Help another Mom out on Mailbox Monday. Each week I post (and answer if I can) a reader question for the rest of you lovely ladies (and gents?) to answer!
Questions don’t have to be cloth diaper related, just email maria at change-diapers.com with “Mailbox Mondays” in the subject, or fill out my contact form for readers, which you will always be able to find on my Contact Page.
Julie says:
Hi Maria,
I don’t know if you have talked about this topic before or not, but I have a question. My son is currently potty training. We still use a diaper at night time only and when we are out in public I usually put training pants on him just in case. I used to wash my diapers every other day. Now I only have one maybe 2 dirty diapers/training pants a
day, if that (sometimes he wakes up dry from the night). I know I can wait 3 days to wash but am afraid to wait any longer than that. Whatdo I do when I only have 3 diapers to wash on wash day??? I worry they won’t come clean if I throw them in by themselves b/c they won’t have enough friction to properly clean. What do others do? How long would
you wait to wash in this situation?
Thanks
Julie G 🙂
My older child was disposable diapered (shame) and by the time I was in that situation with my middle child, I had another baby’s diapers to wash!
I have a top load HE (no agitator) so if I just put a few items in, it uses very little water, and they get clean. In fact, when I first started cloth diapering and was building my stash, I washed 3 at a time twice per day! With a standard top load washer, the lowest load level, combined with the agitator, should get them clean as well. In a front loading HE, I would throw towels in with your diapers and wash them every 2-3 days or consider hand washing them.
I know by the time I got to that point with my son, the diapers were often not really even wet/dirty.
Have you had just a few diapers to wash? How did you handle it?
Maria wants to live in a world where cloth diapers are the norm and moms can make parenting choices without judgement. When she’s not chasing her 18, 14 and 11-year old kids around, you might find her checking out the latest gadgets, organizing something (again) or exercising in the fresh air. 
If the diaper only had urine, I sometimes throw one in with my regular clothes laundry, just rinse really well first. I use Charlie’s for all my laundry, so don’t need to worry about using some special detergent on only my diaper stash.
I would put the diapers through a rinse cycle, and then a hot wash with towels and underwear, extra rinse sometimes. Washed every 3 days.
My son is 3 and still wears diapers at night. We really only have 2-3 wet diapers in a week because he stays dry 1/2 the nights so the diaper laundry is a concern for me too. I have switched him to natural fibers (usually cotton flat/ receiving blanket) just so it is less picky for washing. I spray the wet bedtime diaper out really well to remove most of the icky pee. Then I wash with a load of only towels and treat the load of towels like a diaper load (detergent wise). This has worked for us for us. Good luck and just do what what works for you.