Dirty Diapers
In this house we cloth diaper. I do it because I have a responsibility to keep my mountain of diapers out of the landfill. I don't cloth diaper 100% of the time, though I wish we did, but at night, we use a disposable in order to keep our sheets dry and our sanity in tact. Kudos to those of you who cloth at night, maybe one day soon I will too.
But let's get down to business. The peed-in, pooped-in, dirty business. From what I have read this is a very complex business for many mommies. At least when I read their washing routines, it seems very complex to me, with all the extra rinses, special soaps, strippers (not those kinds!) and who knows what other sorts of things go into that mix.
Want to know what I do? Nothing a whole lot different from the my regular laundry routine.I don't even separate my son's diapers from my other laundry! I gently shake off and solids into the toilet, and if there are any clingons, I rinse them off with the diaper sprayer, then throw the diaper into the pail until I have enough laundry to wash a load. (Maybe every other day if not every third day).
I throw the diapers (and maybe some jeans or towels or what not) into my washing machine and I wash everything on cold,use my homemade laudry detergent and then hang dry in the sun to remove stubborn stains or throw the load into the dryer. Some times I will throw my diapers in the dryer for 5 minutes after hang drying just to soften them up a bit. I haven't yet experienced stubborn stinks and I've been washing diapers for 2 years now... until recently that is.
I was given 22 bum genius diapers for our expected bundle that have been well loved for at least 2 years. I swapped the girly ones for boyish ones, replaced elastics as needed, and converted the ones with really bad velcros to snaps. I washed the inserts as I normally do, hung them outside to dry in the sun, and was ready to stuff and set aside for October. However there was still and underlying- not-my-child's-pee scent. So I washed again, hung them outside again and still, the underlying smell was there. So I left them outside. Little did I know ( even as obsessed as I am with checking the weather network), that that very day we would have a big thunderstorm, Not just rain, but dark angry clouds, with bright flashes of lightning. I wasn't even thinking about my diaper inserts hanging on the laundry line! Once I did realize, it was already too late. My inserts were soaked with rain water so I figurred I might as well just let them dry out after the storm. Once dry, I smelled them and to my surprise, they smelled brand new, like out-of-the-package new. I thought maybe it's a fluke, So I left another set out in the next storm and I had the same results.
I'm no chemist. In fact Chemistry was probably one of my worst subjects. But perhaps it's the extra nitrogen in the atmosphere reacting with the ammonia in the diapers? That's my best guess. Someone told me not too long ago that I would get the same result if I just hang my wet diapers outside to dry. However, that clearly was not the case for me, since that is part of my normal routine and that set of diapers was hung outside twice while wet with no results.You can tell me I'm crazy, that I should be doing 5 rinses and using special products or that my theory just doesn't work. But being the stubborn dutch woman that I am, Im not changing my ways,because my way works well in this house hold. Now I await the next thuderstorm So I can purposely put out my diaper laundry then. My neighbours must think I'm nuts!
