Cloth Diapering on the Cheap: Taking Care of Your Diapers

Taking care of prefold diapers is really easy. It is one of the reasons I prefer prefolds to other types of diapers. When you get your prefolds (if they are new) they will be flat and kind of rough feeling. You need to run them through the wash three times before you use them. Just run them on hot/whites and put in a little bit of detergent. You can just wash them three times back to back, you don't need to dry them in between. When that is done, dry them and they should be fluffed up nicely and ready for use. You do not need to wash your covers before using them.

Next you will need a diaper pail to put the diapers in. Any kind will do, it is up to you. You do not need to put water or bleach in the pail. In fact you should never soak your diapers in bleach unless you want them to last for all of two weeks and then fall apart on you. I just put a plastic bag in my pail but if you want you can get what is called a "wet bag". This is a water proof, washable bag, that you put diapers in and then throw in the wash with the diapers. You can get them on any web site that sells cloth diapers.

Now you need to know how to wash your diapers. There are some people that will tell you that you need to pre-soak, or pre-rinse, and then do another rinse or some such nonsense but I disagree. I think these people are making it sound way to complicated and scaring people away from cloth diapering. All you need to do is set your wash to whites, put in the detergent, and wash them on hot. That is ALL! It is really simple. I should note that I do not know if it is different for front loader washers. I have a top loader. For detergent you want to use about 1/4 of the amount of detergent you would normally use. You do need to be careful about the brand of detergent you use. I know that Tide Free and Arm N Hammer Free both work well and are easily available at most stores.

The last thing most people wonder about is poop. If your baby is not eating solids yet, you don't need to do anything. The liquid they poop can go right in to the wash and will come out just fine. If your child is eating solids then you need to make a decision. You can do poop the cheap gross way or for very little more money you can do it the easy way. The cheap gross way is to get a small bucket and when you get a poop that will not just roll off the diaper, you put the whole diaper in the bucket of water. Then when you are ready to wash, you take out the diaper to wash it and all the poop will stay in the water. Then dump the water in the toilet. The easy way is to either buy a sprayer that hooks to your toilet for about $35 and spray the poop off or to buy a roll of liners for about $6.50. I use the liners. You get a roll of 100 and then just tear one off and put it in the diaper. When your kid poops, you just take the liner and flush it down the toilet. They look about like dryer liners.

Your covers can be washed with the diapers. You can put them in the dryer but they will last longer if you pull them out after washing and just let them air dry. If you go with Velcro diapers, don't forget to use your laundry tabs. These are the little squares of Velcro next to the tabs. You just fold the tab down on the square and then you won't have chains of diaper covers in your wash. Next time I will talk about overnights, diaper rash, cloth wipes and other odd items.