Stripping advice from Fuzzi Bunz

I was over at the Fuzzi Bunz Facebook fan page and was looking through the discussions. I'm VERY excited to have found this advice written by the Fuzzi Bunz FB page moderator. I"m copying and pasting it here, but it is NOT my writing. Go over there yourself and check it out. It's the best diaper stripping advice/explanation I have ever heard!

And while you're at it, why don't you become a FB fan?  YOu might learn some great things from them!

"FuzziBunz Cloth Diapers Stinky diapers are often a result of improper laundering, more often if you have an HE washing machine. Simply put, urine and/ or poop made it through all the rinse/ wash cycles and is still present in your diapers and/ or inserts.


For example, each insert holds about 8-16 oz of urine. If you have 15 diapers in your wash load, that equals 15 cups of pee! And for many HE washing machines that use a small amount of water, you end up with a 50/50 mix of urine and water in the drum. So your diapers are swishing around in urine and a little soap. If they aren't being rinsed out thoroughly, then a little bit of urine is left over after each wash. After a few washes, the ammonia salts build up and you start to get a smell after the baby pees. It reactivates all the salts that are still inside the inserts.


Another example, if a poopy diaper gets waded up during the cool pre-rinse, it could make it out of the cycle still waded in a ball. Then the poop gets "set in" to the fabric when it hits the hot wash cycle, thus the smell you get when you open the washer at the end of the cycle.


Please do the following to resolve your current stinky diapers and/ or inserts issues:


* Do a soak with a detergent like Rockin Green Soap, Vaska or Charlie's Soap. Put a little extra soap into the wash, (like 3 tbs if using a top loader, less if using a bucket), and fill the washer, sink or bucket with HOT water and your inserts. Then let them soak for about an hour, or even overnight.


* Next, wash them as normal doing an extra rinse or two. This will enable the detergent to really soak into the inserts and neutralize the ammonia salts, and the extra rinses will flush them out completely.


* Line dry (especially in the sun, if possible) or tumble dry on low.




Some tips to prevent any future stinky problems:


* Add more cool rinsing to the beginning of your wash routine every time. You should always do a thorough cool rinse before moving on to a hot wash cycle with detergent.


* If you have an HE washing machine, we suggest that you do a full cool wash cycle w/o any detergent. This will help flush out the urine, and then give it a fresh water change to add the detergent.


* It's worth the time to explore the different settings on your washing machine to possibly add more water and/ or rinse cycles. If you have an HE washing machine, many cycles use more water than others, while some models are weight sensitive and you can add a towel into the washer to trick it into putting more water in the basin.


* In general, a bit more water = less stink!"

My Washing Routine

I've researched many sites for the best method of washing cloth diapers and it seems that everyone has their own routine. Even from one brand of cloth diaper to another the washing recommendations are different. Almost every time! So here's my routine, despite what others say or do because it works for me:

-1 wash on cold with 1/4 the recommended detergent.
-1 was on hot/cold with no detergent.
-Dry the diaper inserts in the dryer.
-Line dry the diapers.
-When necessary, strip the diapers. It seems that the method I used before worked nicely because I haven't had any leaks since.

Stripping diapers

So, I've been diapering with cloth for about 8 weeks now and I've just hit a new milestone. Stripping. My lovely bumGenius which never leaked for me before began to leak like crazy. Now, I normally wash my diapers with two cycles--one wash on cold with 1/4 the suggested detergent for a non-diaper load, and one wash cycle on hot/cold with no detergent. For stripping them I did as suggested from some of my research and after washing the diapers with regular detergent as I normally do, I did a "rinse" with some dish detergent in it. After washing with dish detergent you're supposed to do as many rinses as it takes for there to be no bubbles in the wash... except that I have a front loading washer so that was hard for me. I rinsed it twice and then just counted them done. But apparently that didn't work because they leaked this week as well. So, my new regiment is as follows:

One regular wash with 1/4 the detergent used on non-diaper washes.
One regular wash with a small amount of dish detergent.
One regular wash with nothing.
One regular wash with 1/2 cup of white vinegar.

We'll see if it works!