Saturday was a BUSY day, full of shopping for a new washer & dryer (tips for washing cloth diapers in a top loader HE would be much appreciated!) and a birthday party for one of Stella’s friends that went from “3pm to meltdown.” Other then a quick stopover at home at nap time, we were gone from 8:30am-8:30pm. This means that for Palm Sunday we wanted to lay low and do a lot of nothing! We did go to church in the morning, but it was pouring rain when we left, and by lunch time that has changed to dumping snow, so we refused to leave the house for the rest of the day. It was nice to just chill with our kiddos… <3
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Harvey’s doing great sitting up!
My goodness, he’s gotten so big! Love this picture!!!
We had an HE machine and actually got rid of it to get an old school machine since in my area we have really hard water and for diapers and dirty work clothes it would take several washes to get stuff clean so we were using more power and water than with the old school machine, the joys of really hard water. But here are my tips for a top loading HE machine if you have hard water, if you have soft water I have no idea. First can you adjust your water level, if you can, that’s ideal, since you can have the machine fill to the top every time, otherwise, you will probably have to throw in several wet heavy towels in the load to make it fill to the top, or you can add water to the machine. The downside of adding wet towels is that your diapers often don’t agitate as well and don’t get as clean and can require an extra wash. For the wash routine, the way that worked to somewhat help ammonia buildup constantly occurring was to do a cold wash/rinse, then a hot wash/rinse, then an additional rinse or two. Although sometimes they still wouldn’t be clean and would require an additional wash. You may end up having to strip your diapers more often since ammonia seems to build up more on diapers with HE washers compared to the old school type. Some detergents do work better with HE washers for cloth diapers so you might have to try different types to see what will work best for you. I make my own and it worked well. I think with that type of washer it really is trial and error since when I did research on it back in the day, everyone had different approaches that work for them and it also may depend on what brand of washer you have.
Ugh, this is what I’m afraid of. Our old school washer works great for the diapers, and I’m scared of the ammonia build up issue with HE. *sigh* We shall see.
If you do have ammonia buildup problems and don’t want to strip your diapers all the time since doing that a lot can weaken the PUL, you can run them through the washer with really hot water 2-3 times in a row and that usually works as well every month, just turn up your hot water heater a bit for that. Also using Dawn, which is the recommended stripping routine can void the warranty on the HE washers since apparently that can do something to the guts of the machine. I have seen some websites recommend using vinegar to help with ammonia, but I have heard of quite a few people ruining the PUL on their diapers using that approach. One thing I have always done to help with the ammonia since I do have such hard water, is to rinse out even the peed in diapers, that helps slow down the issue a fair bit. Good luck with the washer, hopefully it works out well for you. Once you get a routine figured out you should be fine, might just take a while to figure that out.
For my HE top loader, I found that washing on the “bulky items” setting put the most water into the washer during the agitation part. I added wet towels too, to make the load feel heavier/bigger to the machine.
I absolutely HATED my top loading HE washer! No matter what I did I couldn’t get my diapers “clean” when Shane was on mostly solids. When it died at only 4 years old I wanted to throw a party. I was so happy to replace it with a standard washer. We got a Speed Queen & I can say I’m in love with it. It’s a commercial grade washer and it’s the bomb!
Gah, I’m wishing I had asked this question before ordering the washer. Regretting the purchase already. :\
OMG HARVEY!
Those relaxing days are the BEST! I always find I feel better about life when we get a day like that.
Look at Harvey just chilling!! <3
Is he watching the game?:)
He totally was. Creepy. I turned his back to the TV after that. 🙂
OMG, that is the BEST picture of Harvey!
We have a front loading HE – I’m not sure how different that is from a top loader, but here’s what I do: two hot water rinses in our slop sink then put the diapers in the washing machine with 1/4c baking soda and 2oz vinegar in the bleach dispenser. All free and clear detergent. Wash with pre-soak and extra rinse. Dry. I was using 1tbsp funk rock per load as well as the baking soda but ran out of it recently and haven’t noticed that much of a difference. I know that I’m probably losing most of the benefit of the HE washer by doing the pre-rinses, but I think those hot water rinses help a lot.
Love this photo of Harvey!!! The jeans! And Stella is just so pretty!