Detergent 1: Eco Sprout

Alright, I'll start with saying I'm sorry this post is a day or two late! I've been dealing with a migrane going on 7 days now, so I haven't really felt like writing. Hope everyone understands! :)

I washed using my regular routine, since the goal if this is to find something that fits our needs. My routine is as follows: cold rinse with no detergent, hot wash with detergent, followed by a final cold rinse. The only thing added to the equation is the baking soda I sprinkle in the pail every so often, less than 1/4 c per wash.

After the first two washes with this detergent I noticed a slight stink. I sniff a few liners when I pull them out of the wash every time, and each time there was an ever so slight smell. I upper the amount of detergent to 2 tbsp (we have super soft water so I only used 1 at first) and this seemed to solve the issue. Since I did have the stink I'm wondering what the long term effect would be when using this detergent.

I will have pics to come!

Detergent experiment/testing-- reader input

I would like to hear from you all what you want to see me do when testing each detergent. My plan is right now to take pics at the beginning and end of each week so you can see if there's any dingy-ness and I'm keeping a little journal after every wash on whether they smell and I'm going to check for repelling at the end of each "week" (which is actually 8 days so I can wash with each 4 times) please help me out here bc I feel like something is missing! Either comment here or email me at stehar102650@gmail.com

Stripping with RLR!

I'm wondering if there are people who don't use cloth reading this thinking it's going to be dirty... Haha oh the joys of cloth diapering :)

First the low down on the process. I did a quick little test to see if my liners were repelling, since they were already stinky I could've guessed the results. I poured luke warm water on them and counted the seconds on my watch. It took 8 seconds on the first and 11 on the second, way to long if you ask me! I wasn't having leaking problems, but I'm sure I would have if I didn't do the stripping. I took some pics to prove it!

I soaked each load for 4 hours (I set a timer to be sure!) And took pics of the wash from the first load, which had just been "cleaned" and dried the previous day. The results actually surprised me! Pics below. I rinsed 3 times just to be sure, and when I looked at the last rinse water it was perfectly clear. When I took them out to dry I smelled every few that I pulled out and every one smelled like nothing, PERFECT!

I have to add, I don't think my diapers have been this clean since they were brand new. They have no smell what so ever, and they absorb the liquid immediately! I took pics of that but there's nothing to show because basically it's just a pic of wet liners. I'm going to strip once a month from now on with RLR! On a side note: I've been reading that washing soda is the same as RLR, so if you make your own detergent you probably already have this on hand! Also, try this process if you have any dingy looking clothes!

I think I'm in love with RLR :)

Later this week I'll be posting the results of washing with Eco sprout!

Game plan for my Detergent Experiment

Since I know there are a few people who are excited to see the results, I thought I'd go ahead and update everyone on when I'll start & what my plan is. We decided to make a trip to see the grandparents this weekend to celebrate my youngest sons birthday (a month late, but daddy was doing military training stuff on his actual bday). So, what I'm going to do is strip all my diapers on Friday before we leave, then use sposies for the weekend (bad, I know, but my mom refuses to have cloth in her house. We're only going for Sat & Sun so we'll survive). On Sunday night when we get home we'll start using cloth again and I should have a full pail by Tuesday, which is when I will do my first wash in a tester detergent! I'm counting Monday as day 1 so everything stays even (week one being a Mon-Sun). Here's the order in which I will test the different brands:
Week 1 -- Eco Sprout
Week 2 -- Tiny Bubbles
Week 3 -- Bum Genius
Week 4 -- Country Save
Week 5 -- Rockin green REMIX
Week 6 -- Soap Nuts
Week 7 -- Laundry Tarts
Week 8 -- Allen's Natural
Week 9 -- Charlie's Natural
Week 10 -- Crunchy Clean
Week 11 -- my home made detergent
Yes, that means this is going to last almost 3 months!
So if you're excited to see the results of a particular brand you know when to check up on the blog. I think I've decided to do a post at the end of every week, I'll keep a journal and take tons of pics throught the week and then put that into one big post at the end of the week. That way I don't end up with 77 posts by the end of this whole thing, instead there will be 11 and you can see all the info for each detergent in one place.
I strongly reccomend everyone do this! Maybe not with as many different detergents, but pick a few that you're interested in and order a few samples of each (I ordered 3 of each to make sure I had enough to use for a full week of washing). That way you're not just blindly trusting a detergent to work for you! Remember everyone has different water, among other things, that can affect the way detergents work for you. Again the reason I'm doing this is because I 'trusted' a detergent to work for me because a lot of people seemed to like it. Well it led to stinkies and build up for me, so I started looking around but I thought 'if one cd friendly detergent doesn't work for me, who's to say another brand will' & that's how this experiment was born! If you decide to do it your self let me know, I'd love to see other peoples results!

Green Detergent Experiment

I have been using Rockin Green Detergent for my diapers for about 3 months now, but I recently ran into a bad case of stinkies and that made me change my mind about the detergent. So, I've decided to conduct a little experiment, testing various types of detergents that are "green" and also cloth diaper friendly. All of these detergents are perfect for people like my self and my kids, who have sensitive skin. I will start on Wednesday, and make daily posts on my progress.
Detergents I'm trying:

• Eco Sprout
• Rockin Green
• Tiny Bubbles
• Bum Genius
• Country Save
• Allen's Natural
• Charlie's Natural
• Soap Nuts
• Crunchy Clean

I chose all of these because of their relatively cheap cost per load, the highest being $0.14/Load!!

Have also found a few recipies for home made detergent, the cloth diaper safe detergent is the one I'm going to test. Here's the recipe:
1 part borax
1 part washing soda
1part oxygen bleach
That's it! No dyes, or fragrances of course!

Things I've made so far :)

So I thought I'd do an update on all the things I've (successfully) made so far.
A few days ago I made some re-usable snack bags, and they turned out wonderfully! On the last one I made, I did a little pocket on the front which turned out ok. I'm not completely satisfied with the way that looks, but I'm working on it! Here are some pics:

These are lined with PUL for waterproofing, with the shiny side towards the inside (so it's NOT touching whatever is inside the bag). The outside is a cotton print. Oh, and I don't think I'll be using any more prints that have a "direction" since one side always ends up up-side down, If you didn't notice that before go back and look.
The other thing is a batch of unpaper towels! I'm really excited about these, because it's something everyone could use! Here's a pic:

These are made of 100% cotton flannel, very soft AND absorbant! The top 3 are single layer, and either blanket stitched or zig zagged. I'm not sure those will hold up as long as I'd like in the wash, so I also made a double layer, that's turned and top stitched with some decorative stitching around the edges.

Well, that's about it for this week. Next week I'm going to take another stab at mama cloth, the first attempt didn't turn out the way I'd wanted so I'm making my own pattern with a hidden layer of PUL. We'll see how it goes!!

So, how did we get here?

Let's start at the very beginning. It all started when my youngest child, "M", started to break out in a rash on his bum. After trying every cream, and every different brand of disposable diaper I could find with no luck, someone told me to try cloth diapers! For me, there wasn't much to consider, I was open to trying anything that would make my baby's bum better! I did some research online and decided to try pocket diapers, they seemed like the easiest and cleanest option. I wasn't ready to make a huge investment, so, I bought some used fuzziBunz & gDiapers from my local bookoo website. At first it was a crazy ride. Finding "concrete" info on how to wash was my biggest challenge. What I didn't realize at the time was, everyone does it differently. If you ask 100 moms how they wash you'll probably get 100 different variations on how to do it. Having different babies, washers, and levels of hardness in your water all impact the way you wash. So.. the first weeks were a smelly mess for us. My bathroom smelled because I didn't realize the importance of a pail, I only had a cotton (LOL) bag that I made for storage, it HARDLY contained the smells or fluids. EWWWW. My laundry room smelled too, because I didn't quite know hot to wash them. I kept on trucking because I knew it was best for little M and I knew it had to get better! After a few weeks things did get better and I decided to order 10 new one size diapers from go green pocket diapers. That was a very exciting day, because I knew when I got those diapers I'd be able to use cloth full time with both my kids (S was just about to turn 2 at the time), and they would bring my stash to 18!! So everything was going great and we weren't buying ANY disposables anymore. I was in diaper heaven, until we got a horrible case of build up!! EEEK! Well, at first I had no clue this was even possible.. I'm well aware now. All I could think was "What did I do to make my diapers leak?!". It took me what seemed like forever to figure out what the problem was & how to fix it. I was using "all free & clear" detergent to wash & only doing 1 rinse, because I simply didn't know better. Once I figured out that it's necessary to do multiple rinses, until you see NO bubbles, and that a cloth diaper friendly detergent is necessary (especially when you have soft water!) I was set! Whew! I also decided to take some steps to prevent that from happening again. I found a great chart comparing different detergents based on how CD friendly they are. I ended up switching from all to Tide (haha).. Tide, after all, got 3 stars and All only got 1... I eventually ended up making the leap to Rockin Green, and have had NO problems since. Note: Just because a detergent is "Free & Clear" doesn't mean it's free or clear of the things you NEED it to be for using with cloth. If it has brighteners, enzymes, or non-chlorine bleach, DON'T use it! All of those things can cause problems, including build up, stinkies, rashes, and the break-down of your pul in pocket and aio's.
So, lets go back to those used diapers I bought. They were literally falling apart. the Velcro didn't seem to stick anymore & the PUL was delaminating! I decided it was time to get rid of those and buy some replacements. After doing countless hours of research online, trying to figure out the most economical diapers to buy, I decided to go with Kawaii diapers. I bought about 30 diapers from them in one order, but I got a few different styles. The rounded tabs don't work as well on my youngest as the square tabs with hip snaps, so I got lucky in ordering both styles.
Fast forward a few months, things have been going smoothly and we are loving our cloth! I could literally go on for hours talking about DIAPERS! I never thought it would become such an obsession! Now, I have decided to do more things to be "green", though my motivation isn't entirely to be "green" a lot of it is because of the money we're saving! I figured we saved somewhere around $1000/yr by switching to cloth diapers, so I started to wonder where else we could save.
Here are the products in our home that I hope to replace with things that I hand make:

• Wipes
• Paper towels
• Water bottles
• Tissues
• Plastic Baggies
• Grocery Bags
• Feminine Products
• Saran Wrap

The wipes I've already made a ton of (about 30, from random pieces of flannel around the house) but I'll be posting a blog about this anyway for those that want to know how to make them!
The paper towels I need to work on a bit, I made about 5, but I think they need to be 2 layers to be effective enough for use in the kitchen. I may also quilt them, since that's how they are in the store.
Water bottles, well I don't really think I can MAKE something to replace these, but we did buy a re-usable cup with a lid & straw from walmart for about $5. Both my husband and I use them and take drinks with us instead of buying from the gas station etc.
Tissues, I have a few wipes set aside that I don't put in the regular container with wipes solution, & we use those for noses & faces.
Plastic baggies, I have the material and the initiative, just have to get around to making them.. Maybe I'll knock those out today!
Grocery bags, don't know what the fabric is called, but I would love to find out if I can make them fairly cheap.
Feminine Products, again I have the materials and the initiative just need to find the time to make them.
Seran wrap, I'm thinking about making some bowl covers... maybe something else, I'm not sure... need some brainstorming time.