www.incontinentsupport.org

My wife and I have been doing a lot of traveling in our 5th wheel until recently.

When traveling I normally wear a disposable diaper but they leak at night frequently so I pin a couple of clother over the disposable and then cover with plastic pants.

I have noticed that when I dry my cloth diapers they often smell of urin. I read that the front loaders use a lot less water. Does anyone know of a solution for this as morst RV parks and laundrymates are using front load machine.

I have only access to front loaded machines.
Have never had problems with smell, but I rinse them in cold water
before putting them into the machine, and use a detergent enhancer (or whatever i tis called in english)
which releases oxygen. Oxygen is fantastic to neutralise odor, and it whitenes a bit.
Ph values in the water may also have an influence. In that case maybe vinegar is needed.
Where I live the water is very soft, so I have used venegar only once, but it did really help.
Give the rinsed diapers a spin before the washing,
so as much as possible is removed before the washing process.

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I want to join the bowel movement....

I am wondering if using bleach might help. Is this the "oxygen releasing" product you are talking about.
BTW, thanks for taking time to repsond

Terry

No, it is not bleach. The product I use contains sodium percarbonate.
Here it is called vanish or oxi.

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I want to join the bowel movement....

I will always run my cloth diapers twice. First in a cold water only without soap as a cold water rinse. Then I will wash in hot water with detergent. I also step into the shower fully diapered and let the shower help to rinse off the diaper and wring it out before getting out of the shower. That helps to rinse it off so it doesn't start to smell before I get to wash them. You never want to use a chlorine based bleach as that can disintegrate the fabric and weave of the cloth diaper and it will wear out quicker. You can add a detergent booster (such as oxi-clean) that will help clean it out better. I have also heard of using vinigar to help neutralize the acidity of the urin in the fabric which is what causes the odor. I hope that helps a bit.

Scott

Just thought of this: Definition: Oxi-moron - better than a regular moron becuase it has the power of oxigen to help clean the stains of life off of the fabric of society.

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"Why is the rum always gone?" - Captain Jack Sparrow

"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise." -
Gore Vidal

Scott thanks for the comments

I have always heard that bleach will damage cloth diapers but my wife used it all the time with our kids diapers. We also use is with every wash cycle of my cloth diapers now. I wear diapers 27/7 and have some diapers that are at least 10 years old and seem to be fine.

I asked my elderly mother about using bleach for cloth diapers. She says she always used it when washing my diapers. I wore them all my growing years from birth until I moved out on my own.

Terry

I have always used bleach for washing diapers. I only use half the recommended amount per load and I hold off adding the bleach until the last few minutes of the wash cycle. I have heard that bleach interferes with the cleaning action of detergent, so I let the detergent and water do their job for the first 3/4 of the wash cycle and add the bleach for the last 1/4 of the wash cycle time. I am not looking for whitening; rather I want the sanitizing, germ killing effect.

Way back I tried diaper laundry without bleach, due to what everyone says about chlorine bleach "killing" diapers, and I soon had a problem with odor.....which would start shortly after I wet my diaper the first time. When I returned to using the modest amount of bleach, that was the end of the odor problem. So, I've stayed with bleach and yes, many of my diapers are ten years old and more!

As for the whole laundry routine, my wet diapers come off and go directly into the diaper pail with some concentrated pine cleaner drizzled over them for odor control, but no water...I use a "dry" diaper pail. When I have a wash load, every other day, the diapers go from diaper pail to washing machine and a short 4 minute cycle wash with cold water for the pre-rinse / wash, and the pine cleaner serves as the detergent. After that spins out, I reset to the wash cycle again and do an 8 min cycle with hot water, detergent and good old Borox. I add my bleach for the last two minutes of the wash cycle.

It does take attention but I am fortunate my washing machine is close to my kitchen and I can do other tasks while monitoring the diaper laundry. I think newer machines offer a pre wash cycle; in which case your only intervention would be timing the wash cycle to get the bleach in toward the end. I do not know when the bleach dispenser adds the bleach on machines so equipped. If my machine had a bleach dispenser I would still favor manually adding the bleach late so I can get still get the sanitizing effect of the bleach but not long exposure that may contribute to premature wear and tear on the diaper fabric.

Joe and Terry,

Thanks for the info. I too have had some issues with odor in cloth diapers. Hearing that you do use bleach and it doesn't affect the diaper I will look to start trying that. Thanks again.

_________________
"Why is the rum always gone?" - Captain Jack Sparrow

"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise." -
Gore Vidal

Just thought of this: Definition: Oxi-moron - better than a regular moron becuase it has the power of oxigen to help clean the stains of life off of the fabric of society.[/quote]

A moron diaper would be fine. You often wish you had more on..

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I want to join the bowel movement....

When my diapers are removed, they go into a diaper pail that does not have any water added. I do wash them daily however

Terry