Easy Care Washing Instructions
Copyright 2002 by Soft Landing Diapers™

Many cd'ing mama's use a DRY pail. For a breastfed baby, you won't need to dunk the dirty diapers, it rinses clean in the pre-wash. For babies on formula or solid foods, you should be able to just roll the messes into the toilet. For stubborn messes, you may have to dunk. If you want to avoid dunking, fleece liners really help or buy a minishower. Minishowers hook up to your toilets water supply and is a great product for cloth diapering mama's! It makes washing diapers and keeping them stain free much easier.

Take out the dirty diapers put them in a cold soak for anywhere between 20-60 minutes then a pre-wash (cold still). After the pre-wash, switch the temp over to hot and add the wet diapers and about 1/4 cup of detergent and the longest wash setting. To help keep the diapers in good shape, use the slow setting for washing diapers then fast setting for the second rinse. Using an extra rinse cycle (this is when to put the speed on fast) helps get all the excess soap out. Otherwise, too much soap residue can make your diapers smell ~F~U~N~K~Y~ after awhile.

Some people use vinegar in the rinse cycle but there has always been a big debate surrounding vinegar and pul. Can the pul be damaged by vinegar? Nobody really knows for sure so many people just take out their pul covers and aio's then add vinegar to the final rinse.

Another great laundry detergent is Bi-O-Kleen. It is expensive but a little goes a long way. You can find Bi-O-Kleen online or at some health food stores. Bi-O-Kleen has a very nice citrus scent. Some wahms say that Bi-O-Kleen and other natural laundry detergents are not good to use with their products but MANY mama's have used only natural detergents and have never had a single problem.

If you have a stubborn stain that hasn't come out by pre-treating and washing, do NOT put it in the dryer, take outside (or a bright window inside) and let the sun bleach it for you. The sun really does the trick for stubborn stains!!

For those of you with a front loader, washing diapers is still very easy. Almost all front loaders have different kinds of cycles so you kind of need to go by what works best for your front loader. For example, I have an older model Maytag Neptune. This is my routine:

If there is dirty diapers in the pail, I put them in a cold short wash with an extra rinse with a small amount of Tide HE. When that is done, I toss in the rest of the wet diapers and do a longest hot wash + extra rinse with a very small amount of Tide HE and a squirt of ODOBAN (found this great stuff at Sam's Club!)

Remember, front loading washers use very little water compared to a top loader so you need just a minimal amount of detergent.

DON'T'S

Do not use fabric softeners in your diaper wash routine. Fabric softener adds a coating onto the diapers that blocks absorbency.

Do not use chlorine bleach. It will eat away at the diapers and cause them to wear out much faster. Oxiclean is safe to use in moderation but I have heard it can eat away at hemp diapers so use with caution. The hot wash and hot dry is enough to kill any germs. If you are worried about your next load of laundry, you can always run a quick empty load with bleach.

Don't forget to apply the fold back laundry tabs! Otherwise the diapers will all be hooked together and can ruin stitching and make the fabric very fuzzy.