I did not use cloth but I have read my fair share of info on washing them. I am about to try Vaska for my regular laundry but I know some diaper companies recommend and sell it (see link).

Good luck  nothing seems more debatable than what to wash cloth diapers in! It may become a trial and error for you until you find what works best for you (in your machine with your water).

Here is a link that might be useful: Vaska at Fuzzi Bunz

I'd suggest Charlie's Soap - www.charliesoap.com/ - and NO fabric softener...

Another reason I'd suggest Charlie's Soap are the Test Results on Flammability of Children's Polyester Sleepwear:

"Charlie's Soap continued to improve the flame retardant properties after each washing to the point where the fabric would not catch fire at all. No other detergent tested (Grainlady note: including Dreft and Tide) improved the flame retardant properties of children's sleepwear at all."

The link below has a chart that may be helpful for considering a variety of laundry products.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: The Diaper Jungle

I stumbled on this site today re: Vaska and cloth diapers. Thought you might find it an interesting read (http://www.diaperjunction.com/biodegradable-diaper-detergent.html)

I've read a lot of info on BioKleen's Bac-Out and cloth diapers. Some mother's swear by it to remove smell and clean them really well. I use it for regular stains like blood and grass and it it amazing!

I also read about a new detergent called Rockin' Green Diaper Detergent.

I noticed all of these products are on the Diaper Junction site under accessories. Some have reviews posted as well.

They also had a very interesting article re: Charlie's soap. This product seems very controversial.

Here is a link that might be useful: Charlie's Soap - The Debate

Tide HE powder is what works for me. I strayed from it twice in search of something more "diaper friendly" but always went back to Tide. Planet didn't do much cleaning for me. Within 3 weeks all the diapers were stinky. Ecover gave my kids an angry red rash. At that point I stopped experimenting and just stuck with Tide, because it cleaned well, rinsed well, and my kids didn't react to it.

See if you can get into the "Q&A" forum at www.diaperswappers.com -- there you will see laundry detergent and laundry routines discussed ad nauseum. There is always the "diaper du jour" there as well as the "detergent du jour" -- the latest trendy thing to come along that everyone gets all excited about. Then it fades. Rockin' Green is the latest detergent that everyone swears by. Before that it was Crunchy Clean. Before *that* it was Country Save. I'm sure they're all good.

P.S. Charlie's seems to be one that either works for you or REALLY doesn't work for you. I haven't tried it myself, just reporting what I read from others on the diapering forum.

hcj1440, would Tide not have optical brighteners and enzymes which you are not supposed to use with cloth diapers? Just curious ...

As you can see, it's a personal and highly debatable thing. I'd suggest trying several and see which you like better. Dreft and Ivory have always been good brands, as is Tide. When I was growing up, there weren't any special diaper detergents used. We did fine.

Enzymes are good. There can be sensitivities to it but I think it's crazy to not at least try it. Enzyme detergents clean better overall. They're not always necessary but my laundry is much cleaner with them.

A lot depends on your water chemistry too. So that's why there's no one detergent universally better than another. What works well for me might not work well for you.

One other thought, you could also try the Free & Sensitive version of a brand too. I use Tide Free since I don't like detergent stench and occasionally react to the dyes and perfumes in some brands. I don't react to the latest regular Tide. But I also don't wash diapers. (yet)

When my kiddos were babies, I used Ivory Snow powder detergent. Is that still on the market? I always used plain white vinegar in the rinse cycle, and they were always very clean, soft, and fluffy.

Also -- I used a 5-gallon diaper pail to soak diapers in until I washed them. I used 1 cup of borax and 1/8 cup of Clorox (to kill odor and germs, and prevent stains) in the water.

When I washed the diapers, I just emptied the pail into the washer -- diapers and soak water together -- ran the washer through a spin cycle to get out all the water, then washed the diapers on a wash cycle in HOT water. This was easy as pie -- made the whole process easy and quick.

The pail I used for soaking may have been a 10-gallon pail. It was not an 'official' diaper pail, but one my DH found at a hardware store, with a very nice and durable handle. I know it held a lot of diapers, enough to fill up the washer.

hcj1440, would Tide not have optical brighteners and enzymes which you are not supposed to use with cloth diapers? Just curious ...

Indeed, Tide does have both those things, and cloth diaper manufacturers tell you not to use Tide and most other mainstream detergents for that reason. Enzymes, if left on the diaper, can react with urine and give your child a horrific rash (I believe that is what happened with Ecover when I tried it). Optical brighteners were supposed to bind permanently onto the diaper fabric and over repeated use, would cause the diaper to repel the pee and thus cause leaks.

In my personal experience Tide powder rinsed out very well from my diapers despite my very soft water conditions. This was corroborated by the lab results on Country Save's website, where Tide powder came in second, after Country Save, on the rinsing clean test. I think that's why my kids never reacted to Tide but reacted instantly to Ecover (Ecover has enzymes but I thought it was a little greener than Tide since Whole Foods sold it).

As far as the optical brighteners in Tide, I washed in Tide for almost 2 years and did have repelling issues with bumGenius diapers which have a suede cloth lining. However, my other diapers (fleece, cotton, hemp) had no issues despite being in a very small rotation (meaning I washed very frequently -- each diaper was washed every other day because I didn't have that many diapers in my "stash"). They had plenty of exposure to Tide but no issues. I needed the enzymes to get the diapers clean -- I felt my 3 week experiment with Planet failed because of Planet's lack of enzymes. It just didn't clean adequately enough and the diapers developed stink in just 3 weeks (stink = smells like a barnyard when diaper gets peed in even though it smells fine when it comes out of the wash). Also, stains galore like you wouldn't believe.

The type of detergent you use also partly depends on what kind of diapers you are washing, and what kind of water you have, and what kind of washing machine. Front loaders are more challenging for diaper washing because of the small amount of water they use. Makes it harder to rinse the diapers really well (diapers are by their very nature highly absorbent, and they suck up all the water in the machine and you're left without any water to slosh around in), and any residual detergent that is not fully rinsed out of the diaper is going to cause problems - be it buildup, a rash on your baby, or major stink issues.

That being said, I've used a front loader for cloth diapering 3 children so far over the course of 5 years, and managed it successfully. It just takes a little more "tweaking"....

I use "Allen's Naturally" simply because back when I started 5 years ago, after months of agonizing over having just the right detergent, I finally decided this one must be the right one and I purchased a gigantic jug of it. It's still going strong, lol...

When it runs out, though, I probably won't bother getting it again....not b/c it is "not good" but just because I don't think it's necessary to get something specialized...

If you're using basic cotton prefolds, I think they're more forgiving of optical brighteners/enzymes/etc in the detergent. Any kind of specialty fabric like suedecloth, microfiber, microfleece, hemp, etc. is going to require you to be more careful with what you use. Doing things like vinegar rinses, etc. are not always necessary, either... again, depends on what kind of diapers you're using.

Some good links.... Abby's Lane has excellent info....
http://www.abbyslane.com/faqs.php#Q13

And here is a handy chart detailing a whole lot of different detergents....

http://www.pinstripesandpolkadots.com/detergentchoices.htm

Good luck on your cloth diapering journey!! We have LOVED using cloth, especially with our daughter who has very sensitive skin and absolutely hated disposable diapers.

Thank you all for your input! I don't feel as lost now! I use Tide HE powder now and will try it with the diapers, the plain pre-fold cotton ones, and just keep a close eye out and hope he doesn't have any reactions to it.

I was very surprised about the article on Charlie's Soap, def. don't want to take the chance of giving little man any burns on his bum!

When you find a detergent that works well on your diapers, just make sure that you use an extra rinse on them to help remove and soap residue afterwards. if your using a FL, make sure it is HE detergent also to avoid exessive sudsing.

Andi -- sounds like a good plan and with prefolds you shouldn't have any issues -- they are pretty hard to have laundry issues with. I agree with the extra rinse -- I don't know if it's necessary to do this, but I always inspected the final rinse and watched for suds, and my usual routine was to run it through a second, shorter wash cycle without detergent as a super rinse every other time to make sure everything got rinsed out. I was probably on the extreme side on this one -- most people did not do this and were fine.

I read the "debate" article on Charlie's and could not resist adding this: moms on the diaper forum routinely report speaking to Charlie's Soap and being told that they need to use bleach to disinfect their diapers in addition to using Charlie's. I always thought that was such a crummy response. Your detergent doesn't work so moms have to use bleach? In almost 2 years of using Tide I never bleached once and have never had to strip with Dawn (people strip "detergent build up" by using a drop or two of Dawn dishwashing liquid). The most I've ever had to do was run my dipes through the sanitize cycle every other month or so. Otherwise I just washed on "hot" as I did not want to expose the elastics (my stash was all fitteds, pockets and AIOs) to the high temps in Sanitize on a routine basis.

Some detergents to try.

Soap nuts
bio Kleen perfume and dye free
Charlie's soap
Country save

Just to let you know, many who have problems with charlie's in cloth diapering do not follow instructions, or can not due to diaper manufacturer instructions. In fact, the whole problem realy started when charlie's was in colaberation with a diaper manufacturer to develope a detergent. The detergent failed. Few years later, Charlie's came out with Charlie's soap. Charlie's soap began to develope a good reputation. Ex-business associate became quite pissed at this and all of a sudden there were reports of burns on babies butts from charlie's. Not only does this diaper manufacturer tell people they can not use bleach, but they can not use a sanitize cycle on the diapers either as it will damage the diaper. Of course kids are gonna get rashes if you have no way to disenfect the diapers. That's common sense. In fact, the detergent she does recommend has a high concentration of borax in it which can help, but many babies are sensitive to borax, but you won't hear her mention that.

I did a lot of reserach on this particular dilema. I found out several things. Many mom's admitted they did not follow Charlie's instructions. Some admitted they did not contact the company when there was a problem. Some refused to or could not use bleach to disinfect, nor did they mantion any form of sanitizing at all. (Ya know even the sunshine can help with that.) Some reported that the only place there was a rash was on the butt where it got wet, but still felt no error on their part even though the child had a rash no where else. Many never took the child to the doctor to find out if it could have possibly been a food allergy expressed in the urine. Some refused to wash the rest of their laundry in the same thing there in by depositting other harsher deposits onto the baby's clothing.

Also, unless a detergent specifically says it disenfects, it doesn't. You can wash and wash until the cows come home and may still never completely remove bacterium. Bacterium found in waste matter whether it is fecal or urine is particularly nasty. Would you use a wash cloth on your face that someone had wiped their poopy butt on if it had not been disinfected? I wouldn't. That's gross. But it's ok to make a kid sit in a cloth diaper that has not been sanitized in anyway? Something is not jiving here.

Not to mention an independent lab tested charlie's on their own and found no residue left behind. If there's no residue then it can't be the detergent causing the rash. Something else has to be causing it. Common sense folks.

Use what you feel comfortable with by all means. I just hate to see a product bashed because of a witch hunt started by some pissed ex-business associate from years ago. Even to this day she has refused to have testing done to support her claims. Makes ya wonder doesn't it.

I don't know if TideHE Free and Clear has changed their formula recently, so my experience may not currently apply.

A couple of years ago I suddenly had a horrible exzema type rash on my leg where the crook of your ankle starts. I also has severe itching on my upper arms. I finally went to a doctor that said I had psoriasis/exzema, and $400 dollars later I was still not cured. The doctor said I would battle the rash the rest of my life...because that "was the way these type of rashes are".

I happenened to mention my agony to my daughter who lives out of state. She said her pediatrician told her to NOT use any of the Tide detergents. There was an ingredient(s) in there that was causing horrible rash problems in children.

I immediately stopped using it and switched to Seventh Generation powdered laundry soap. It has HE directions on the box. A rash that had tormented me for over a year cleared up within two weeks. Totally.

I am now giving the Sears brand Free and Clear powdered detergent a try, based on good reviews here. I will never touch Tide products again. I surely would not use them on my baby.

The key is to use a detergent without excess chemicals, and make sure they are well rinsed. You may need to use some bleach to kill bacteria, but be sure to rinse extra well. Line drying, when possible helps with killing germs.

I raised 5 children (all grown now) and I've used both disposables and cloth. Cloth is more work, but much, much better for babies. Cheaper too. One of my boys was severely allergic to the chemicals in disposables, so I had to switch to cloth anyway.

Sandy

Rockin' Green Diaper Detergent

My wife says this is the BEST diaper soap she has ever used. Five kids later, all cloth diapers in front loaders. We have used Tide in the past as well. It was OK, but my wife said she needed to strip the diapers at least once a month when using it.

As for sanitary, make sure that the final cycle is as hot as your diaper warranty will allow. For most that will be 150F or less. Any hotter and the elastic breaks down quickly or the PUL liner that prevents leaks delaminates.

We have been using some of the bumgenius diapes for a little more than two years and two kids. The velcro is starting to wear out, but the diapers look very good yet. We also have some diapers with snaps of the same age and those snaps don't seem to wear out. The problem is a 1.5 year old will NOT sit still to use snaps. Velcro is a must on older children unless you have another adult to hold the child while the other is doing the snaps.

This is totally OT, but Im so excited!!! Little man is finally here!!! 4/28/10! :-D

Thank you everyone for your suggestions, they have been very helpful! My husband tried Tide HE powder first since I already had it and he says it seems to be working great and baby's bum doesn't seem to be bothered by it, but we will keep all other suggestions in mind just in case his skin starts to react.

Congratulations! If your washer rinses well, you should be fine. If he starts to react switch over to something gentler.

Thank you!

Its been a little over a week and so far so good! Hopefully it stays that way, his diapers are coming out of the washer fresh and stain free!