The Demystified Diaper Dilemma

The funk came back. I thought it was a goner, but the funk came back...

I discussed my particular issues with my local diaper experts and they said they thought that my diapers just weren't getting enough water in the rinse to get all of the detergent out. When you don't get all of the detergent out, you get ammonia buildup in diapers = stink! This is a common problem with high efficiency washing machines. The usual "fix" is to throw a wet towel in with the diapers to add weight to the machine and trick it into adding more water.

I had tried doing that (along with nixing the "spin" in my prerinse cycle), but I was still having trouble.

Not only that, but some of my diapers have kind of yellowish brown patches on them that particularly seem to stink. And no, it's not poop. That was a little more mystifying than the smell. Not even the experts were sure of what that was. You can kind of see what I'm talking about on the diaper on the right.



I also picked up some Rockin Green detergent. It's maybe the most popular detergent amongst cloth diaper users because it rinses clean, is all natural, gentle, smells great, and it has cute little gimmicky scent names (Motley Clean, Smashing Watermelons, Barenaked Babies), etc. I thought that since my detergent wasn't rinsing out, maybe a more clean rinsing version would do better.



Then my washing machine died. Lovely, but it might be the best thing that has happened to my diaper routine because I think I've figured out the problem.

The machine wasn't letting enough water in. Even for an HE machine, it wasn't letting enough water in. And it was cutting off in the middle of the rinse cycle. Not only that, but when the repair guy came, he detached the hose that lets water into the machine to check the water pressure, and the clean water that was going into the machine was BROWN! (Umm...hello brown patches on diapers!) Ah the joys of well water! They are supposed to repair it today and I will be anxious to see what kind of difference it makes.

In the meantime we have been back in disposables and back to leaky nighttime ("12 hour"...yeah right!) diapers. Not only that, but I've had dirty diapers sitting in the pail for 3 days now and that is driving me absolutely nuts. I can't wait for it to be fixed!

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