Am I supposed to run 3 whole washer cycles every 1-2 days for 3-8 tiny rectangles?

[wisper]

Sorry for all the questions, trying to and slowly figuring this out. I have prefolds and flats on their way over in the mail, along with wipes. We might also add “paper towel” or “bidet” wipes in ourselves.

However, this still leaves only 1-3 soiled diapers a day. I don’t want to let things sit for a lot of reasons, so I’d like to clean everyday.

However, it sounds like you run a cycle on cold, then hot, then cold again… which, okay, that’s simple enough. But especially with EC success, that feels pretty wasteful water-wise to run a whole cycle on such a tiny amount of laundry, let alone 3 cycles?

This can’t be right, right? Am I reading this wrong? I do remember going through a LOT of disposable diapers before EC, especially when baby was younger.

I’m legitimately kind of afraid our landlord might throw us out with that volume of laundry being run, and also don’t want to waste it. What does everyone here do?

 

[wisper]

Thank you, everyone! Though I have to say I feel more confused now reading that everyone has different routines. I’ve read the wiki and various articles and it seems like everyone has a different opinion.

What I’ll be washing will mostly be flats or prefolds (still waiting to receive them in the mail), and maybe a doubler or two for overnight (just pee on these!). Everything is cotton, a doubler might involve some hemp for overnight. The water here is soft.

Part of why I’m so confused is because I thought back to the newborn days. We absolutely had blowouts where poop got on his clothes. And literally today, a large solid poop smeared outside the diaper onto pants. I’ve never done anything special when this happens, and it’s always come out clean without staining (just a normal hot cycle, detergent, and tiny amount of vinegar—if it’s super bad, we run under cold water). Pee has also gotten on his and my clothing and bedding and it’s just never been an issue despite not doing anything special to wash it, though obviously cloth diapers will get more “use”. I’ve also gotten blood on absolutely everything (heavy periods!) and have period underwear (ie Thinx), and that similarly has never had a problem, and again, I don’t do anything besides running it under cold water immediately before washing within a day or three. It’s been years. Unless I’m doing something wrong—all these advanced routines make me feel like I’ve never done laundry correctly?!

I’d rather play it safe, but will probably go for a manual prewash or quick washer soak, then either an immediate wash on hot and/or I’ll hang dry in the sun and run a bigger hot load every 2-3 days. I might also adjust depending on if anything gets poop on it—would prefer to immediately wash, or wash within the day—if we do.

 

[nicoleb07]

@wisper We just do a rinse cycle (just water) followed by a regular wash cycle on hot with an extra rinse at the end. After the initial rinse cycle we throw in all of bb’s other clothes, towels, etc to make a good size load for the standard wash. We wash every 2-3 days. We do use a bidet sprayer to pre spray off poopy diapers ahead of bagging them for the wash. We haven’t had any issues at all.

 

[tanzanite]

@wisper I do 1 hot wash. Splash of bleach and a soak cycle and a rinse cycle. Line dry or toss in the dryer if I have to. Never had a problem with smells or rashes. Cloth baby # 5

 

[sexualpurity]

@wisper I did two washes when baby was EBF and the poop stayed in the diapers. Now that they eat solids I plop or rinse and one wash with a prewash and rinse works well. In the load I add diapers, inserts, cloth diaper wipes, the diaper pail liner, cloth paper towels, kitchen towels, and rags. I do two loads a week.

 

[grace2018]

@wisper Other things I add:
- cloth napkins
- kitchen towels
- wash cloths/cloth wipes

I do 2 washes, a 30 minute fast cycle in warm with 1/2 scoop of detergent. Hot heavy duty wash with full scoop of detergent.

You could probably wait and do it after 4 days, I know I occasionally forget and do it after 4 days and we haven’t had any issues (20 months in). Or 3.5 days?

 

[dantter]

@wisper I only run one cycle (on hot) because my machine has a good prewash included in the programme. We almost never have poop diapers so that helps. I think most people only do two. And I don’t do it every day, every 3-4 days is fine, especially with flats which clean very easily. I typically do Mondays and Thursdays. But I think your situation with only using 1-3 diapers a day is a bit unusual, you can’t really save up for a full load, especially if you want to wash every day. Maybe do a daily rinse or prewash?

Don’t quote me on the math, but with an efficient washer I still think you’re saving water compared to using disposables, a lot of water is used in manufacturing.

If you’re doing two washes you can add things like towels to the second wash.

 

[isaiah122]

@dantter I did the math! An average wash on an HE machine uses 14 gallons of water, and a toilet flush is 1.6 gallons, so each wash is the same amount of water as 8.75 toilet flushes. (Probably a similar number to your added flushes for EC) Of course that doesn’t take into account the energy to heat the wash water, which is significant.

What kind of machine do you have?

 

[dantter]

@isaiah122 I’m impressed! But how much water is used to manufacture a disposable diaper? I’ve no idea really. With a cloth diaper you’d also have to divide that number by the times it’s used.

 

[markiplier]

@wisper Two cycles, hot, with detergent. Spray solids off before the first wash. That’s it. I wash my son’s diapers with his clothes.

 

[robbvii]

@wisper I handwash dirty diapers (haven't started solids yet so they're not that gross to me) and then put them in the wet bag with the pee ones, then wash everything on "sanitary" which is super hot once every few days. Probably bad for the elastics but they were second hand anyway so I can't make myself care. The wet bag does smell like a barnyard pretty quick though.

 

[_ajayy_2014]

@wisper I use a sprayer for solids as they’re taken off baby and just do one super duper hot water wash about every 1.5-2 days. Never did all the extra washes except for prepping new prefolds. Ik it’s not “the way” but in two years I haven’t run into any issue doing the single hot wash

 

[buckeye_momof4]

@wisper We also do ec and so we only go through about four diapers per day. We do a daily prewash, mostly because we do cloth overnight and baby isn’t dry yet overnight. To our loads (regular and the daily prewashes) we add our own bidet washcloths, dish towels, baby’s eating smocks (aka old kid tee shirts), cleaning rags, baby socks that got peed on during misses, napkins, basically anything small that might need some extra laundry love. We have enough laundry to do a main wash every third day or so.

That’s only two cycles for everything; the prewash is just multiple small loads. You don’t have to do a third cycle on cold. For best results, just do two hot cycles. The first can be a normal cycle and the second should be longer.

 

[amanda911]

@buckeye_momof4 Seconding this as another mum who ECs.

Unfortunately the daily prewashing (when overnight nappying) is necessary to break the ammonia build up cycle.

If you have a front loader they really don't use much water. So much less than hand washing them would.

Two hot washes or even a prewash with a bit of bleach that is cold/warm is adequate.

 

[jean100]

@wisper Most people only do 2 cycles. If want to do daily washes, you could do a daily prewash but leave the main wash until you have more built up.

 

[wisper]

@jean100 What does a daily prewash look like?

 

[sleeplesswhite]

@wisper The same as the prewash you would do with a full load. For me it's a cold heavy duty cycle with half cup Biz and half cup Foca detergent. If you aren'd going to do the second wash right after you want to hang the diapers on a drying rack to avoid molding between main wash and drying.

 

[dominga]

@wisper I think most ppl run 2 cycles… I only do one wash cycle w extra rinse (at least while EBF), but do a very thorough hand rinse when the diaper comes off and then hang to dry in the sun between loads every 3-4 days. I don’t want to run laundry every day so I got enough flats to last half the week and we also do EC so saves some diapers.