I love the stashes ladies. All I have to show are prefolds and a few workhorses from GMD. Not picture worthy. My mom and I did make cloth wipes last weekend!
What do you guys plan on using for a laundry detergent? I bought my diapers from kellyscloset and they recommend specific cloth diaper safe detergents and, maybe I misread it, but it sounds like a lot of the people on the NJCD board use just regular Tide.
What do you guys plan on using for a laundry detergent? I bought my diapers from kellyscloset and they recommend specific cloth diaper safe detergents and, maybe I misread it, but it sounds like a lot of the people on the NJCD board use just regular Tide.
I have found that the cloth diaper "detergent" the companies sell is really crappy. If you think about it of course they are going to tell you anything else will ruin your diapers. They make more money when you have to buy their detergent!!! Also they do fear monger their clients by telling the. Anything but those detergents will ruin your diapers. I'm sorry but if something I'm going to use on two kids, gets peed in and pood in is that freakin fragile I don't want it. The truth is most of those detergents don't actually contain much of anything to get your diapers clean you have to use double the amount sometimes triple to get them clean and that gets expensive fast. If your diapers don't get fully clean they will smell or you get what's called ammonia build up and they will give your LO rashes. I recommend the fluff love & CD science group in facebook the group here does not. That being said I use Gain powder and borax because I have hard water. DD isn't sensitive to Gain. If this LO turns out to be sensitive I'll use the arm and hammer free and clear. Just use whatever you use on your clothes.
What do you guys plan on using for a laundry detergent? I bought my diapers from kellyscloset and they recommend specific cloth diaper safe detergents and, maybe I misread it, but it sounds like a lot of the people on the NJCD board use just regular Tide.
I have found that the cloth diaper "detergent" the companies sell is really crappy. If you think about it of course they are going to tell you anything else will ruin your diapers. They make more money when you have to buy their detergent!!! Also they do fear monger their clients by telling the. Anything but those detergents will ruin your diapers. I'm sorry but if something I'm going to use on two kids, gets peed in and pood in is that freakin fragile I don't want it. The truth is most of those detergents don't actually contain much of anything to get your diapers clean you have to use double the amount sometimes triple to get them clean and that gets expensive fast. If your diapers don't get fully clean they will smell or you get what's called ammonia build up and they will give your LO rashes. I recommend the fluff love & CD science group in facebook the group here does not. That being said I use Gain powder and borax because I have hard water. DD isn't sensitive to Gain. If this LO turns out to be sensitive I'll use the arm and hammer free and clear. Just use whatever you use on your clothes.
Amen sister! I just compared the two lines of advice and went with what made the most sense to me. It just doesn't seem logical to wash material that is covered in poop and pee with two tablespoons of water softeners, followed by rinse, rinse, rinse. It does make sense to do a short wash to remove any poop and pee followed by a heavy duty wash with the recommended amount of real detergent and a water softener if your water is hard.
Post by paintdadanta on Apr 4, 2015 16:17:26 GMT -5
We just bought the Tide Powder HE but I have no idea how well it works yet. But I think GMD and RaR have it on their recommended list. Is anyone trying the wool dryer balls like Woolzies?
I used homemade detergent for two years (similar recipe, but a little different) until I was exploring CDs and found FL&CDS. I realized that there's really not any cleaning power in homemade detergents and that the soap used is different from detergent because it builds up in fibers where detergent rinses clean. I thought our clothes were clean until I started using Tide free and gentle and now I realize that our clothes looked pretty dingy and they had an off smell to them. I know there are mixed reviews on fluff love, but the info there just made sense and I definitely won't be using my homemade detergent anymore, especially for diapers. Here's more info on the science of what I explained, if you're interested. www.fluffloveuniversity.com/senior-year/the-bad-the-worse-and-the-ugly-why-we-dont-use-homemade-detergents/
What are you ladies doing for your wash routines? I am so confused! I read on the CD board that a prewash and extra rinse were absolutely necessary, however FLCDS says no rinse is necessary and a very short prewash is sufficient. So many differing opinions! I wanted to ask the CD board, but it seems that they all have the same opinion, or maybe some people are too scared to disagree with them...
I have an HE washer and plan to use Purex Free and Clear, I just have no idea how to wash. What has worked for you ladies in the past if you have done this before?
First thing you need to do is get a free water test from water boss. That will tell you if you have hard or soft water. You may have to tweak your routine to find what works best. My personal routine is as follows but I do have hard water. I also have an HE top loader. I do a quick wash and do the dirt setting to heavy I put in 1/2 cup of borax (hard water) I also use a little detergent because my DD is on solids and has nasty peanut butter poops. Then I do a heavy duty wash on hot with 1/2 cup of borax and a full scoop of regular powder gain. Then I hang covers and dry everything else. If I'm lazy it all goes in the dryer. For a newborn my routine was as follows granted we had normal water so I didn't need a water softener. It was a non HE top loader. Prewash setting, then just a full heavy wash with full scoop of All free and Clear which I found to be really weak and switch to arm and hammer free and clear. with newborn I found if I didn't have enough diapers and the load was to small there wasn't enough rubbing action to get them clean so I would throw a towel in for extra friction.
Well I guess this thread is pretty entertaining as it has sparked interest on another board. We're getting flamed so hard on NJCD right now. Apparently they like lurking this post, so I'm sure they'll see this. I found the thread pretty funny since they just basically ranted and raved the whole time about Fluff Love being mentioned here. I'm really not even sure where they get their info on them because it's so far from what I've seen during my last three months as a member of the group. As they pointed out though, I'm a FTM so we'll see if my diapers come clean using the amount of Tide recommended on the bottle. If not, I can always switch to using two teaspoons of Borax followed by rinse, rinse, rinse!
omgtree - thanks for the input! Did the Arm & Hammer work well for you? MH wanted to use it because it is relatively cheap, but I have read mixed reviews.
Like anything some babies can be allergic to it. I never had a problem with it. I should also mention once my DD started solids I started spraying her poopy diapers. I never had a problem with arm and hammer but when I used the free and clear I usually had to use a cap and a half to get her diapers clean.
Also I have to add this, tea tree oil (TTO) and grape seed extract oil or whatever it's called will NOT get rid of yeast in your cloth diapers. I actually researched this and found scientific articles that state the amounts needed to kill yeast/mold. For a standered washer it would take over a gallon to properly kill yeast/mold. Yeah a gallon!!! Also it's actually the preservative in the oil that distroys it not the oil itself. If you end up with yeast just bleach unless you have iron hard water.
What thread is it? Its odd that it bothered them. Fluff love was only mentioned a few times, its not like we were bashing the advice given on NJCD. A lot of us are first timers with cloth, its only logical to explore different options and opinions.
That's what I thought. I didn't know I would cause offense by posting what I thought the more logical of the two washing instructions are, but apparently I did. Someone brought this thread up out of the blue on one of their threads called "come in here" with the subheading "if you want to be flamed." Some of it is just banter among the members, so it goes back and forth between that and the discussion of this thread. I'm still not even sure why/ how they found this thread and why it matters to them.
What do you guys plan on using for a laundry detergent? I bought my diapers from kellyscloset and they recommend specific cloth diaper safe detergents and, maybe I misread it, but it sounds like a lot of the people on the NJCD board use just regular Tide.
I have found that the cloth diaper "detergent" the companies sell is really crappy. If you think about it of course they are going to tell you anything else will ruin your diapers. They make more money when you have to buy their detergent!!! Also they do fear monger their clients by telling the. Anything but those detergents will ruin your diapers. I'm sorry but if something I'm going to use on two kids, gets peed in and pood in is that freakin fragile I don't want it. The truth is most of those detergents don't actually contain much of anything to get your diapers clean you have to use double the amount sometimes triple to get them clean and that gets expensive fast. If your diapers don't get fully clean they will smell or you get what's called ammonia build up and they will give your LO rashes. I recommend the fluff love & CD science group in facebook the group here does not. That being said I use Gain powder and borax because I have hard water. DD isn't sensitive to Gain. If this LO turns out to be sensitive I'll use the arm and hammer free and clear. Just use whatever you use on your clothes.
Newbie question. Is borax going to be too hard on my diapers if I don't have hard water? I'm pretty sure our water will be pretty hard because it's well water.
Re: laundry soap. I used Charlie's last time and never had any problems with ammonia smell and I felt like they were clean. I've seen reviews that it doesn't work for everyone so there's probably going to be a learning curve with your washer and your water.
I had a HE washer and did a short pre-wash on cold, then added the soap and did a wash on hot and could set an extra rinse after that (cold).
Don't make yourself crazy with a complicated routine starting out - a lot of what you see online is people who are troubleshooting, you may or may not need to but you can't anticipate now. I think when you're reading the troubleshooting stuff it can feel overwhelming when you're just starting out, but for me just jumping in and doing it got me over that pretty fast. I've maybe posted on the NJCD board once or twice (stash questions), but I think their advice for washing is pretty solid from what I've lurked on.
I would not recommend Charlie's soap. It has been proven to cause chemical burns on babies.
"Proven" by whom?
It's difficult to say that anything is really "proven" scientifically, but there is definitely evidence supporting that Charlie's would and does cause chemical burns. Charlie's is pretty secretive about their ingredients, but their MSDS states that the detergent contains sodium metasilicate. I will post a link showing that sodium metasilicate is a mild to severe skin irritant. The ingredient is actually a pH adjuster. Since pH is already high in water full of urine and feces, Charlie's raises that even further which is what causes the burns. It seems like some people don't have issues with Charlie's and I'm guessing that would be because the water in their region has a low pH. Basically, the company is being cheap by not adding another ingredient that would buffer the sodium metasilicate and then they're being secretive and hiding what the true ingredients in their detergent are. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15981734/?i=48&from=Sodium%20metasilicate
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