Cloth Diapering with a Solid Food Eater

If you do not cloth diaper, have no interest in it, or shoot- don't even have kids- I would NOT read this. I use the word poop/s a lot and get pretty gross. Sorry.



Ok, so you made it through the first phase! Woohoo! Now...onto cloth diapering with solid food poops..

This is where it gets a little more involved. Don't read "difficult" because hey- you're still saving lots o' money!! Plus, by this time you've already gotten the hang of washing and caring for your dipes, right? Well now, we're just going to add a little bit more to the pre-treatment process before washing!

Basically, the joy of water-soluable poops is gone once your little one starts on solid food. No more "tossing the soiled, untreated diapers in the wash"...nope, those days are gone. Now you will need to knock the chunks into the toilet before washing. I know, this is getting graphic, but what can I say- solid poops are devastating no matter what diaper you use.. yuck!

Anyways, sometimes you will be luck and it will simply shake into the toilet. Other times? Not so much. Other times, that poop will cling. It will stick. It will absolutely refuse to budge. Those are the poops that require additional attention. For those poops, I chose to invest in a toilet sprayer, which is basically like a sink sprayer that attaches to your toilet. We purchased THIS one from amazon and have been very pleased with the pressure it provides.

Spray them off as best as you can, and when you're done, put it in your wet bag. The beauty of solid poops is that they are much fewer and farther between than breastmilk diapers. The bad thing- they smell BAD. You will find that you need to do a load of diapers more frequently than before. Also, you will need to strip them more consistently- I recommend every other week. If you don't remember what stripping diapers is, check it out in this post, towards the bottom of the page.

My wash routine is as follows:

1. Soak diapers in machine overnight. In the morning, I close the lid and let it run a cycle with no detergent.
2. Run another cycle with 2nd rinse and detergent.
3. Hang to dry.

Still pretty easy! The only thing is spraying off the poop before putting it in your washer. I find that soaking them overnight takes care of any little bits of poop still clinging to the diaper ('cause let's face it- you're not going to get every bit off 90% of the time... you just won't.)

Hope this helps! This is what works for me, but feel free to do your research!

P.S.
Neal built me this super-cool fold down drying rack in the laundry room- I will post pictures later! It's great for Piper's clothes and my under garments that I don't want drying out in the open!