As you may have read in my previous post, we bought a house recently and have been staying with my in-laws until our house is ready. As I was getting everything ready and we finally made the move, I thought I had it all together (well, as together as one can be with three kids under 4 and a busy farmer for a husband.) I was excited to be doing laundry in a house with a water softener because our old house had crazy hard water and stain removal and the dingy's were a constant battle. That is until I had to wash the cloth diapers. We have used cloth diapers on all of our kids and have never had a problem. It did take a lot of research and a little bit of tooling around with the amount of detergent and the number of rinses before I figured out what worked best for our water, but once I had the formula I never had an issue. And then we moved. The soft water I had been looking forward to has now become the bane of my existence. I know they say to use less detergent and more rinses. Did it. Try washing more often. Did it. Try stripping and starting over. Did it. I am tempted to try vinegar, but have heard such mixed reviews that I don't know if I want to risk it. I miss my cleaning smelling, easy to wash, super absorbent diapers! Currently I do a cold wash with 1tsp detergent, hot wash with about a tablespoon of detergent and then up to three rinses. I have tried less to detergent to cut down on the rinses, but then the diapers smell disgusting and worse than disgusting after they are used. It didn't help that my father-in-law was trying to be helpful one day and threw the diapers into the dryer after only the cold wash...I think he may have baked in the stink ;) He meant well so I guess I'll give him a pass. I never thought I would be doing laundry, longing for my hard water back!
We are finally finishing up with the updates on our new house and plan to move in this week. I am seriously considering not hooking up the water softener. I hate hard water stains, but I don't know if I can take the smelly diapers! I think a little extra cleaning might be easier to handle than the eye-watering stench of a cloth diaper with soap build-up. I guess the grass isn't always greener on the other side and the water isn't always better! Maybe there is a way to have both soft water and clean diapers, but I'm not sure I have the time to figure it out. They can't smell any worse though, so maybe I should just fiddle with the softener and see what happens. Wish me luck!
