy hempies) have been smelling quite foul by morning. Not surprising as they stay on for 11-12 hours, but they are bad even for that, so I decided to do some "stripping" today.

Basically, cloth diapers get smelly for two reasons: not enough detergent, or too much. Ours was definitely a case of TOO MUCH.

After washing the diapers, I pulled out just the overnights to boil on the stove. I filled the pot with cold water and tossed the inserts in, and immediately the water was filled with soap. (the first picture) So I rinsed them and refilled. Same thing. Repeat this 15 times (the second picture is after 10 times). I kid you not. Then I felt like it was good enough to start the boil, even though there was still soap (the last pictures). So I boiled them and then did the same thing with the actual diapers. After boiling and rinsing some more (still soapy!) I threw them back in the washer for a quick cycle with vinegar and a tiny bit of bleach to kill any nasties. MORE SOAP. I had to do ANOTHER rinse, and can you believe there were still suds? At that point I decided we were good enough for today and tossed them in the drier.

They weren't out of the drier by bedtime, so we'll have to test them out tomorrow night.

I'm thinking of filling up the bathtub and throwing all of his diapers in and just jumping around in there to get some of the soap out! Oy. I have a few more diapers coming that I bought used, and we're going disposable for our trip to the great white north, so I'm thinking that this is a good time to strip everything. I see a lot of wash (sans soap) in my future.