Washing Cloth Sanitary Pads

[Howdyhihi]

I switched to CSP a couple of cycles ago. I'm slowly building up a collection. I have some that are cheap and cheerful bamboo topped ones and others that are cotton. The bamboo ones wash really well and never stain but the cotton ones stain unless I scrub them with stain remover and even then they aren't exactly as good as new.

One of the reasons I changed to CSP was because I wanted to avoid harsh chemicals. The stain remover seems to be defeating the point, though I did use bicarb on a few and that worked, but worry about the impact of that on my PH.

I keep them in a wet bag for no more than 2 days, put them on a rinse cycle, let them stay in the water for a bit before draining and then wash at 20. I used to rinse each one out immediately after use but honestly, I found it gross and the cotton ones still stained.

Everywhere I look online is insistent that they shouldn't stain. Please someone, tell me that theirs are also a bit stained and that that's okay. Or let me know a step that I'm missing in caring for them!

Does anyone that uses them have seriously heavy periods? Like needing to change pads every hour or two on the heaviest days? Also does having a dark top layer mean you cant always tell when you need to change them?

I’m thinking of buying some. One of the websites said they shouldn’t be soaked for more than two hours. I usually do washing about 4 times a week, I’m wondering how to store them before I wash them? Do I let them dry out and then wash them when I put a load on? I don’t want to end up putting my washing machine on more. I wear a panty liner every day, so I will accumulate them every day.

I use period pants. I don’t soak them at all. I tie them all down in a bag (nappy bags left over from dc baby days at the moment) until I’m ready to wash them, then put them on a cold rinse cycle on their own and then wash with a normal load at 30 degrees. They actually say to wash at 20 but my machine doesn’t have that setting.

If you're rinsing out stains hold under a running cold tap from the back so you are pushing the stain back out rather than further in to the fabric. So it gets the stain on the top, you rinse out from the back outwards.