Hints & Tips? Washing routine for reusables? Dry pail ? Wet pail?

[ukemmalewis]

its my first post ! hi everyone !
Would love some advice from you organised mums out there, I am about to have my first baby in June and have started to purchase reusable nappies (going for mixture of tots bots, bamboozles, fluffles, motherease and kissaluvs to see how i get on!) and I am trying to get my head around, in advance, what the best routine for washing/changing should be.
So many disposable mums have said ooh it will be such a hassle and you won't have any time to wash nappies and i am so determined to stick with it and show that it isn't as much hassle as it seems, but I need your help pretty please!!.
Any advice would be gratefully received, yours hopefully, Emma x

Hi, welcome, and first don't give yourself a hard time if you struggle and use disposables for a few months first, that's what we did and it is still SO worth doing the washables thing, for me environmentally being the key issue. The hassle is not great and you get used to it, we don't regret the decision and will re-use our motherease nappies for next baby.

You'll get to know how often your baby needs changing, but anywhere between 2 and 5 hours seems right for us (sorry vague, depends on how much drunk mostly). We rinse them out with quite a lot of water (the cotton is thick so if you don't rinse the wee smell seems to get 'stuck') then a vague wring out and into the bucket with a lid. We used to soak in water with the tree oil but I found the bucket quite heavy to lift in order to tip the water down the loo prior to washing the nappies.

I guess we do three loads of nappy laundry a week, but this takes into account the fact that ds is in disposables once a week (when my parents look after him) and if, for example, we go to visit friends we have got a bit lazy about it.

hi

i use MEOS and Tots bots and I dry pail then wash when bin gets too full, nnormally every 2-3 days. I wash at 40 degrees with no detergent or fab cond and they come out fine, some stubborn stains remain but I have found that 60 degrees and detergent makes no diff. BTW fab cond coats them so they don't absorb liquid and detergent apparently coats them a residue so they get crunchy. I have been washing without detergent for a few weeks now and notice they are softer but just as clean and fresh, although without the perfumed smell of course. You can tumble dry which gets them really soft and fluffy, line dry (if weather allow) or stick them on an airer, mine normally dry overnight on the airer, and if a bit damp can tumble them for 15mins after.

It makes sense to wash in the evening and then hang them on the airer rather than have an airer standing around all day if you are going to do it this was. Do not put terry type nappies on the radiator to dry as they go like cardboard, I found this out the first time I used them.

If you are going to dry pail its a good idea to use a bit of tea tree oil on a hanky in the top of the bin, or sprinkle it on the laundry net as this helps with the smell. Also, I wash out any solids over the loo with the shower head, once baby is weaned their poo is more solid and can be rolled off the fleece liner! Or buy paper liners and flush.

It really is not that much hassle, you just have to have enough nappies so that you can take a day/night to wash and dry some while still using some. Really if you think that with disposables you still have to bag them/wrap them and then empty the bin when it's full, the only real extra work is hanging them on the airer or sticking them in the tumble dryer and any rinsing you choose to do, but TBH I just used to chuck the BF poo ones straight in the machine as it's hard to rinse until it gets more solid, sorry if TMI.

Good luck in June and best wishes for the birth .

If I had known how little trouble they were, I would have started using them even earlier! As gingernutlover says, if you are bf then you could virtually just put them in the machine as you go (the poo is so inoffensive and virtually liquid). I don't have any worries about washing them with other non-nappy washing (sometimes do a hot wash with dp's chef whites and ds2's karate kit!) Fluffles are fab because they dry very quickly and you are unlikely to ever run out of nappies. Most young babies poo after a feed btw. Boosted nappies last fine all night - highly recommend tots bots fleece wraps for overnight(but don't have too tight vests/babygros over the top). The hardest part for a new mum is probably getting used to handling poo! But if you bf, the transition to stinky ones is nice and slow!

Oh, and rinsing then dry pailing is the way to go I think. I now cut my own fleece liners for non-lined nappies, I make sure they cover the whole nappy - you hardly get any poo on the nappy then.

Lots of good advice already, but are your nappies brand new? If so, remember that certain brands (Tots for definite, I don't use the others) need prewashing several times to get to maximum absorbency. They don't need drying in between these washes, and although I used powder in the first wash, just to ensure any residues ??? were washed out, I did the rest of the washes just in plain water.

Have you got a nappy bin already? I have two. One is the Mothercare size one. I use this for dirty nappies when they come off. I then rinse them later on (usually DH does the whole days worth in the evening), and they go into a bigger bin.

I really don't think they're any extra hassle. I found in the first few weeks with ds that I was always washing wet/pooey clothes anyway, either because the disposable had leaked (used disps for a couple of weeks after I had a c/s), or because he weed/pooed during a nappy change. A few terry squares or muslins are great for lying on the changing mat during the early days.

And as a fan of laura032004 can I say what clever and soft liners she makes from cutting up old bed linen and folding the pieces to make it abosorbent (if you buy it from a charity shop it is super old and therefore super soft), and it means that if you get a really yucky pooey one (maybe as your baby goes on to solids) you can throw it away instead of re-using, safe in the knowledge it cost next to nothing.

Lio you made me !

I started off wetpailing but I couldn't fit very many in the pail, so now I just dry pail and don't rinse either - just chuck the whole lot in the machine about every other day. If the lid is tight I don'tfind it smells. And I put some vinegar in instead of fabric conditioner so the terry doesn't get rough when drying. Though if you always tumble dry you don't need to

You are all fantastically helpful people !! how great is this site :-) Thanks so much. xxx

This has really helped me too - I have been using MEOS since ds was about 1 month (no 6 months), but I didn't know about the vinegar tip - will be using that in future. Thanks beartime! And best wishes for June Emma.

I use white vinegar to rinse and spin the nappies in the machine before actually washing them. It gets most of the wee out to start with & its a natural disinfectant.

thanks for the tips girls. we are useing bumbles, dry pail and chuck em in machine every other day then line dry or warm cupboard. Going to try reducing teh ammount of detergent after reading this thread, might try the vingar as well.
unisarah

in Aus we can get someting called napisan - not quite like the napisan you get in the UK - but similar. I use that rather than laundry detergent and no fab conditioner.

Dry pail wet nappies ( few drops of lavendar oil on a cloth) and wet pail pooey nappies but dd2 isn ow 17months old. Use terry squares, fleece liners and plastic pants.

Just wash in warm water and napisan - dry and they are ready to go - terries take no time to dry here in Aus.

Congratulations! Lots of good advice already! Just wanted to chime in and say that our DD is an incredibly pooey baby and because she's BF it is often liquid! This makes for very dirty nappies, we dry pail (buy some scented nappy bags and have a plug in air freshener so the smells don't get too bad!). We wash every 2-3 days, I use cheap washing powder (non bio!) and some Oxi-clean that I brought from the £shop! This gets most of the nappies nice and clean and gives them a nice smell! Have yet to use any oils or soaking as there hasn't been a need! We don't have a tumble dryer and up until now were drying the nappies inside!

My only other advice would be have some disposables at hand! Many people advice against this as they reckon it makes you lazy, however for the first few weeks you may just want to get used to your baby and their bowel movements! We still have disposables in the house, I've not touched them in ages.. but it gives me the reassurance that if DD did have a terrible few poo days I'd still have nappies!

Good luck xxx

These kind of threads using mums opinions are just so useful as a first time mum as I dont' have a clue where to start!! its all really helpful. Thanks lovely ladies :-)

Um, tried a soapless nappy wash today- not good on bumbles - lots of orange poo staining on the fleese I've put them through again with detergent this time and its sorted out.

Am now only using half the ammount of deteregent the packet surgests and that seems to be working fine on everything.

Hi, first time mum here, and wasn't at all used to handling babies, at all, ever! Plus ds used to cry through every nappy change at first....so I used disposables for the first couple of weeks until I got used to the whole process, then moved on to my accumulated resuseables...which I now find just as easy to use. Hard to plan this in advance of baby though, cos you never know how many nappies they'll get through, ds is very tolerant of wet nappies (not always a good thing!) but some babies cry as soon as nappy is a little damp, meaning far more frequent changes leading to a need to wash more often....ho hum
I dry pail, nice tight lid (!) and do a wash whenever the supply of clean ones is getting low ( every 2-3 days). I find totsbots take longer to air dry than mothersease onesize and that the imse vimse thin things i have dry really fast ( but I don't like them much!). Air drying can leave the nappies a bit stiff and 'crunchy' (IYKWIM) so I tend to give them a brief blast in tumbledrier ( while I distract my trying-to-be-eco-friendly brain!) for about 30-40 minutes, then air dry them.
Dh has started doing nappies in last couple of months (only took him 6 months to work up to it!!!) and he uses disposables still cos he thinks they are less fiddly and he lives in fear of being widdled/crapped on while he farts about with the nappy and liner and wrap!!! I'm keeping the pressure up though!!

We used disposables for the first six months, as it was such a shock having a new baby!

With reusables, I dry pail (it's a bag, not a bucket), then when full the bag and all gets chucked in the washing machine. I use half the amount of detergent for all our laundry, not just the nappies and have no problems with stains. I tumble dry the bamboozles on low heat (can't rely on the English weather to line dry them!), then finish them off in the airing cupboard with the motherease wraps and wonderoos. I also use washable wipes and these get washed with the nappies - they are really handy and nicer to the skin than the disposable wet wipes.

Good luck with everything! :)

Hi, have used terries with my last 2 and found wet pail was best. I use cheap swing bin for the nappies (found ds2's nappies were so smelly they needed a really good swill!). Have always used nappy soak (from Perfectly happy people) - is good as you only need to put through rinse cycle in your machine. Haven't tried the vinegar though - will definately give it a try.

Suggestion of making own boosters is a good one - I've cut up old fleece blankets, towels, sheets to make liners. Saves loads of money!