What Works When Handwashing Cloth Diapers (and What Doesn’t Work)

Day 6 of the Flats & Handwashing challenge is always a joyful reminder of being almost finished and a dreary wake-up call that handwashing is challenging to squeeze into your day, and your lifestyle.

You make it work because it’s important to you, and this year I feel burdened with privilege in making this work. If you are ever someone who wants to share your cloth diapering story and you don’t have the time, resources to do that – let me know because I would love to share the different voices of cloth diapering here and showcase how different things work for different people. That’s okay. Send me an email about your story at hello [at] simplymombailey [dot] com.

I’m participating in the 2018 Flats and Handwashing Challenge hosted by Cloth Diaper Revival.  This challenge helps showcase real solutions for parents struggling with diapering. Today’s topic is to share what’s working for you and what’s not working

Day 1 – Why – Day 2 – Stash – Day 3 – Fold  – Day 4 – Wash Routine – Day 5 – Open 

My why for doing this challenge is to open the conversation about cloth diapering, but I find myself sadly disappointed the world and its attitude about laundry and gross things. Yes. This is gross. But it works. Let’s talk about 4 things that work for handwashing cloth diapers.

4 Hand washing Things That Work

Here’s a few things based off my 2018 experience that are really working for me.

1. Washboard.  I’m seriously loving on my washboard. It doesn’t require the upper arm strength of a camp style plunger system and really helps me de-stress and get our all my angry mom feels. 
2. Bar of Soap. It has was hard to find a bar of soap at the store, but using the Soap Bar has been easy, gentle on my hands, and a refreshing change of pace. I’ve done a little research into the detergent versus soap debate and feel confident hot water, soap, and sunshine are good enough for handwashing. Detergent is made for the machine process. 
3. Flats Themselves. Flat cloth diapers are truly amazing, and it makes me wonder why we feel the need to modernize the cloth diaper. Flat’s are absorbent, easy to launder, forgiving, and simple. They do the job without the fuss and fustration of modern cloth diaper systems like the all in one, or the pocket and microfibre.
4. Hanging to Dry. Anybody else get a wake-up call this week? I hang most of the kid’s clothes to dry but got in the habit of using the dryer for my cloth diapers. Hanging to dry is seriously efficient, and easy to do. I toss them up on my rack every night, and by morning my birdseye cotton stash of flats is dry. 
   • It’s also been 20-27C (70-80F) here and my diapers dry in a snap outside.

4 Handwashing Thing That Don’t Work

and these things for the 2018 challenge just aren’t working for me.

1. Washing Daily. I like to live my life, and even though I’m just a SAHM, washing every night is kind of a buzz kill. That’s definitely a lot of attitudes talking there, but sometimes I just loved having a few extra flats so I could push it to another day. After all, I still need to keep the house, kinda clean?
2. Scrubba Bag. Because I don’t want to wash every 5th diaper change, the Scrubba Bag is retired to the closet for the rest of the challenge. It’s a great idea, it’s just not super functional for the number of diapers I need to clean. If it could hold a whole day worth of diapers (8-10 changes) maybe then I’d use it more.
3. Soap Nuts. I’m over soap nuts. My diapers were beginning to smell earthy and while the idea of soap nuts is great, I’m loving the soap experience better. Soap Nuts really need agitation and hot water, perhaps they’d work better in the plunger and bucket system.
4. PUL/TPU Modern Cloth Cover. If this was my real life, I would ditch the pul/tpu covers. Cloth Diaper covers as we know them take forever to dry and poop is constantly getting caught up in the elastics. I try to go coverless and rock a flat fold, but otherwise, wool or fleece might be a better option because it seems easier to handwash.

Check out what’s working for other bloggers below.