One of the most daunting things when deciding whether or not you are going to cloth diaper is washing the diapers. When I first brought up the idea of cloth diapering Lucas’s first comment was “I don’t want to touch poop.” He made it veryclear that I would be the one that washes the diapers. After I did some research and talked to other cloth diapering moms I realized that it was actually quite easy to wash the diapers.
The system we use is the “dry pail” system which basically means that we throw the dirty diapers in an empty wet bag instead of throwing them in a pail that has water or some sort of solution for your diapers to soak in until you wash them. This was simple enough for us because instead of throwing the dirty disposable diapers in our Arm & Hammer diaper pail, we threw them in a bag. Since we use pocket diapers, I make sure the empty out the insert and throw both the insert and the diaper in the bag so that I don’t have to do anything later before I washed them. The poopy diapers weren’t much different except we tossed the poop in the toilet and then threw the diaper in the wet bag.
Once I am ready to do a load of laundry, I empty everything that is in the wet bag and throw the wet bag in the washing machine. Since I have a front-loading washer, I don’t have a pre-wash or pre-rinse cycle. So instead, the first thing I do is wash the diapers on cold WITHOUT soap. The reason you use cold water first is that it doesn’t let the poop stains set. The purpose of this first cycle is to rinse out the pee and to get off any of the poop residue that may be left on the diaper. After the cold cycle, I then wash the diapers on hot WITH Rockin’ Green soap. The purpose of this cycle is to get the diapers cleaned and ready for their next use. Once this cycle is done, I throw everything in the dryer and dry on low heat. To make your diapers last longer, you can hang dry your diaper shells while your inserts are in the dryer so that the elastic and PUL last longer.
We got the hang of washing our cloth diapers so quickly that even Lucas helps washing and drying the diapers! We are really only doing 2 or 3 extra loads of laundry a week! That is nothing!
