Thursday, April 30, 2009

Diaper Care

I came across this article this morning. http://blogs.consumerreports.org/baby/2009/04/how-to-care-for-cloth-diapers.html

It occurred to me that caring for diapers has become more complicated than it needs to be. Honestly, some of this information was not correct. For example, it says to test your diaper by putting water on it and checking to see if it beads up and if it does wash it again. However it fails to mention that with any stay dry material ( ie. Fleece, microfleece, suedecloth) it will ALWAYS appear to bead up so you’d be doing a lot of washing! Stay dry materials are used in many modern diapers and in all of the top 3 major brands and definitely deserve mentioning.

I am going to love being able to give the easy instructions for Smartipants!

I also get disturbed at the promotion of wet pails. Honestly it wastes more water and can be a hazard with a baby or small child in the house. It is no more helpful with stains than line drying your diapers in the sun. Avoid the risk and waste of the water and store in dry pail. If you really need to rinse your diapers then use a diaper sprayer! Very convenient.

When it comes to washing start simple and if you are having trouble with additives and a complicated washing routine then go back to basics!

Wash, rinse dry. Use a detergent that won’t leave residue and if you get stains put your diaper out in the sun-it takes out stains like magic! This also works great on clothing stained with baby food. Just wash and hang to dry in the sun.

2 comments:

  1. i was overcome with "How to wash" when i first started cloth diapering... it really is very simple.
    I do a cold rinse first, hot wash w/ detergent and another cold rinse (usually). hopefully the sun is out to line dry!

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  2. I read the consumer report article on washing diapers and felt like i was back in the 50s! LOL That's how my mom diapered/washed and it's so much easier now, 30 years later. Also, I wanted to say, who cares about stains anyway? They are DIAPERS, right? I have stains on some of my diapers and I leave them in the sun and they get better, but not totally gone...but I really don't mind because no one sees them but me! :)

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