Detergent Confusion

I have been battling ammonia for a really long time and was using pocket diapers / microfibre inserts.  I've switched to my Motherease Sandy's thinking that the cotton would get more air to my baby's (14 mos) bum and would help to heal the sore that she developed.  I was using Country Save detergent and have now switched to Nature Clean but am still having problems with her overnight diapers. They're horrible!  I am wanting to use a regular detergent such as Tide or Sunlight to see if that helps.  I know in the Motherease wash and care, they say that you can use any detergent but WHY do all other diaper sites say to stay away from regular detergents when it's okay for Motherease?  What makes Motherease diapers different?

Honestly I think it's because Mother-Ease has been around longer than most (if not all!!) other diapering companies and haven't jumped on the 'only miniscule amounts of specialized mail-order detergent will ever get diapers clean' bandwagon because they probably know better. Honestly I don't know why seemingly everyone in the cloth world has suddenly decided you need these specialized detergents to get diapers clean. I've researched the detergent thing quite extensively and although I find lots and lots of people/websites that talk about it, none EVER give any real scientific reason as to why this would be. Lots of conjecture and 'I read on a website that one lady's cousin's friend... blah blah blah....' but no real scientific explanation for build-up or the need for specialized detergents.
 
Do note that many diaper manufacturers are now offering their own 'brand' of detergent and/or selling a specialized brand. So they're not exactly unbiased in their recommendations... And quite frankly, the formulation of many of these specialized detergents are quite lacking and often total ripoffs. For something to be a real detergent you need water conditioners (water softeners - ie washing soda, sodium carbonate) and surfactants. Many specialized diaper detergents are just water softeners (borax, washing soda, Oxy-Clean and some essential oils). Might work for some people but overall it's not a complete detergent. AND it's something you can quite easily make at home yourself!!
 
I'm experimenting with detergents and such myself right now (I talk more in detail in a previous post) and quite frankly the absolute best detergent I've tried so far is Tide (plain old regular scented powdered Tide). I used a ridiculously large amount (not that you'd need to - I'm just experimenting with build-up as well) and had absolutly no ammonia in all my nighttime diapers (5 year old heavy wetters no less!!!). Not only that, I had no odors or ammonia at all in the pail, even after sitting for 5-6 days.
 
Country Save should be a good choice, how much were you using? Nature Clean is a great detergent for clothing and such but I do wonder about a couple of things with natural detergents for diapers. First, many may just be too gentle to handle the nasties in diapers, especially overnight ones. Second, many contain vegetable based surfactants that may act as pure soap and cause soap scum build-up in diapers (this is not to be confused with the oft-proclaimed detergent build-up problem, pure soap is well documented as problematic in diapers and even clothing to a certain extent). But then I do believe it has high ratings at the Pinstripes & Polkadots detergent rating chart so what do I know... Again, maybe you're not using enough? Or maybe you have hard water and could benefit from an extra dose of water softeners (Calgon is great but washing soda will do the same job at much cheaper!) along with your detergent?
 
Other than that if you want to try Tide I say go for it! I've had great success with it and know TONS of others who have as well (go to Diaperswappers.com and search for Tide, you'll find hundreds of happy Tide moms!). Just use a full scoop (to the 1 or 2 line) and don't worry about build-up or suds or stripping or anything else! Tide isn't my favorite detergent when it comes to ethics or the environment, but if it keeps your diapers smelling happy then it's totally worth it!
 
Karen.

Hi Karen,
First of all, thanks so much for writing so much detail!  You give me hope. I will try Tide and since I still have Country Save, Nellies, and Nature Clean I have enough detergents to do my laundry for a long, long time.  As far as my experience with Country Save, I was washing with 2 TBS each load which is probably not enough.  I've always followed the whole "use 1/2 of what the recommended amount is" and always had smelly diapers. My eldest is 3 and I had smelly diapers for all her diapering days and she developed the same sores that my youngest has recently developed now.  Went to the Doc with both of the girls and nothing he prescribed worked on their bums.  The only thing that healed my 3 year old was to fully potty train her.  Since she's been out of diapers, she's had no problems.  I don't want the same thing happening to my 1 year old as she's got a long time yet ahead of her in diapers.
 
Anyways yes, I was using 2 TBS Country Save in my top loader with naturally soft water.  Probably not enough, eh?  Lots of stink. Been doing it this way for a while and then tried double the amount and if I remember correctly, I didn't have as much problems with stink.
 
I tried 1 Nugget of Nellie's and my diapers still stank.  So next wash I threw in 2 Nuggets and was told that Nellie's is really strong and 2 nuggets is too much.  (But I thought if you can use 1 nugget for an HE machine, then how is it that I can only use 1 nugget for my top-loader when there's that much more water?). I was told to quit using Nellie's and try Nature Clean. 
 
I tried Nature Clean just a couple of washes ago using 3/8 cup of detergent.  I had to do 4 rinses after the wash to get all the suds out and even then, there were still opaque suds happening, but not many so I didn't bother rinsing a 5th time.  Baby's overnight diaper was almost unbearable.  Burned the eyes.  Her daytimes are fine.  Just the night-times are bad.  So, there you have it. My extremely tough battle with ammonia.
 
My mom is pressuring me a little bit because of the ongoing battle with ammonia and sores on my girls' bums. She wants me to go disposable, but I know that there's got to be a solution for me - otherwise cloth diapers would not be on the market as much as they are.  If it's so hard to launder them, who would want to bother? I am almost at my wits end but I love cloth-diapering and want to WIN this battle!!
 
Thanks again!

Wow KarenC, lots of fantastic details! I'm so glad that you have done your own research and you don't just listen to the 'blah blah blah' that the internet is selling everyone! kudos.
 
I had the same situation with ammonia in my diapers when my son was born in 2009. I couldn't get the smell out. I tried rinsing out all the diapers by hand before putting them into a dry pail and it wasn't helping. I washed every other day, so there was no point to a wet pail for me. I switched my detergent to the Kind that Mother-ease sells and I stopped pre-rinsing my diapers by hand. The stink went away at first, but returned. What we discovered was that the urine wasn't being rinsed out enough before the wash regardless of the detergent.

Shortly after that I started to do 45 minutes of extra rinsing on top of my regular washing time. I do an extra pre-rinse and an extra final rinse. Since then, my diapers come out smelling so clean. I can't even remember when my kids had their last bad rash due to diapers. I don't use any 'helpers' such as Borax, bleach or Oxy Clean. If I need to get a stain out, I put it in the sun for a day or two.
 
I strongly suggest you add an extra rinse cycle to your regular routine. You might feel like you are wasting water/electricity, but it's better than switching to disposables. 
 
-Sarah

Yeah, more of any detergent could well be the trick. Or something stronger like Tide... This is going to go against almost everything you read out there nowadays but it's scientifically valid (whereas most other 'theories' out there are not) --- ammonia = unclean diapers. Lingering bacteria will absolutly cause ammonia odors (bacteria causes the urea in urine to transform to ammonia, the more bacteria the quicker it happens, so if it happens just overnight then you've got lots of bacteria). That's why daytime diapers don't usually get ammonia stinkies (and if they do it's much less severe). The sores you mention are all too familiar to me (and probably caused by ammonia burns), I dealt with them on my twins for ages. They only went away when I used a good quantity of detergent or disinfected the diapers somehow (bleach or a sanitary cycle). 
 
An extra rinse can definetly be helpful especially if you're using an HE machine. For me personally I don't have to do any extra rinses or stripping even in my HE machine (and I don't use any 'tricks' to get more water in there either) since I've started using lots of detergent (so far I've done Tide and Sunlight - Tide definetly works best among the two, for me anyway).
 
Have you tried stripping/deep cleaning your diapers? I don't think this should be a necessary 'usual' step in a wash routine but if you're having problems it can sometimes be helpful to start with refreshed and deep cleaned diapers. I don't really believe in detergent build-up but sometimes the diapers just aren't getting clean enough for some reason so it can be useful to deep clean them before changing your routine (to hopefully prevent the problem from happening again). Lots of hot water washes (maybe the first couple with detergent and maybe even additives) can be very helpful. As can boiling the diapers (not the absolutest safest thing to do with snaps and elastic but if you're careful it should be ok) or using a sanitary cycle. Or even bleach if you're so inclined. Honestly if you're at the point of considering disposables I would use bleach before I did that. Sure bleach isn't the most eco-frienly or healthy product around, but a little (maybe as little as 1/4 of a cup every second wash) can go a very long way and it's surely no worse than disposables (plus much cheaper!). I would try Tide or more detergent or additives (Oxy-Clean can help with bacteria for example) first but I also don't think that bleach is quite so bad that I would use disposables just to avoid a little bleach.
 
Karen.

K Sarah, Thanks!  I actually thought about doing this and I tried it today.  I'm doing a full cold cycle and then a hot cycle with double rinse.  I hope it works!

Karen,
Yeah, I did do a "stripping" just before switching detergents to Nature Clean. I think I'm probably not using enough detergent which, the way you said it, makes sense to me.  I washed with Ultra Tide (powdered), so we shall see how that goes. I am looking forward to the results and trusting that I will have a good report.  Do you think that I could/should be using Tide on my BumGenius Pockets as well?  I read another "scary" article today that wrong detergents could harm the lifespan of the PUL.

Hmmm, interesting question. My gut says that clean, stink-free and rash-free diapers are wayyy more important than diapers that last through 4 kids... But is there something to these therories of good vs bad detergents for durability of PUL?? Honestly I don't know. Historically PUL was made to withstand the heavy duty intense washing you get in industrial situations. But it's possible that there are now different kinds of PUL that may be more sensitive. If someone's regular routine involves a 'safe' detergent and an intense routine involving multiple cycles etc... Then this will certainly take a huge toll.I would think that the theoretical (ie do they really have anything to back up their statements???) chemical effect of a 'bad' detergent would be much less than the cumulated effect of the physical wear from extremely intense wash routines I regularly hear about. But again that's just my gut and I don't really have anything to back it up either...

If one can make one of the 'safe' detergents work (presumably with a simple wash routine) then all the better. But if I had to chose, clean would win out over 'safe'. But that's just me...

Good luck, hope it works and you clean worry- free diapers!!

Karen.

I suppose it's possible to wash covers separately from diapers, and protect the PUL that way, although I've personally never felt like doing a separate load just for covers.  I'm okay with it if I have to replace a few covers every once in a while.
 
I can only echo Karen's views on detergent -- in my experience, my diapers stank because they weren't getting clean enough, not because of any kind of detergent build up.  And if you ignore what you read on most diaper websites, that's what makes the most sense: dirty diapers don't smell good.
 
I'd like to add to this: in addition to switching detergents, using more, and rinsing more, I've had a really good experience with sunning my diapers.  I like them to be soft and fluffy, so I still put them in the dryer for a little while, but then I hang them on a drying rack and put them out in the sun or stand them in my kitchen window in full sun.  Even on a cloudy day it seems to help.  There are a lot of benefits to this: the diapers are cleaner and smell better, stains are naturally bleached, and they spend less time in the dryer (saves power and money).
 
Good luck with getting them clean!  My daughter was getting occasional sores on her bottom too, and they're completely gone now.

Yeah, I always washed my covers seperatly but not in a seperate load per say. I always just threw them in a load of whites (or light colors), although that did require having quite a few covers (I usually had at least 5-6 per size). Then of course you can't do that with PUL pocket diapers...
 
Karen.
 

Okay can I tell you about Calgon and RLR?
We've battled ammonia and ammonia type burns after a night long sleep.  I'm in Canada and we're a hard water nation.
I discovered RLR.  I'm doing a soak right now in them but the first time I used it I tossed it in the wash with regular soap(I use Eco Nuts or dropps).  The ammonia was kinda out but no more burns.  It didn't make my laundry brighter but I'm doing a soak to compare between them and Calgon.
Then I tried Calgon Water Softener. Love it! I bought it at Home Hardware.  I did a soak for a couple of hours and then tossed it in the wash with Baby dropps.  It washed so well, it also came out brighter.

Both RLR and Calgon remove soap build up and hard water particles are recommended for cloth diapers.  We've have no ammonia problems since!
 
Give it a try, I hope this helps!

Well, it has been a couple of weeks now and since switching to Tide and using a normal (none of this 1/2 to 1/4) amount of detergent, I have no more issues with ammonia. Hooray! I am thrilled. My pails don't even stink after 3-4 days.  My girl's bum is all healed up and looking good!

Yippee for ammonia-free diapers!! Glad to hear things are working out well!
 
Karen.

I'm so happy to hear that!  I have been using Rockin' Green for a couple of months, but while it gets my diapers pretty clean, I find that it is very expensive and I don't get nearly as many loads out of a pack as promised.  I've bought myself a box of Tide and so far so good.  I would rather use something more environmentally friendly and perfume-free (I bought the HE powder and couldn't find it in Free and Clear) but I will settle for really clean diapers at a reasonable price washed in a reasonable amount of water.

That's wonderful news! Thanks for sharing your quest in getting ammonia-free.