Washing Cloth Diapers

Using cloth diapers is a very basic tightwad activity if you are a mother. About as basic as washing baggies! It is also one of the more disgusting jobs you will ever do. Some books and sites give the impression that this task is no big deal. Believe me, it is if you are at all normal in your fastidiousness! It is also a big deal financially however, which is what makes it worth the yuckiness. You can keep a pair of latex gloves just for this job if you really can't bear to touch the things, otherwise just wash your hands afterward.

Since there is little information on exactly how to go about this chore I have listed below the steps I use to wash diapers. There are lots of different preferences, particularly in the area of soaking (or not as the case may be!).

• First, rinse any 'solid' matter off the diaper. Do this by taking it and the diaper pail to the bathroom and dunking the diaper in the toilet. Keeping dunking till most of the 'solids' are off, then let it drain some of the water off. Hold the pail next to the toilet and quickly drop the diaper in. If a diaper is merely wet I just plunk it in the pail as is. Covers can go in the pail too.
• When the pail is full or you have run out of diapers dump the contents of the pail into the washing machine. Add a small amount of detergant and half a cup to a cup of Borax and run through a short wash cycle. Stop the machine before it spins out and let the load soak awhile (15-30min.). Then let it spin out but not refill for rinse.
• Reset the machine to do another wash cycle and add more detergant. You can add more Borax or the same amount of baking soda if it's a particularly dirty load. This time let the machine run all the way through. If you like you can add about a quarter to a half cup of vinegar to the rinse water. This helps all the detergant rinse out, but you have to be careful! Too much vinegar can irritate a very young baby's skin, especially if he or she has sensitive skin already! Older babies and toddlers can usually handle the vinegar in the rinse and it really does help the diapers get clean.
• I like to machine dry diapers, but it's okay to air dry them also. Covers generally should only be air dried, but this can be irritating (for you, not the baby!) if you use the plastic pants. I machine dry those too but take them out after about 10min. and they have lasted for me.

More information about washing diapers

More information
My Gentle Mothering Page-see links at the bottom