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| I have always used a dry pail. Now my 3rd DS, who just turned 1, is slightly anemic and needs to take an iron supplement which is making his BM's very dark. I have been putting liners in the diapers but it just soaks through and gets on the diaper anyway. I am worried that this is going to ruin all his diapers. I was thinking about maybe using a wet pail so they can soak, but I read that the water needs to be changed daily which sounds like a lot of work. Right now with the amount of diapers I have using a dry pail I only have to do laundry every 3rd day. I am a single Mom of 3 and don't want to add more work to my routine then I have to. My question is, is it really necessary to change the water every day? Or does anyone have any other suggestions? And if I do start using a wet pail, what kind should I purchase and what kind of cleaning solution do I put in the water? |
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Are the liners you're using disposable/flushable or fleece? If the former, I'd suggest using fleece liners to try to keep the color off the diapers. They keep color off diapers much better than the papery ones. I've had a trace of color come through fleece to diapers in the past (like with beet-influenced poops and the like), but not much, and it comes out eventually in the wash. Generally, fleece has worked really well to keep poop off the diaper, and fleece doesn't stain.
Another point, though, is that even if you have some staining to the diapers, chances are good that the stains will wash out eventually without any extra work on your part. To me it's an issue of whether or not you can live with some stains, and to a lesser extent, possibly affecting the resale value of the diapers (though by the time you get to that point, maybe he won't be on supplements, and you'd be amazed at what lemon-juice and sunshine can do).
Having started with a wet pail and having had vibrant orange BF stains on all of my diapers, I'm not so sure about the soaking to reduce stains theory, but maybe that was just me. I switched to a dry pail and have to say that it dramatically improved my CDing experience.
If you want to try a wet pail, anything with a tightly-sealing lid (a wet pail is a drowning hazard) will work, although you have to consider size for lifting something filled with water. Several smaller pails might be the key. Something I got when I wet-pailed were some mesh liners for my pails. ME now sells these, but my MIL made some for me out of athletic mesh for way cheaper. That way you can lift the mesh with diapers out of the pail and put them straight into the washer. You tip off as much water as possible into the toilet, transport to washer, lift out mesh, insert. That's great for front-loaders; I think that some people with top-loaders just pour the whole bucket with water into the machine and spin out the water before starting their normal wash routine.
ME does recommend changing the water daily, but I don't think that most people who wet pail bother, so I would play that by ear. You don't really need anything special for soaking; some people like to put in a few drops of tea tree oil or the like. What I wouldn't do is follow ME's recommendation (do they still say this? haven't checked recently) to put in some detergent. The only time I did that I had build-up problems, guess it was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
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| I was using the disposable liners but I cut some fleece liners last night. My DS just put one to the test, and it worked great, absolutly nothing was on the diaper. Thanks so much! I am glad that I can continue to use a dry pail. And yes, ME suggest to put detergent into a wet pail, they recommend Dreft and Ivory Snow. They also say that diapers in a dry pail should be washed at the end of EVERYDAY to keep odor from setting in. I wash mine every 3rd day and that seems to be working for me. Thanks again for the fleece suggestion. Now if I can just figure out how to keep him from taking off his Rikki Wraps! HeHe! |
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| That's the downside of Rikkis. Airflows are much, much, much harder for those little hands to undo! |
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