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What’s the best way to wash cloth diapers?
In the grand scheme of difficult questions, it seems like this one should barely register. It’s just really dirty laundry, right? How hard can it be? But parents looking online for diaper laundry instructions nowadays are more likely to find pseudo-science than sound advice.
On one hand, you have many of the heavy hitters in the cloth diaper industry, who tie their warranties to a specific set of care practices and issue dire warnings about the myriad ways your diapers will be ruined if you fail to abide by their instructions: use small, practically homeopathic amounts of special “cloth-safe” detergent free of enzymes, perfumes, brighteners, or chemical surfactants. Wash in the largest amount of water possible and rinse multiple times afterwards. Only line dry. Cloth diapers are treated as fragile slips of investment-grade soft goods.
On the other hand, there’s a growing contingent of parents who are cluing on to the fact that if you’re going to wash the dirtiest laundry that you’re likely to encounter—pieces of cloth smeared with human waste—you should probably use strong detergent and plenty of it. They’re connecting the dots and realizing that washing as directed is likely to lead to recurring problems with bad smells and ammonia in diapers. And they’re realizing that these non-evidence based wash routines are hurting babies, through bacterial rashes and actual chemical burns from ammonia building up in poorly cleaned diapers.
The founders of Fluff Love and CD Science launched the Facebook page in the July of 2014 because they were tired of parents being given woo-based advice on diaper laundry, tired of seeing babies injured by bad wash routines, and tired of hearing stories of parents battling endlessly reeking diapers armed only with bad advice and blue Dawn dish soap. Based on howrapidly the group membership skyrocketed – 10,000 in two months, 13,000 in less than three months, approaching 20,000 in less than four months – it was clear that people were eager for accurate information that actually worked.
Every day on Fluff Love and CD Science, we hear from parents whose cloth diaper laundry routine is broken. So we designed a survey with a simple goal in mind – finding out what works.
The survey
Using the professional version of Survey Monkey, we asked about wash routine details: detergent brand, detergent quantity, water hardness, boosters and laundry additives, type of washing machine, wash routine cycles, water quantity, and extra rinses. For outcome measures, we asked about problems including minor and major smells and rashes, ammonia, stains, and leaking. We also asked what steps people took to fix these problems. Survey takers had the option of entering information for up to three separate wash routines. Links to the survey with unique collector IDs were posted in Fluff Love and CD Science, and in a large BumGenius Buy/Sell/Chat group with more than 11,000 members. Additionally, people were urged to share a third survey link on local cloth diaper forums and parenting chat pages.
In a span of 48 hours, 1,690 individuals completed our survey. About one-fourth of them entered information on multiple routines. After deleting results for people who didn’t fully complete the survey, we had 2,040 lines of data.
The results in a nutshell
Based on what we hear from our members every day in Fluff Love and CD Science, we weren’t surprised by the overall results. In a nutshell: people have the best results with mainstream detergents, followed by free and clear detergents, then plant-based detergents. Cloth safe detergents, homemade detergents, and free and clear detergents all performed poorly. Using more detergent generally produced better results than using a small amount. Setting water level to a “stew” consistency seemed to help non-HE results. Adding a water softener seemed to help routines, and extra rinses were associated with problematic routines. And surprisingly, the most effective detergent among our survey takers was also the cheapest.
Survey limitations
Before we get too deep into the survey results, we need to issue a few warnings about how our data can and cannot be interpreted. In an ideal world, we would have been able to conduct a huge, wildly expensive, randomized, controlled trial testing different wash methods. After crunching all that data, we could have stated with a fair amount of certainty which methods caused clean diapers. And we also would have come away with a fairly good idea of how frequently “cloth diaper safe” methods of laundry resulted in problems such as smells, rashes, ammonia, leaking, and staining.
In the real world, we only had the resources to create a survey and offer it to a non-random pool of people. Fluff Love and CD Science is a page primarily dedicated to helping people fix problems in their cloth diaper routines, so it was likely that people on that page would report more problems in their current or prior wash routines. That wound up being the case – 48% of Fluff Love members who took the survey reported having had problems with their routine at some point, and 19% reported having had ammonia. Members of the BumGenius Buy/Sell/Trade page had a lower incidence of problems, and members from general parenting and cloth diaper groups reported more general problems than the BG group, but a lower incidence of ammonia.
|
Survey collector |
Count |
Problems? |
Ammonia |
|
FL&CDS |
1636 |
48% |
19% |
|
Bumgenius |
270 |
35% |
16% |
|
Others |
134 |
44% |
10% |
|
Grand Total |
2040 |
46% |
18% |
Additionally, it’s possible that people who have struggled with their wash routine might be more likely to click on and complete a survey of this type. For that reason, it’s not possible to look at wash results from this survey and state that “48% of people using Detergent X are likely to have problems”. However, we can say that among people taking this survey, people using Detergent X were twice as likely to encounter problems as people using Detergent Y or Z.
A note about outcome measures – throughout this report, we focus on ammonia as one of the most important adverse outcomes, for several reasons. First, it’s pretty easy to accurately identify ammonia – that “burn your nose hairs” smell is impossible to miss. Secondly, while problems such as rashes have a multitude of possible causes, ammonia is almost always due to problems with the wash routine. And finally, while staining and smells are annoying, ammonia can be a serious medical issue. Ammonia is a caustic chemical, and infants who wear diapers with ammonia can get severe chemical burns on their bottoms and genitalia.
Detergent type
Our survey looked at six major categories of detergents:
- Mainsteam, such as Tide, Gain, or Arm & Hammer Original
- Free and Clear, such as All Free and Clear or Tide Free and Gentle
- Natural or plant-based detergents, such as 7th Generation or Method
- Cloth-safe detergents, such as BumGenius, Country Save, or Charlie’s Soap
- Homemade laundry soap, typically a mixture of Borax, washing soda, Fels Naptha soap, and other ingredients
- Soap Nuts
Based on what we hear from our members daily, the results were fairly close to what we expected. Survey respondents reported the best outcomes with mainstream detergents. 26% of those using mainstream detergents reported problems, with the majority of issues being minor smells, and 6% reported experiencing ammonia. Half of the respondents who used free and clear detergents reported problems, and 16% reported ammonia.
We were disappointed, but not surprised, by the overall prevalence of problems among those using natural, cloth-safe, homemade detergent, and soap nuts. The Fluff Love and CD Science page maintains a policy that we do not allow people to share recipes for homemade detergent. So many people experience severe problems with homemade detergent, the line of reasoning goes, that we cannot morally be complicit in encouraging its use. The survey data certainly did not show that homemade detergents are very effective. But we were somewhat surprised that they performed better than cloth safe detergents. About the same percentage of homemade and cloth-safe users experienced ammonia (37% vs 38%). Cloth safe users had more rashes and smells. One interesting note – more than a quarter of homemade detergent users reported that their diapers leaked. We counsel people that leaking is generally caused by problems with diaper fit and absorbency, and is less about wash routines. However, homemade detergent users reported leaking three times as frequently as all other detergents. Soap is the primary cleaning agent in most homemade detergents, and soap scum can build up on cloth fibers, coating the fabric.
It is interesting to note that mainstream users actually reported the fewest number of leaks, which provides evidence against claims that mainstream detergent builds up in diapers and causes repelling.
Soap nuts performed very poorly among survey users. However, with only 14 people reporting their use, the numbers are too small to draw firm conclusions.
|
Detergent type |
Count |
Problems? |
Minor Smells |
Moderate to severe smells |
Minor Rash |
Moderate to severe rash |
Ammonia |
Leaking |
Staining |
|
Mainstream |
959 |
26% |
14% |
4% |
4% |
1% |
6% |
4% |
7% |
|
F&C |
362 |
50% |
27% |
11% |
7% |
3% |
16% |
9% |
16% |
|
Natural |
216 |
63% |
34% |
18% |
13% |
6% |
30% |
8% |
23% |
|
Cloth Safe |
415 |
74% |
33% |
26% |
18% |
12% |
37% |
12% |
29% |
|
Homemade |
74 |
65% |
28% |
24% |
9% |
9% |
38% |
26% |
32% |
|
Soap nuts |
14 |
79% |
21% |
21% |
21% |
0% |
43% |
14% |
29% |
|
Grand Total |
2,040 |
46% |
23% |
12% |
8% |
5% |
18% |
8% |
16% |
Using SAS statistical software, we also performed a series of logistic regression analyses, looking at which aspects of a wash routine impacted the outcome. Detergent choice was by far the most important element.
Detergent Brand
The next chart shows problems reported by each brand that had at least ten users. The cloth safe detergents performed the most poorly in general. Charlie’s, Country Save, and Allen’s had the highest overall proportion of problems. However, Ecosprout had the highest occurrence of ammonia, at 54%, followed by BumGenius detergent, Allen’s, and Rockin’ Green.
Mainstream detergents such as Tide, Gain, Arm & Hammer, Purex, and Foca performed very well. On the FL&CDS page, we frequently recommend Tide as the most reliable overall detergent. However, Gain, Purex, and Foca all outperformed Tide in almost every category.
Foca is a Mexican detergent with a short ingredient list and mild smell, and is appropriate for non-HE machines. It is also dirt cheap, and we were somewhat surprised that it was the highest ranked detergent. With only 20 survey respondents providing information, the numbers are too small to draw firm conclusions, but it is worth investigating more.
|
Brand |
User count |
Problems? |
Minor smells |
Moderate to severe smells |
Minor rash |
Moderate to severe rash |
Ammonia |
Leaking |
Staining |
|
Charlie’s |
63 |
79% |
27% |
32% |
17% |
13% |
35% |
14% |
30% |
|
Country Save |
55 |
76% |
44% |
16% |
9% |
13% |
29% |
9% |
33% |
|
Allen’s |
15 |
73% |
47% |
20% |
7% |
13% |
40% |
7% |
13% |
|
Rockin’ Green |
154 |
73% |
31% |
29% |
21% |
14% |
38% |
16% |
33% |
|
Kirkland F&C |
11 |
73% |
55% |
18% |
9% |
9% |
36% |
27% |
18% |
|
Ecos |
68 |
72% |
34% |
25% |
12% |
9% |
29% |
9% |
31% |
|
Bumgenius |
65 |
71% |
29% |
22% |
23% |
8% |
40% |
11% |
23% |
|
Ecosprout |
24 |
67% |
29% |
33% |
33% |
13% |
54% |
21% |
46% |
|
Nellie’s |
29 |
66% |
24% |
28% |
17% |
10% |
31% |
10% |
24% |
|
Sun |
19 |
63% |
42% |
5% |
0% |
11% |
16% |
5% |
32% |
|
Biokleen |
15 |
60% |
27% |
13% |
20% |
0% |
27% |
7% |
20% |
|
Purex F&C |
39 |
59% |
41% |
15% |
8% |
5% |
21% |
8% |
10% |
|
7th generation |
32 |
56% |
41% |
9% |
13% |
3% |
22% |
3% |
9% |
|
All F&C |
135 |
56% |
28% |
13% |
13% |
5% |
19% |
10% |
19% |
|
Tide F&G |
130 |
45% |
23% |
8% |
4% |
2% |
8% |
9% |
14% |
|
Kirkland |
17 |
41% |
18% |
12% |
18% |
0% |
12% |
0% |
24% |
|
Arm & Hammer F&C |
36 |
36% |
17% |
14% |
0% |
0% |
22% |
6% |
17% |
|
Arm & Hammer |
30 |
33% |
13% |
17% |
3% |
3% |
10% |
7% |
17% |
|
Tide |
678 |
26% |
15% |
3% |
4% |
2% |
6% |
4% |
7% |
|
Gain |
129 |
21% |
14% |
0% |
1% |
1% |
4% |
1% |
4% |
|
Purex |
34 |
21% |
9% |
6% |
3% |
0% |
6% |
9% |
9% |
|
Foca |
20 |
20% |
0% |
10% |
0% |
0% |
0% |
0% |
5% |
Detergent quantity
In addition to the type of detergent, survey results suggest that the amount used is also important. In every category of detergent, problems were much lower when more detergent was used. The following chart compares survey respondents who used at least a full scoop (3/4 cup) of detergent, the amount recommended by FL&CDS for mainstream detergent. (We recommend using even larger amounts for free and clear and plant-based detergents, but this analysis uses ¾ cup as the cutoff).
|
Type |
Count |
Problems? |
Minor Smells |
Moderate to severe smells |
Minor Rash |
Moderate to severe rash |
Ammonia |
Leaking |
Staining |
|
Cloth Safe |
415 |
74% |
33% |
26% |
18% |
12% |
37% |
12% |
29% |
|
Less than 3/4 C. |
410 |
74% |
33% |
26% |
18% |
12% |
37% |
12% |
29% |
|
More than 3/4 C. |
5 |
60% |
20% |
40% |
0% |
0% |
0% |
20% |
20% |
|
F&C |
362 |
50% |
27% |
11% |
7% |
3% |
16% |
9% |
16% |
|
Less than 3/4 C. |
248 |
56% |
30% |
13% |
10% |
5% |
19% |
12% |
18% |
|
More than 3/4 C. |
114 |
36% |
19% |
9% |
2% |
0% |
9% |
4% |
11% |
|
Homemade |
74 |
65% |
28% |
24% |
9% |
9% |
38% |
26% |
32% |
|
Less than 3/4 C. |
63 |
70% |
33% |
27% |
10% |
11% |
38% |
29% |
38% |
|
More than 3/4 C. |
11 |
36% |
0% |
9% |
9% |
0% |
36% |
9% |
0% |
|
Mainstream |
959 |
26% |
14% |
4% |
4% |
1% |
6% |
4% |
7% |
|
Less than 3/4 C. |
537 |
29% |
16% |
4% |
5% |
2% |
8% |
4% |
7% |
|
More than 3/4 C. |
422 |
22% |
13% |
4% |
2% |
0% |
4% |
3% |
7% |
|
Natural |
216 |
63% |
34% |
18% |
13% |
6% |
30% |
8% |
23% |
|
Less than 3/4 C. |
148 |
67% |
32% |
22% |
19% |
4% |
36% |
10% |
25% |
|
More than 3/4 C. |
68 |
54% |
38% |
9% |
1% |
12% |
16% |
3% |
18% |
|
Grand Total |
2,026 |
46% |
23% |
12% |
8% |
5% |
18% |
8% |
16% |
The following figure shows the decrease in ammonia associated with using larger quantities of detergent. There were too few cloth safe detergent users who used the larger amount of detergent to draw conclusions. Users of mainstream, free and clear, and plant based detergents experienced about a 50% reduction in ammonia when using at least a full scoop.
Machine type
One variable that didn’t seem to matter at all was washing machine type. The incidence of problems was basically identical between the 1008 HE machine users and the 985 non-HE users. While some users seem to have problems with certain brands of HE machines, in general, machine type was not an important variable.
Hard water correction
An estimated 75% – 85% of households in the U.S. have hard water with high levels of minerals. These minerals can deposit onto cloth fibers, causing dinginess and trapping bacteria and ammonia. Adding a water softener like Calgon or borax can make it easier for the detergent to do its job, and prevent mineral buildup on fibers.
Adding a water softener was associated with approximately 50% lower ammonia rates among mainstream, free and clear, and plant-based users. However, it didn’t seem to make much of an impact in cloth safe and homemade detergent users. This is likely because water softeners already are a primary ingredient in cloth safe and homemade laundry soaps.
Extra rinses
Many cloth diaper websites advise user to rinse at least once, if not multiple times, after each wash, to remove all detergent residue. However, we’ve noticed that people who perform a number of extra rinses actually experience more issues with their diapers. This is likely because hard water can deposit minerals onto cloth fibers, trapping bacteria and ammonia.
In the logistic regression model, extra rinses was actually the most statistically significant variable – that is, the variable that was most clearly associated with the incidence of problems. However, there are several possible explanations. For example, it could be that people start doing lots of extra rinses when they have problems with their diapers, thinking it will help (this is known in statistics as “reverse causality”). Additionally, people who do lots of extra rinses are also likely to follow other “cloth safe” directions such as using small amounts of detergent. However, based on the survey data, it does seem likely that extra rinses actually cause more problems.
The following chart shows the percentage of users reporting ammonia problems, divided by the type of detergent used and the number of extra rinses in their wash routine (0, 1, or 2+). For every type of detergent, each additional rinse was associated with a higher proportion of ammonia.
What makes green detergents work?
Many people who use cloth diapers are drawn by their environmental friendliness – less waste for the landfills, less chemicals from disposable diapers on your baby’s bottom. For green-minded cloth diaper users, it seems counter-intuitive to wash diapers with mainstream detergent.
Based on trial and error and our understanding of what makes laundry work, the FL&CDS administrators have developed recommendations for using plant-based detergents: use 1.5 to 2 full scoops or caps, add a water softener if necessary, and wash on hot to maximize the detergent’s cleaning power. We did not ask about wash temperature in our survey. However, the hard water correction and detergent quantity did have an impact. The following chart shows the incidence of ammonia among survey respondents using plant-based detergent. When using small amounts of detergent and not correcting for hard water, ammonia incidence was 39%. When using at least a full scoop of detergent and adding a water softener, ammonia incidence dropped to 7%. While still higher than the rate of problems when using a sufficient amount of mainstream detergent, the survey shows that plant-based detergents can be reasonably effective in cleaning cloth diapers.
|
Less detergent |
More detergent |
|
|
No Hard water correction |
39% |
22% |
|
Hard water correction |
27% |
7% |
FL&CDS outcomes versus traditional CD safe methods
Finally, we compared two methods of washing cloth diapers – the “cloth safe” method, which suggests using small amounts of detergents without enzymes or scents; washing in lots of water, and doing extra rinses; versus the method recommended by the Fluff Love and CD Science group– using plenty of mainstream detergent, washing in a “stew” water level, correcting for hard water, and not performing extra rinses. The results speak for themselves.
Among those using the cloth-safe wash methods, 74% encountered problems, and more than 1/3 reported ammonia. Among those washing with methods recommended by Fluff Love & CD Science, 21% reported problems, primarily minor smells. Only 2% experienced ammonia. When limiting the results to those who had been using their wash routine for more at least three months, results were very similar.
|
User count |
Problems? |
Minor smells |
Moderate to severe smells |
Minor rash |
Moderate to severe rash |
Ammonia |
Leaking |
Staining |
|
|
FLCDS routine |
268 |
21% |
13% |
2% |
3% |
0% |
2% |
3% |
6% |
|
cloth safe routine |
246 |
74% |
35% |
26% |
18% |
9% |
34% |
13% |
31% |