Confession.
I have a confession to make: I absolutely love washing Patrick's cloth diapers.
Wow. Yes, to some, this may seem like a complete shock--cause a lot of people despise doing laundry. I have always not minded doing the laundry--probably because we don't ever let it "pile up" and when the laundry basket is full, we do a load.
how cute does he look in his London dipe from the UK?!! & he's got a major fluffy bum going on!
Not long ago I posted about how we were starting to wash our own dipes, instead of having our service do it. Then I posted about how we found a good nighttime dipe, so we're 100% in cloth now. Well, a few weeks into not having our diaper service and washing our own dipes, I've come to this conclusion (and confession): I love love LOVE doing our own diaper laundry.
A big factor of this love is that we have a separate washing machine in which we use to do our diaper laundry. 'Tis wonderful to not have to wash Patrick's poopy dipes in the same machine we wash our clothes in.
Another factor is this magical invention, the diaper hose. Mike attached this to the toilet in Patrick's bathroom and it's ah-mazing. When there's a #2 on a dipe, we just rinse the poo off in the toilet using this hose (with a super-impressive water pressure! that poo doesn't stand a chance hanging onto the cloth), then toss the dipe into our diaper pail. It's awesome--I never have to touch any poo (yet I still wash my hands like crazy as if they were covered in it!) and the sprayer prevents anything from accidentally landing outside of the toilet (as was the case when we tried to just "flap off" the poo without touching the water and/or yucky part of the dipe.
I actually look forward to diaper laundry! Which, after a few more nighttime dipe purchases, we only have to wash the dipes every 5-6 days now--which is AWESOME. Yes, we totally could wash them more often, but we try and wait (to save that water!) until we're almost out before we do a load.
And for my cloth diaper friends, here's the washing routine we've settled in with...for now. It can always change :) But this is what's working for us at the moment to get the smell and color/stains out of each of the dipes:
- We do a "prewash" on cold with about 2 tablespoons of regular blue Dawn and about a cup of Borax. We let them soak in this (with water) for about a half hour before we run the load.
- We do a second wash on warm with Tide (and every other time or so with bleach)--we usually let them soak in this (with water) for about an hour or so.
- Since we have not-great hang-drying sunlight in and around our yard (thanks trees!), we usually dry the dipes in the dryer. It usually takes 2 full dryer cycles to get them fully dry.
And that's it! They come out fluffy and soft and smelling great and ready to go on Patrick's booty!
a surprised fluffy bum sneak-attack flash pic from mom.
Yes, it is true--and I can't believe I'd ever be admitting these even!--I sure love washing cloth diapers.
