Cloth Diapering-Laundry and Solids

I was rereading some of my previous posts about cloth diapering and thinking to myself that some things have changed as of late, specifically my laundry routine.

As Mara has started solids, our laundry routine has changed a bit.  When she was exclusively breastfed everything was water soluble and easy to wash out.  Now not so much....

I think in the cloth diaper world you can go about this one of two ways.  The first is to buy those disposable inserts that you can lay in the diapers and lift out when your child poops.  This never made sense to me as it's just another disposable thing to buy and throw away.

The second option is to purchase a diaper sprayer and attach it to your toilet.  We found a sprayer on clearance at a local cloth diaper store before Mara was born and Josh hooked it up in the bathroom adjacent to Mara's room.  It worked really good at getting all the poop off of the diaper and when you were done you just flushed it away.  No bad smells lingering afterwards!

My only issue with the sprayer was the water splatter.  At first I would get water everywhere in the bathroom.  I felt like I had to clean the bathroom every time I dealt with a dirty diaper. As time went on I got better with my aim but still wasn't completely satisfied.  Enter the diaper dawg spray cover.  Totally awesome.  It looks like those dog collars that your animal gets when they have stitches from the vet.  It slips over the sprayer head and voila no splatter!!!

So after a quick rinse our routine hasn't changed much.  I still spray the diapers down with BioKleen bac out and throw them in the diaper pail.  I now rarely rub them down with the diaper soap as I usually get all of the poop off with the sprayer.

On wash day I throw everything into the washer turning the pail liner inside out and using it as a hand cover to arrange the diapers.  I now don't do an initial rinse but do a hot soak on my diapers.  I do this to get them nice and wet.  I am still using Charlie soap but now use probably close to 3 tbsps per load.  I run a hot wash cycle followed by a rinse cycle.  After this initial rinse I usually do one more to make sure I get all the soap out.  I've found that over time this really helps on build up on the diapers.

Then I throw the inserts into the dryer with three wool dryer balls on high for about an hour.  I found that the dryer balls help a ton with static cling and dry time.  I still hang all my covers for about a half a day and then stuff them all when everything is dry!