This is Day 196 of the Green in 365 series!
Guest Post by Erin of Diaper HQ
I have sympathy for people using cloth diapers who are having leak, stink and/or rash trouble. These issues are, fortunately, totally preventable. Unfortunately, there is SO much to know about cloth diapering, that it can be hard if you don’t have someone to guide you in the right direction when you are getting started. Cloth diapering can be so easy if you know what you need to know.
There are a lot of common mistakes that are made when it comes to cloth diapering. Wrong detergent, wrong rash cream, wrong wash routine….I could go on and on. But, for the sake of not overwhelming you, I am picking just one of these common mistakes and giving you the know how to fix it and start afresh!
How to Get Rid of Build Up on Your Cloth Diapers from Dryer Sheets
I decided on dryer sheets for today’s topic. I know some of you are saying “I know, I know….everyone knows not to dry cloth diapers with dryer sheets!” Yes, but unfortunately, not everyone knows you can’t even use them on your clothing laundry if your diapers are dried in the same dryer!
Dryer sheets are designed to melt fabric softener off of those sheets when heated. There are all kinds of oils and chemicals that are released onto your clothing when your dryer heats up. So, the inevitable is, that it gets on your dryer drum as well!
What do you suppose happens when your dryer cools? It solidifies on your dryer drum. And of course once it warms up again it melts off and transfers onto whatever is tumbling around in your dryer. Diapers are made to be absorbent, therefore they not only get coated with these oils, but they also absorb them.
Do Your Diapers Have Dryer Sheet Build-Up?
Here are a few ways to know if you are suffering from dryer sheet build up…
• Rash – If your little one is getting frequent diaper rash that you just can’t seem to get rid of.
• Leaks – If your diapers seem to repel or leak rather than absorb. A good way to test this is to take a clean dry diaper and hold it under trickling water. If the water rolls right off or takes longer than 4-5 seconds to absorb there is a buildup issue. But let’s shoot straight – when your kiddo is wearing a diaper and within an hour his pants are all wet – that’s a pretty obvious sign!
• Smell – If your diapers are really starting to get a funky smell when pee’d on but smell nice and fresh (dryer sheet fresh) when dry.
• Discoloration – If your diapers have an overall yellowed or grey tint to them it may be from dryer sheet build up.
Sound familiar? Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh! (I can hear you from Goshen, IN!) Don’t panic yet! Your diapers aren’t necessarily ruined, there is hope with some time and determination.
Clean Your Dryer
The first thing you need to do, is head to the store and buy yourself some blue Dawn original dish soap (ONLY buy this kind because of its amazing grease cutting action), and a few bottles of lemon juice. Then, make up a super, soapy, bucket of HOT water with the Dawn soap and scrub the living daylights out of the inside of your dryer drum with a sponge. I mean SCRUB!!
It’s going to take some serious elbow grease and time, but you can get it off! Once you have your dryer clean, you will want to get the soap out of the dryer. Throw a few really wet towels into your dryer and turn it on high heat. Let it go until they are completely dry. This should get most everything off. If you are still a little nervous that there is build up on your dryer wall you can repeat the process again.
Strip Your Diapers
Now, on to those diapers. It’s going to take a little while, so you may need to buy some disposable diapers or borrow some cloth diapers from someone. Recently, we had a customer who found out she had build up and I offered to strip her diapers for her, if she would allow me to use them as an example.
She had been using the diapers for nearly a year and had been using the dryer sheets only on her clothing. NOT ON HER DIAPERS! She was having leaks and her little B was getting diaper rashes. Here is a step-by-step of what I did to get her diapers back in working order.
1. Hot Wash Cycles
First I threw them into the washer with 2-3 tsp. of the Dawn dish soap. Then I ran a hot long wash cycle. Once it was finished, I did another hot wash cycle with no soap. Then I repeated this process seven times! Yes, that is 14 wash cycles!
2. Hang in the Sun with a Lemon Juice Solution
Then, I mixed a solution of 50% lemon juice and 50% water. I completely soaked each insert, and diaper into the solution, wrung them out and hung them in the sun for a full day. The acid in the lemon juice can break down any remaining build up and it will also naturally bleach them out. Win-Win!
3. Check Your Diapers for Repelling
Pour water onto the diapers to check to if they are still repelling. You can see here that there are dry spots in the diaper after it has been completely soaked. That means there is still build up in those areas even after all of those washes and hanging in the sun!
Typically you could just do a long wash cycle and be done, but since baby B’s diapers still had repelling areas I went back in for more! I did 2 more rounds of the Dawn soap and I scrubbed the soap into the diapers that were still repelling before washing. Whew!
The diapers were in much better shape post stripping, but, the true test was putting those diapers back on baby B’s bottom. I checked in and Mama said they are absorbing better! Yay!!
Now that you know you can’t use dryer sheets, I am sure you’re wondering what in the world you should use to get the static out of your clothes. It’s easy! Get yourself some wool dryer balls! They last forever and in the long run are cheaper. Not to mention you don’t have chemicals sitting on your skin all day long like you do with dryer sheets!
My favorites are Woolzies brand, but there are many other options. You can also find tutorials online for how to make your own dryer balls. If you find yourself in a predicament with your cloth diapers, please contact us! We are happy to help you out and trouble shoot so you can have the best diapering experience possible! www.diaperhq.com or [email protected].
Erin and Ashley are cloth diapering mamas and co-owners of Diaper HQ – a local business in Goshen, IN that helps families get started with cloth diapering by offering in home consultations and their unique Test Drive Kit, which allows parents to try cloth diapers on their little one before deciding what to buy. They also have a online store, DiaperHQ.com where you can stock up on all your cloth diapering needs, as well as order a Test Drive Kit if you live in other areas of the country. If you have any questions about cloth diapering, they are always happy to help, contact them at [email protected].
Find all the Green in 365 posts.
*Emily’s note: I am so thankful to Erin for this post! I had no idea you weren’t supposed to use dryer sheets in the same dryer as cloth diapers! I use wool dryer balls and love them, but I think some of my diapers might have some build-up issues from the days long ago when I used to use dryer sheets! I’ll definitely be using this method to get them back in great working condition!
If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out the great giveaway from Diaper HQ this week! You could win a bumGenius Freetime Cloth Diaper, a Fuzzi Bunz Diaper Tote and a copy of Confessions of a Cloth Diaper Convert ebook! Click here to enter the giveaway!
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I have a question. I use shared laundry machines and had no idea. With the sun I have been air drying only. Is there an effective way to strip diapers at home because the laundry room is limiting to short cycles and expensive. I have a bucket and plunger for when we are low on funds would that do the job? And would I have to do it every time I used the dryer? I noticed a smell and also her little jay is always red 🙁
You can boil just the inserts with a couple drops of dawn to cut down on the number of washes needed to strip. You can also use RLR every once in a while as maintenance.
Our baby is turning 5 months tomorrow. And we’ve just mixed up disposable with cloth diapers this week. So far, so good. Although we’re still far from using cloth diapers exclusively, it’s helping us manage our finances and our trash problems better.
Thanks for this tip. It will certainly help my wife and I in keeping baby clean and our lifestyle green. 🙂
how long to you leave the inserts soaking in lemon juice?
I havn’t used fabric softner/ dryer sheets for the last year or so. I havn’t heard of the dryer balls (i will look into) I just use 1/4 to 1/2 cup of white vinager in the rinse cycle. My clothes just smell like my laundry soap and I don’t have the static issues and honestly my clothes are softer than using fabric softner.
Dryer sheets are toxic. This isn’t one of those panic comments. I’ve done the research. No dryer sheets, nor conditioner, for that matter, should be used for clothing. The dryer sheets are neurotoxic, for one thing. If you notice, you may not smell the scent after a while. That is because they are neurotoxins.
I don’t know what products are available now, but I used a kind of diaper rinse that was blue – but wasn’t “blueing.” I washed the diapers by hand because I didn’t own a washing machine. But the rinse worked, as did using a zinc oxide ointment. Never talc. Never. Only cornstarch.
I won’t post urls to the various toxic dryer sheet sites, as you can do that. It’s not hooey. The chemicals never leave cloth. (I’m here today because I had been given a jacket that would be great except for the use of conditioner and dryer sheets, and I’d really like to wear it, but don’t think I can get the chemicals out of it).
Wherever your dryer exhaust is, you should know that it infiltrates the air. When our neighbor using the dryer, we cannot go outside, as we become ill. We can’t cook outdoors as much as we’d like to, since we never know when there will be waves of nauseating scent, and the neighbors don’t care. We have asked – begged – them to try alternatives. Non-smoking household – woman had lung cancer – any connections? Anyway, the particulate lingers on plants as well, so trying to grow anything without the use of pesticides, etc., essentially organically, is a joke. It takes hours for the air to clear – that’s how heavy the stuff is.
We just moved overseas and into a home that came with a washer/ dryer. After a 3-month separation from our cloth diapers during the move, we were so excited about the reunion that we just started using them…before it even occurred to me that the family before us probably used dryer sheets. I use Fuzzibunz, and we’ve done really well with them. Before this, we’ve never had a problem with leaks or repelling. But after three weeks in the new dryer, my entire diaper stash is water repellant. As in, they hold water like a Dixie cup. To complicate matters, both our washer and all of the washers at laundromats I’ve checked on-island are cold-water only. The hot water tube doesn’t even connect to the machines. SO, in the past 6 weeks, I’ve spent all of my free time boiling diapers on the stove and sink. We can get our tap water up to 75 C, so sometimes I’ve resorted to just using that, even so-one cycle is an all day project. I started with just the boiling. Then I added some AC vinegar. Then I tried white vinegar. Then I tried the blue dawn dish soap and white vinegar. Then I decided I’d ruined my diapers anyway, so I used bleach on the inserts and wipes. Still not making any headway, I found this post and tried it. The blue dawn in 75 C water in the sink, soak and scrub on a washboard for 45 minutes in shifts (clean water for each third of my stash), then a cold-water wash in the washing machine. Back to the sink to dunk everything in lemon juice: water (50:50), and out into the yard to dry. By the time I finish all this, it’s usually evening, so I left them out there through the next day. They still feel moist, and all my inserts (microfiber and minky) have turned pink. The inserts are fine, and the wipes just have a pink cast to them. HELP! What have I done, and what do I do now?! Do I just keep going with the blue dawn and lemon juice? Do I throw my diapers away? I’m so tired of my every waking moment revolving around diapers.
UPDATE! The pink washed right out in a cold wash, I think maybe it was some kind of effect from being out at night before they had a chance to dry in the sun. I decided to try the lemon juice treatment again, this time getting them out earlier while there was still some sunshine and bringing them inside at night. I tested some of the dipaers this morning… and they are absorbing! Not just a little, but immediately! I’m so excited. 🙂 Thank you!!
I just did the tub soak with vinegar and baking soda a couple days ago. That seems to help with any stink issues however it didn’t really do anything for the lack of absorbency! I shall have to give this a try because we use a LOT of diapers on a daily basis.
Question: how do I remove the dryer sheet gunk from my dryer balls? My guest “did me a favor” by finishing my diaper laundry for me after I only rinsed and washed. So no extra rinses (HE front loading machine) and then the all of it in the dryer with the balls and at least one dryer sheet. Can I just wash the balls normally since they’re already felted?