The Cloth Diaper Saga... How Does It All Work?

So, for the next installment of The Cloth Diaper Saga, I will be tackling the biggest issue that people have with cloth diapers- poop.. well, more importantly, cleaning poop.

Above you can see a picture of one of my favorite cloth diapers- the Fuzzibunz. The first step to dealing with the poop is a preemptive one. When putting a clean diaper on the baby, we lay down a liner in the diaper. It comes on a roll (basically like toilet paper) and you just lay it in the diaper. The liner is flushable and it gets about 97% of the poop. We have used the Cutey Baby diaper liners and have had great success with them. They are flushable and biodegradable.

Then you are probably wondering..what happens to the other 3%?

We have a diaper sprayer for the rest of the poop! The sprayer connects directly into the water supply of the toilet. When we have a diaper that still has poop on it once the liner is removed, we spray the diaper clean with the diaper sprayer. It pretty much works like the water sprayer next to your kitchen sink- but it is very powerful! After everything is rinsed off in the toilet, you simply flush it all down.

It's important to note that exclusively breastfed babies have very runny, liquidy poop, so placing the liner in the diaper doesn't really help because it's mostly liquid. In my experience, the poop eventually got less like liquid and the liner started to make a difference. Also, because we got the one-size diapers, we had to wait about a month before Catie Grace started wearing cloth, so we skipped the meconium and really liquidy poop. Although the liner isn't really helpful at first, the sprayer is amazing and will rinse it all off with now problem. Seriously- this thing can spray!

So the solids have been thrown away in the toilet..the remnants have been rinsed off.. now all that's left is to remove the absorbent insert and put it all in the smell-proof bag. I bought the Kissaluvs Antibacterial Pail Liner. The pail liner is smell proof and it has a pocket that you can put essential oils in to make it smell better. When I am ready to clean the cloth diapers I wash the bag too! I just turn the bag inside out so all the diapers go into the washer, so I never have to stick my hand in with the dirty diapers.

Washing the cloth diapers is really easy too- once I found the right detergent. I did a lot of research on what detergent to use because I had read/heard that detergent can make or break the cloth diaper experience. There are a lot of different laundry soaps that got great reviews for cloth diapers, but many of them are hard to find locally. The most important thing about choosing a cloth diaper laundry detergent is to avoid dyes, fabric softeners, and any soaps that are "free." Ironically, the "free" soaps are the worst for cloth diapers.

I found Soap Nuts at Greenlife here in Chattanooga. Soap Nuts are the actual fruit of a Chinese Soapberry tree and are an all-natural detergent. I put three soap nuts in the little bag that comes with the detergent and throw them in the washer with the diapers. You can use the soap nuts twice, so the box I have has lasted for about two months and I would say I have about another week of the first box. The box was only about $10.

To wash the diapers, I first run them on a pre-wash cycle on Cold/Cold without soap. After the pre-wash I wash them again on a Hot/Cold wash with an extra rinse and extra water.

After the diapers are washed I hang them on the drying rack to dry. On a nice day I put the drying rack outside to dry in the sun- very green! On a rainy/snowy day, I let them dry inside. I usually like the diapers to dry outside because the sun naturally bleaches them. That's right- even though you can't use bleach on cloth diapers, the sun will bleach out any stains you may encounter. Isn't Mother Nature and being green awesome?

After the diapers are cleaned and dried, I put the absorbent insert back into the diapers and put them in these convenient storage bins.

That is all there is to cleaning the cloth diapers! It really isn't all that bad. I wash the diapers every other day- which may sound like a lot, but it really isn't. Now that I am used to doing the diapers, I have a routine and it doesn't take very much time at all.