Before Magnus, Jay and I were like frat boys when it came to laundry. Really I didn't mind washing/drying our clothes but what I lacked was motivation when it came to folding, hanging, and putting away. We lived out of the hamper mostly (hamper full of clean clothes and a dirty pile on the floor). I kinda hoped I'd do a complete laundry turn around once Magnus arrived. Thankfully I have as I've come to the realization that babies continually create dirty laundry and if you don't wash and put it away fairly quickly it will lead to some pretty frustrating situations.
Aside from a few weeks between the end of spitting up and starting solids we've been doing laundry almost every day since Magnus's arrival. On top of our regular household laundry I now do a load of CD's every second day.
For those who might wonder this is my wash routine (keep in mind it's not set in stone as I'm still experimenting). I keep the soiled cotton soakers (the absorbent part on my CD's) in a plastic garbage with a hands free foot pedal. Some of you might be surprised to know that there is no odor (I keep the garbage can in Magnus's room and I have no complaints as of yet ;-). There is no need to soak or prewash the CD's prior to wash day unless poop's involved. As Jay mentioned a few blogs back we have a front load washing machine (HE) and therefore washing CD's is a bit trickier. I do a cold wash no detergent on delicate (delicate as it uses more water and cold as not to set in any stains). I often add a few liters of water at the beginning of the detergent free wash. If Magnus cooperates and I remember I try to cancel the cycle before the final spin so that the CD's are still nice and wet for the next part. Next I do a heavy duty wash with a small amount of CD friendly detergent on warm cold rinse with an extra rinse. I often try to add a few liters of water to one of the rinse cycles during the heavy duty wash. Because it's nice and hot in the Okanagan these days I've been line dying the CD's (my most wonderful husband put one up just for me, check it out in the pic above).
I know this whole process may sound like a lot of work but once you find a routine that works for you it's not bad at all. Yes, I also realize that it doesn't seem very green to be adding extra water but if you look at the big picture our household is using less water overall since we started using our HE machine. The big problem with HE machines is that they really don't use enough water to rinse the CD's clean (I know there are some who CD and have no issues with their HE machines too). Any leftover soap residue can lead to stink issues, repelling (a loss of absorbency) and rashes for the little ones. I honestly love my front loader but if I knew three and a half years ago that I was going to CD I probably would have bought a top loader.
Feel free to share any HE CD'ing tips you may have. Like I said I'm still experimenting.
The Laundry Lady aka Mommy
Oh silly me, I forgot to mention how I wash my GroVia shells. I throw them in the household laundry when they get soiled or at the end of the day, whatever comes first. I hang to dry and they dry super fast.
ReplyDeleteWe also have an HE front loader and have had to experiment. Good idea with the delicate cycle. We have a "no spin" option, so I do a quick cold-water wash without a spin and follow that up with a heavy duty wash. We are still finding the odd ammonia odour issue, so we have some tweaking to do.. I'll keep you posted if we come up with something brilliant! Oh and we never soak - even with poop - and we've never had an issue.
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