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Cloth diapers are awesome! They are cute, environmentally friendly and can save you tons of money!
That is, until they start holding stinky smells or leaking. If you follow some basic cloth diaper care when it comes to the care and cleaning of your diapers, you shouldn’t have to strip them often. However, if you do end up with a leaky diaper or one that smells as soon as your baby eliminates, it might be time to strip them!
I stripped my diapers a few times before my son was finished with diapers. I tried a few different methods including RLR and boiling inserts. By far, the easiest way to strip cloth diapers is to use BLUE Dawn dish soap.
I stripped all my son’s diapers with Dawn this spring after he transitioned to underwear. They were looking kind of dingy and dirty. As a side noteāthe sun is a great way to take out stains in cloth diapers!
All you need to strip your cloth diapers:
- Blue Dawn dish soap
- Washing machine
Step 1:
Wash your diapers as you normally do. For my diapers, I always run a cold rinse cycle, wash on hot, rinse on cold. Simple as that!
Step 2:
Add Blue Dawn dish soap. I have to add a lot of soap because I have very hard water. Dawn soap will suds up a lot, so try only adding a few drops the first time you strip. If it doesn’t make any suds, try again, adding more soap. Wash on a hot wash cycle with a cold rinse.
Step 3:
Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Rinse on cold until you can no longer see suds when the diapers spin dry in the washer.
Look how clean my diapers turned out! These diapers were used by my son for over a year and they look brand new!
Have you had to strip your cloth diapers? What methods have worked for you? I’d love to hear your success stories.
New to cloth diapering? Read: Cloth Diapers? Naturally! Cloth Diapering Basics.
Neat – never knew that!
Can you use a different dish soap or must it be the BLUE dawn?
I have only ever used blue Dawn. I think it’s because it doesn’t have other additives in it that can lead to build up or residue on your diapers.
I read your article on this and stripped my sons Charlie Bananas diapers. We used the lot of them 100+ times and they were starting to stink and stain! After using a liberal amount of Blue dawn soap as you suggested you had done due to hard water (we have it too), my diapers came out clean and white! Woot woot! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with a diaper newbie!
This is so fabulous to hear! Using blue Dawn was the only way I ever stripped my diapers and it worked wonders. š
Would any dawn dish soap work?