When it looks like this outside…
It looks like like this inside…
It came to me last night, as I saw my husband engineering a way to dry our diapers inside because it has been raining for what seems like weeks here in Florida, that this might be something worthwhile for those of you out there interested in cloth diapering. What he came up with was hanging them from hangers, almost like a cloth diapering mobile, in our laundry room. I personally thought it was brilliant. You see, we try to avoid using the dryer as much as possible with out cloth diapers for a couple of reasons, the first being the electric bill. One of the main reasons we chose to cloth diaper was to save money. You won’t save much money if your electric bill goes up because you suddenly find yourself using it every other day. Secondly, we try to avoid the dryer because it can have a devastating effect of the PUL and elastic in the diapers. With repeated drying the elastic loses its elasticity and the PUL cracks which causes leaks.
So far I have not had any trouble with the elastic in my diapers (thank you FuzziBunz). I have noticed some PUL cracking in one my Econobums covers. Not good, but it could be worse. To keep my cloth diapers in the best shape possible my husband, who helps with the laundering, and I developed an excellent routine for drying our wipes and diapers. Our routine involves drying our prefolds and inserts on high heat for about 50 minutes in the dryer about once a week. The rest of the time they get hung out to line dry. Line drying not only saves on electricity, but it also helps to remove stains and combat lingering odors. Plus they look oh so cute hanging on the line! As for our covers, , pockets, AIO, AI2, and fitted diapers, they get hung up to dry, whether it be outside, all over my kitchen, or whatever drying rack my husband has invented. One thing about hanging diapers out to line dry (especially prefolds) is that they can get that stiff, crunchy feeling. I hate it. When that happens I usually toss them back into the dryer few a few minutes just to fluff them up. You can also use vinegar during one of (yes, there is more than one) the rinse cycles to help combat the crunchiness. Another thing about line drying is that pockets dry much more quickly than AIO, AI2, and fitted diapers do so if you need something quick and don’t want to use the dryer I would suggest only using pockets and prefolds.
As you can see we do not eliminate the use of the dryer completely from our routine. In fact, I often get lazy and throw everything in the dryer. I’m not completely convinced that it hurts things too much as my diapers are still going strong. The important thing to know though is that machine drying you should never use a dryer sheet on your diapers. Doing this will cause your diapers to repel liquids, which is the one time you don’t want fabric to repel anything. This same rule applies to using fabric softener of any kind when washing your diapers.
Once my diapers are all dry I start separating them into their respective piles so that I can stuff and organize them appropriately (this is helpful to my husband who doesn’t know which insert goes where). I make a pile of prefolds, a pile of covers, a pile of FuzziBunz with inserts, a pile of BumGenius with inserts, a pile of Blissful Booty diapers with inserts, a pile of WAHM diapers, and a pile of wipes. Then I start stuffing away and separating them by size. I store my stash in the drawers of our diaper changing table for quick and easy access. That is essentially our cloth diaper drying routine in a nutshell.
How do you dry your diapers when you can’t get outside?
The post Baby, It’s Wet Outside: Drying Cloth Diapers appeared first on Whey Beyond the Naked Truth.