Finding the Right Cloth Diaper Detergent

If you wash your own diapers, you probably have either found a detergent you love or are searching for that soul mate of soaps. Finding the right method for washing your cloth diapers can be just as overwhelming as starting to use cloth diapers. There are some people who swear by certain detergents and others who have trouble with the same ones. But there is one hard-and-fast rule: your detergent does matter.

Here's why.

Your soap or detergent can build up on diapers over time. This creates a barrier between the cloth and your baby's bottom, preventing the cloth from effectively absorbing urine. What you don't want in your detergent are all the additives. You're trying to clean your cloth diapers, not coat them in a bunch of chemicals and other junk. Here is some residue-causing stuff to avoid:

• Fabric softeners - these cause liquid to repel or wick onto baby's clothes.
• Optical brighteners - these are chemical particles that absorb UV light and reflect back a bluer light, which makes clothes look whiter. These particles can build up and cause residue, and some
• Stain guards - stain guards prevent staining because they coat the cloth. You want your cloth to absorb the stain-causing materials. That's the whole point of a diaper.
• Soaps - this is a little confusing, but soaps are actually different than detergents. Although they are natural, they can react with your water to create residue.
• Natural additives - this is a biggie. A lot of detergents nowadays are marketed as being natural, eco-friendly, etc. That sounds like it would be great for cloth diapers, right? Not necessarily. Many of these contain oil-based surfectants. That means that the soapy stuff is made of oils. These oils can coat your diapers over time, creating a barrier to absorbency. Oils that you don't want to see in detergents are orange oil, citrus extract, and grape seed extract, among others.

Different water types and cloth types react differently to different detergents. If you use an eco-friendly detergent with an oil-based surfectant on microfiber, you could actually ruin your diapers. The way the oils coat the synthetic fibers makes it difficult to remove. It gets all rubbery and gunky, and you may not be able to remove the residue completely.

Using a detergent specifically formulated for cloth diapers can help solve your problems. From a totally objective standpoint, we have noticed that Rockin' Green is pretty popular with cloth diapering parents. Out of all the cloth diaper detergents that are available, this is the one we hear the fewest complaints about. In fact, I don't know if I've ever heard a complaint about Rockin' Green.

If you're still not sure, check out the cloth diaper detergent chart at The Diaper Jungle. This chart gives you ratings and pros and cons for lots of different kinds of detergents and may help you find the detergent that's right for you.

And whatever you do, use lots of water. Lots of rinses don't matter if your water level isn't high enough. Crank up the water, crank up the heat, and get washing.

Tips for a Healthy Home

I attended the Healthy Home Party at Green Baby last Wednesday, and I learned a lot. The most memorable thing?

You don't have to make every change at once.

Even if you just change one small thing--like filling a spray bottle with vinegar and water and putting away your 409--it will make a huge difference in the air quality in your home.

If you're ready to add other steps to your goal of a healthy home, here are some tips for keeping pollutants out and clean air in:

The No Poo Challenge - A Wrap Up

So who tried the No Poo Challenge? Was it hard? Did you find your hair looked better than ever? Was it too greasy? Did you push past it?

I was washing my hair yesterday (with baking soda) and thinking about how it didn't feel heavy anymore. When I used to shower, after shampooing, it would feel heavy and coated. And when I started the No Poo challenge, it felt worse. As though it was covered in rubber.

And now that's gone away. I don't remember how long it has been. Since July, I guess. My hair feels soft, not dry, not heavy, just real. Sometimes it gets greasy. I've tried to use less baking soda because I've been getting dandruff, and if I don't use enough, my hair gets a little greasy. But you know what? It gets greasy with regular shampoo, too.

Composting 101: How to Make Compost (The Easy Way)

We have been talking a lot about gardening and natural products. Well, composting is one of the best, most natural things you can do for your garden and your environment. You probably know what composting means—it’s becoming pretty popular—but how on earth do you do it? Composting is essentially combining scraps of organic material so that it breaks down into a nutrient- and microbe-rich “soil." This happens in nature all the time. It’s how plants existed before people arrived to fertilize and mess with them. As organic matter breaks down, it feeds other plants, giving them what they need to fight disease and grow.

If you have ever researched information about composting, you may have become overwhelmed. A lot of resources make it sound like if you don’t do everything perfectly right, you’ll have a rotting, stinking mess. I used to worry about this and even went so far as to buy a thermometer to make sure my compost pile was getting hot enough for proper decomposition. I turned it religiously and tried to monitor my ratios of brown to green stuff.

And then I had two kids, got lazy, and didn’t touch my compost bin for a year. When I started gardening again, I stuck a shovel into the bottom of the compost bin and pulled out … COMPOST!

So this is the lazy, beginner’s version of composting. The point is that it works. It gives you a foundation to start from, and you can perfect it as you go. This is the lazy person’s guide to making compost.

Green Living: The No Poo Challenge - Tips and Tricks

So we're not the only crazy ones. Other people have done the No Poo thing too. And they are addicted. It certainly has made my hair more manageable and has brought out my natural wave. It definitely took some time to get used to. In fact, I went off the wagon a couple of times in the past few months because I felt like my hair was greasy, and you know what? When I washed it with regular shampoo, it was greasier.

This is what my hair looks like since I've done the No Poo challenge (and this was on a day when it felt kind of greasy):

Cloth Diapering Products/Accessories - Cloth Wipes, Wipe Solution, and Wipe Pouches

When you’re dealing with diapers, you also have to deal with wipes. If disposable diapers = disposable wipes, then it makes sense that cloth diapers = cloth wipes, right? When you think about it, it makes sense. When you use disposable diapers, you end up balling the dirty wipe inside the diaper and throwing it all away. When you use cloth diapers, you do the same thing. Just wipe, throw the wipe inside the diaper, roll it up, and put it in your diaper pail or wet bag.

Green Living: Natural Personal Care Products and Toiletries

Green Baby Diaper Service supports green, natural living. In an effort to eliminate unnecessary chemicals from our everyday lives, we’ll be posting some blog entries with recipes for natural personal care products, cleaners, and lawn care. This is the first in the series, and we’re talking about natural toiletries: deodorant, face wash, shampoo, and baby wipes.

I recently read an article somewhere online—I can’t remember where—that said cancer used to be a disease of the elderly and the feeble. Now it often occurs at any age and in otherwise healthy people. So many things are different nowadays, but one is the pervasive use of chemicals in toiletries. For all the studies that show that these chemicals are safe, there are just as many studies suggesting they are harmful.

Call me paranoid, but if scientists have a reason to study the link between a certain chemical and cancer, wouldn’t you want to limit your use of that product and perhaps not spread it all over your body? Researchers began to study the antioxidant properties in berries because they had reason to believe berries were good for your health. Perhaps they have begun to study the damaging effects of chemicals in personal care products because they have reason to believe they are bad for you.

Also, only a few of the thousands of chemicals registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have undergone comprehensive testing to determine their effects on human health. It usually takes dramatic injury or poisoning combined with extensive public outcry before the government will regulate a certain chemical. The government assumes chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. But just because a chemical has not been proven to be harmful doesn’t mean it’s not.

I would rather stick to the opposite idea and restrict my use of unnecessary chemicals until they have been proven safe. Just like I’d rather eat products with fewer ingredients, I’d rather use products with fewer ingredients on my body, hair, and skin. It just feels right.