Comments on: No Washer, No Problem :: Washing Cloth Diapers without Insuite Laundry

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:55:12 +0000

Thanks for sharing Rochelle. I think you make a good point about having a few extra diapers on hand to extend your laundry days. The extra investment will likely pay for itself in reducing the number of coins going into the machine!

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:53:35 +0000

Now 8 machines sounds like a bit of a luxury!!
Glad that you have found a routine that works for you. Thank you for sharing and good luck with the contest.

By: Amy K

Amy K — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:00:55 +0000

I just found your blog after entering for the free diaper giveaway!
We too are in a no insuite situation. And I was terrified when we moved in here. BUT now, now I LOVE it. The machines are much more heavy duty than what we had in our house.
I dump solids into the toilet, then if they are still a bit pasty I just soak in toilet before tossing em into our pail. I wash them about every 3 1/2 days, and only do one cycle of wash. I use my own homemade detergent with some extra baking soda with a vinegar rinse ( in a downy ball) and they come out squeaky clean and fresh smelling EVERY time. Then I either hang dry( on my enclosure) or pop in dryer (depending on how lazy I am that day) The great thing about non insuite laundry is I can do all my other laundry at the same time since we have 8 machines. I think cloth diapering without insuite laundry is definatley do-able!

By: Rochelle

Rochelle — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:21:37 +0000

I just wanted to say that we are a “no in-suite cloth diapering family”, and I enjoyed this post because it was extremely difficult to find information on how people had made cloth diapers work without their own laundry facilities before my son was born. All the washing instructions are directed at people who can run multiple cycles and have unlimited access – it was all pretty daunting to begin with.

I use mostly pocket diapers and some prefolds. My current strategy (now that my son is 10 months old and eating lots of solids) is to dump whatever solid waste I can directly into the toilet. When that’s not possible I toss the dirty one into a separate pail I keep in the bathroom with some cold water to soak for about an hour and then wring it out and throw it into the diaper pail with the rest of my diapers (and dump the water down the toilet). I do a hot wash, and do a load of other laundry in another washer at the same time. Then I pull out all the pocket shells/covers and hang them on a laundry rack in my apartment to dry. I put the pocket inserts/prefolds in the dryer with the other load. The pocket shells and covers dry really quickly. The inserts and prefolds are sometimes still a little damp when they come out, but I found when I was only hanging them they would take 24 hours + to dry sometimes. This way they get dry or mostly dry, but I’m still not paying for an extra dryer load. If they’re still a little damp I hang them for a few hours.

I should say that when my son was a newborn I was soaking all my diapers in a pail prior to washing them (and using a gdiaper swish stick to agitate!) because they were pretty much all poopy. It was a lot of work, but I was still too cheap to run them through the wash twice. It got a lot easier when I didn’t have to do that anymore! I also decided it was worth it to invest in a few more diapers so I didn’t have to wash every other day.

Sorry this is long, but this is one topic I really wish got more coverage!