How to tell if cloth diapers are clean?

People tend to really freak out about cleaning cloth diapers and how to tell if your cloth diapers are actually getting clean, but it really isn’t all that difficult.

Once you have washed and dried your cloth diapers check to see if they smell, if they smell like poop, fish, ammonia or just yucky, then they aren’t clean, cloth diapers should only have a slight detergent smell.

Keep in mind that if your cloth diapers do ever start to smell there are ways to fix the problem.

Like just run them through an extra cycle, or if that doesn’t work double check your wash routine and make sure you are using the right amount of detergent for you.

Not what everyone tells you is the right amount for you, the actual amount that you have found works best for you.

If you are interested in learning more about washing cloth diapers check out my article “Best detergent for cloth diapers”

Are cloth diapers gross to clean?

Cleaning cloth diapers is no different than cleaning your baby’s clothes.

When you have a baby, you are going to have more laundry and that laundry is going to be kinda yucky sometimes, but it’s not that big of a deal and no one usually bats an eye.

But, if you say you are washing the exact same things out of a cloth diaper, all of a sudden, it’s beyond disgusting and how could you even think about doing something so gross.

It’s all about perception and not about the actual facts.

When I wash my kid’s cloth diapers, I actually have to use less detergent than when I wash regular clothes.

If I were to use the same amount of detergent on my cloth diapers as I do with my regular clothes, there would be way too many suds and I would start to get detergent buildup and smells.

That tells me that my dirty and “gross” cloth diapers are actually cleaner than my everyday normal level of dirty clothes.

And on top of that from the amount of suds I get in the main wash I think I’m still using a little bit too much detergent on my cloth diapers.

Plus, with disposable diapers, baby poop blowing out of the diaper and up baby’s back and down baby’s legs are not uncommon.

So, unless you are replacing all of your baby’s clothes every week, you’re gonna have to wash some pretty yucky stuff.

Now with cloth diapers you will probably still get the occasional poo-splosion, but in my experience they are far rarer, and less tends to escape.

Do cloth diapers need to be washed twice?

I personally wash my cloth diapers twice, I do 1 quick wash cycle with a little bit of detergent and them I do a very long wash with more detergent.

I would say the vast majority of cloth diapering parents wash their cloth diapers this way.

But many people just do a prerinse and then a main wash, and some people do a prerinse, a main wash and an extra rinse at the end.

So basically, cloth diapers need to be cleaned, so if your cloth diapers get clean from a prerinse and a main wash then just go with that, or if you need to also throw in an extra rinse, just throw one in.

There is no wrong way to wash cloth diapers as long as they are getting clean and doing their job.

How do you sanitize cloth diapers?

Sanitizing cloth diapers is done through a process called ” Stripping”, to strip your cloth diapers you can either make your own or buy a premade laundry treatment.

To make the stripping solution yourself you need, Borax, Washing soda and Calgon that you mix together, add to your washing machine and soak your cloth diapers in it.

Then you drain the water, rinse and do a bleach soak.

My favorite way to strip cloth diapers is to use a premade laundry treatment like RLR or Grovia Mighty Bubbles.

I personally prefer the Grovia Mighty Bubbles since they are much easier to use and the process is much quicker, however you still do need to do a bleach soak after using the Mighty Bubbles.

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT use the ” Sanitize” cycle on your washing machine to try and sanitize your cloth diapers.

The sanitize cycle uses extremely hot water that will ruin your PUL/TPU and will probably also do some serious damage to your cloth diapers elastics.

It’s just one of those things that seems like a really good idea but in reality, it’s a really bad idea.

If you want to know more about stripping cloth diapers check out my article ” What do you soak cloth diapers in? Options & reasons why”

Can you handwash cloth diapers and get them clean?

This a pretty big barrier for a lot of people, since the whole point of cloth diapers is that you can wash and then reuse them, well what if you don’t have a washing machine?

For the last 3 years I have participated in the Flats & Handwashing Challenge which is a full week of handwashing that usually takes place around the end of May.

The original idea behind the flats challenge was to show people that you can cloth diaper even if you don’t have a washing machine or the funds to pay for extra loads at the laundromat.

It’s called the flats & handwashing challenge because flat cloth diapers are the easiest to handwash since they are usually pretty cheap and are just 1 layer of fabric.

But you can handwash pretty much any kind of cloth diaper, during the last flats & handwashing challenge I chose to use a few all-in-one cloth diapers just to see how well they would handwash.

Most of the time I used pocket diapers with receiving blankets, flour sack towels or DIY stretchy flats, and they all came out perfectly clean.

Resources

Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you) from qualifying purchases made through those links.

* Indicates an affiliate link

Link to Stripping instructions at fluffloveuniversity.com

Link to bleach soak instruction at fluffloveuniversity.com

Link to Grovia Mighty Bubbles at thenaturalbabycompany.com *

Link to RLR on Amazon.com