Washing Your Custom Cloth Diapers

On the advice of our WAHM diaper designer:

"I personally use the dry bucket method. In my bathroom I have my set-up: a basic diaper pail with lid (under $10) no liner, a tall shaker for my baking soda and my newest cloth diapering MIRACLE, a toilet sprayer. I will take the diaper off the babe and head in to take care of business… If the diaper is wet, I just do a little shake of baking soda, fold it in half and drop it in the pail. If messy, then I will turn it inside out over the toilet and use my sprayer to remove any other solids from the diaper. The diaper liners are great for cleaning up, I do use them when it is their usual time to have a bowel movement and it makes everything that much easier. For those of you that do not have a toilet sprayer, get one! In the meantime, you can swish the diaper in the toilet to remove anything that may be stuck on and squeeze out any extra water. DO NOT WRING THE DIAPER OUT!! THIS WILL BURST YOUR HIDDEN PUL LAYER AND YOUR DIAPER WILL NO LONGER BE WATERPROOF.


Every other day, especially during the warmer summer months, take your diapers to the washing machine. Dump the whole pail in, diapers wipes and any soiled wet bags. Run them thru a cold water rinse cycle. This will remove all the bodily fliuds and any remaining messy spots. You can add 1/4 cup of baking soda to this rinse if there is an odor to your diapers. You want plenty of room to agitate the diapers without too much friction to cause pilling of the flannel. Next, you will run a hot wash with 1/4 to 1/2 of your detergent of choice (check the detergent link below). NO BLEACH EVER!! IT WILL ALSO DETERIORATE YOUR PUL LAYER. I have a front loader and actually I run a hot prewash, wash and cold final rinse. During you rinse cycle you can add a couple things. One is a few drops of tea tree oil, this will provide a fresh scent to your diapers and ward off any bacterial growth. The other is vinegar to make them cuddly soft since FABRIC SOFTENER IS NOT EVER TO BE USED. Remember we just got all the softener out of our fabric, do not put any back in!

Next the drying process: run your diapers thru the dryer (longest cycle you have) on medium to medium/high and check to see if they are done. You can either run them thru for more time or hang them (inside is as good as out) to finish drying. Of course you can hang them outside to dry instead of machine drying, but even when I do that, I will run them thru the dryer to fluff them for 30 minutes then put them out on the line. Any stains can be naturally removed with a little spritz of lemon juice and laying in the sun."