Hand Washing: As the Diapers Swirl

One of these was handwashed. The other was machine washed. Can you tell the difference?

Didn't think so. Neither could spouse, and he even had to sniff them.

So as promised, here is a breakdown of todays handwashing routine.

This is where I keep the fluffies. Yes, it's a Repurposed Tidy Cat liter bucket, 'cuz that's how we roll around here. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. All about the Reusing.

From there they go to the bathroom to be rinsed with the diaper sprayer. I actually took the camera in to take a picture for you, but lets just face it, some days you don't want people looking round your bathroom, you know?

From there it's out to the washtub in the tiny alcove in the garage, and by tiny, I mean two feet wide.

In my narrow, yet deep but plumbed alcove I have a washtub, complete with spray nozel, and handy dandy fence stuff for hanging things like scrub brushes and bags of, yep, you saw it, Rockin'Green. Yeah, I'm still hearting the Rockin' Green.

The diapers got dumped into the sink, complete with freshly found plug and recently steralized plunger. (That was fun, not!)

Then, while filling the wash tub with HOT water and 1TBSP of Rockin' Green, I invoked the Laundry Goddess, Mischief. Oh wait, that's just my cat.

I agitated the water with the plunger for a while. It didn't really do it for me so I went back to using my fists and body weight to agitate the water. I'm still not quite sure what I was doing wrong with the plunger, but I'll try again tomorrow. After the "wash" cycle, I was really wet. So I decided to do the rinse cycles in the bucket after I drained the sink.

So I drained the wash tub, put the bucket back in the sink, and filled it half way with HOT water while wringing out the diapers into the washtub.

Then I put them all in the bucket and agitated them by plunging both hands in as though I was kneading particularly stubborn and squishy bread. I agitated it for a few minutes, then dumped it out, and wrung the diapers while refilling the bucket again.

This step got repeated 3 times, because I'm all paranoid 'n stuff, and then I wrung them, sprayed them, and wrung them again.

After they were thoroughly wrung, I lugged them through the house and to the back porch hang out on the rack to sun.

While todays batch were sunning, I pulled yesterday's out of the dryer (where today's will end up after they're done sunning, because in this weather, there is no hope of hang drying in just one day) and folded them.

I was a little proud that I had gotten them all clean, as well as the wipes and inserts to the pockets that got used yesterday too.

For tomorrow, again, I plan to make a few changes.

1. I want to see how Tiny Bubbles works compared to the Rockin' Green.

2. I want to see about using a different style of plunger.

3. I want to see if I can scare up some gloves (still) because my hands aren't loving the HOT at all.

I am, however, feeling fairly confident that by the time we get the washer fixed, I will know how to wash a fluffy backwards, forwards, or inside out.

For the record- they aren't repelling today, so yay handwashing!

And for the germaphobes out there- I am planning to boil the inserts and prefolds on Friday, but the sun works wonders for killing bacteria too.