El Bee Baby

DIAPER WASHING ROUTINE:

There is a wide variety of cloth diaper washing routines out there. If your routine works for you, stick with it! If, however, you're new to cloth diapering or if you're looking to streamline things a little, try our routine on for size!

put dirty diapers in the pail (rinse the poopy ones first)
every two to three days dump contents of pail into washing machine
do a cold rinse first with a TINY amount of detergent
do a normal to long wash on warm or hot with about a 1/4 to a 1/2 scoop of detergent (take it from us-you DON'T need to use as much as the box tells you! Though it might seem that using more soap will get diapers EXTRA clean, in actual fact it's the opposite. The more soap used, the more soap that is still left in the diapers after the last rinse. Leftover soap means stinky diapers; the soapy residue will actually hang on to odour rather than eliminate it. You'll also have dingy diapers and potential skin irritation! Yuck!)
do one to two cold rinses until the rinse water is no longer soapy
dry in any manner convenient (We like to do a partial dry in the diaper and then hang the diapers to finish drying. This does prolong the longevity of the fabrics)

If your diapers take on a bit of a smell, add about 3 drops of tea tree oil or lavender oil to the wash.

If you're concerned about stains, hang your diapers in the sun for a while. (You can even do this in the winter if you feel like it) Works like a charm!

FABRIC CARE:

Here at el bee baby we really like to stick with natural fibres. They’re beautifully soft, kinder to the environment and they don’t have the same ‘smell grabbing’ properties that manmade fibres do. Natural fibres will show wear in the course of their life. This can be a good thing, though. Who’d want a T-shirt or pair of jeans that never ‘broke in’?

While we like to stick with the naturals, we do make one exception when it comes to the material that we bind our diapers with. We use an organic cotton jersey that is blended with 6% lycra to encourage greater binding longevity.

Here are a few tips to keep your diapers looking their best:

Do NOT use any bleach or washing soda as this will encourage premature wear and tear.
Washing on the warm or hot wash setting is ideal. Some machines, particularly the newer models, have a ‘super hot’ setting which in our opinion is too hot for cloth diapers. Using this setting consistently will result in premature wear and potentially some residual shrinkage.
Washing with other diapers with Velcro closures is not recommended as it can lead to premature fabric wear.

Dyeing HANDDYED DIAPER CARE:

We do all our dyeing with low-impact, fibre-reactive dyes. We find these dyes to be very very safe to use and long lasting.

Handdyed products are unique and not always absolutely uniform in colour. We consider this to be part of the charm. Any handdyed product, no matter how it is dyed will show some fading over time.
We rinse our dyed fabrics VERY thoroughly but it’s almost impossible to get every last molecule of dye out.

We ask you to keep the following things in mind:

Handdyed diapers should be washed by themselves (or with like colours) at least once or twice prior to use. We do not advise leaving them sitting wet in a diaper pail for extended periods of time between the first few uses.
Once your handdyed diapers have been washed a few times, colour runoff will be at a minimum and they’ll be fine with the rest of your diapers. We’ve washed handdyed red diapers (a notorious ‘running’ colour) with our white diaper loads and they don’t pose any significant ‘hazard’ after the first few washes.

If you DO experience some dye runoff onto lighter fabrics, fear not, the dye shouldn’t bond with the lighter fabric and will come out in a few washes.
To keep handdyed diapers looking their best, please wash them in warm water as opposed to hot. It actually isn’t necessary to wash diapers in water hotter than 60ºF.