Washing cloth diapers with an HE front loader

So I have a Frigidaire HE washing machine. I love it. But then I started cloth diapering and slowly realized that my cool machine was not so cool for cloth. Oh, you want the diapers to be completely submerged in water? You mean my use the least amount of water machine won’t do the trick? UGH. Again…UGH.

So a-googling I went. I read many wash routines and tips and tricks for HE FLs. Add a heavy wet towel, add water, use this or that cycle. I tried the towel thing and I just don’t think it helps. It might trick the machine into adding a bit more water but then you have a huge towel in there soaking up water and taking space. One person said to use the delicate cycle, another recommended the bulky cycle. I tried both. I like the delicate cycle to get everything soaked and I run it with a “no spin” option so everything is sopping. This helps make the washer fill with more water without having to add anything.

So here it is, this is what works for me:

I wash every other night, sometimes every night depending on how many diapers I used.

First, whenever I change I diaper, I rinse out the inserts in the sink and then put them in my wet bag. I like to get as much pee rinsed out so it isn’t sitting in there transforming like a magician into ammonia.

(I don’t pay for water or electricity so I don’t mind doing small loads)

I run a delicate cycle with no detergent on warm (soil level-normal), no spin.

Next comes a normal cycle with Rockin’ Green for hard water. The settings are hot, low spin, and for the soil level-heavy. I also add a big pot of water heated on the stove in this cycle right after it fills for the first time. I get as much extra as a front loader will hold.

Then I do a bulky cycle on cool, max spin (unless I see bubbles and then I switch it to a low spin since I will run another cycle), soil level-heavy.

All covers, Sunbaby pockets, Kawaii bamboo pockets, etc get line dried and everything else goes into the dryer. If it’s just inserts and such I dry them on hot and if they are still a little damp I will hang them up to finish drying. If it’s a mix I dry on medium heat.

Seems to be working well, I will update if I have any issues and share what I do to fix it!

UPDATE: I have found that the smaller the load, the better. I tend to wash 6-10 diapers at a time and when it is a small load all the diapers are submerged in water in all cycles, only the normal wash do I sometimes have to add extra water to.

I also routinely use RLR to strip my diapers (especially used ones I buy) and man oh man! are there bubbles when I strip used dipes! Serious detergent build up. I also added Ecover to my routine. My natural fiber items get a dosing of this in the final rinse cycle and these diapers come out beyond soft! Basically I use this on all my fitteds and some of my AI2s.

About these ads