newmama, I own a Maytag Bravos washer. It is the best washer I've ever owned and I highly recommend it. It rinses all my laundry very well. You could add an extra rinse (an option on the Bravos) if you wanted to be sure the diapers were rinsed well. Whether you use an extra rinse or not, using white vinegar in the final rinse is a wonderful way to be sure all detergent is fully rinsed out of laundry. I would recommend you get a washer with an internal water heater, regardless of what washer you buy, so that you can be sure the water is hot enough to sanitize the diapers. I used cloth diapers, and this is what I did to make laundering them quick and easy: I used a 5-gallon diaper pail for soaking them between washings. I filled it up with hot water, 1 cup borax, and 1/2 cup Clorox, stirring well to dissolve. When I took off a soiled diaper, I dumped the poop in the toilet and put the diaper in the soak pail. When I took off a wet diaper, I put it in the soak pail. When the pail was full and/or I was low on diapers, I dumped the whole thing, diapers and soak water, into the washer and used the Spin cycle only to drain the water out. I washed the diapers with hot water and Ivory Snow (I don't know if that's available anymore). I used white vinegar in the final rinse to ensure there was no detergent residue. (This was recommended by a nurse even for a traditional washer w/agitator.) 1 cup of white vinegar in a traditional washer and 1/2 cup of vinegar in an HE washer would be sufficient. The diapers always came out of the dryer very soft and fluffy -- no vinegar odor at all. Hope this helps! :-)

I didn't read the other responses so some of this might be repetetive, but here's my story: We use cloth diapers on DD who is now 3 months old. We use disposables for traveling but that is the only time we use them (a jumbo pack will last 4-6 weeks in this case). The only reason we don't travel with cloth is because they take up too much room in the diaper bag and are messier than I want to deal with. I bought all my diapers from organic bebe.com. (No, I don't work for them.) (I believe jardine diapers has a good website too - has lots of FAQ on cloth diapering. Type the name in a search engine. I've never ordered from them though.) After trial and error and several orders I've decided that 3 dozen diapers and about 5 wraps is a good amount to have on hand. This leaves you doing laundry every other day. We only use the prefolds because it's the cheapest and not any less convenient than all-in-ones or fitted diapers. Plus, I don't have a lot of space to store several different kinds of diapers. With the prefolds, I just stack them up and put them on a shelf. Works very easily. We have a wet pail and a dry pail. Basically a wet pail is a bucket of water that we keep in the bathroom that has a presoak in it (we use BIZ - look in the laundry aisle). Poopy diapers go in here. We also have a dry soak that lives by the crib. It is a diaper pail with a trash bag in it. Wet diapers go in here. We were just using a wet pail but it was filling up too fast and I wasn't sure wet diapers needed to really "soak" anyhow. Since DD only has a poopy diaper about once a day it's very convenient to have the dry pail so close to the crib! The wet pail lives in the bathroom so that you can dump the solids in the toilet before allowing the diapers to soak. When it's time to do a wash I dump all the diapers in the washer and run it on hot. We use dreft detergent on the cloth diapers but any detergent will do. (Somebody gave it to us and I thought we should make sure baby's bum isn't sensitive to Tide or other detergents. Plus, somebody said Dreft gets the diapers the whitest-don't know if that's true or not. When we run out of Dreft we'll probably use the family detergent. I use Tide on all her clothes as well as ours.) I do not dry the wraps in the dryer. I let them air dry. But, I do use the dryer for the prefolds. When buying prefolds you want to make sure they are good quality. Chinese prefolds and Baby textiles are supposedly the best but I go by their absorbancy chart. 4x8x4 is what I buy. That means there are 8 layers of absorbancy in the middle and 4 layers on each side. You can also buy diapers in 4x6x4 or 2x4x2 depending on how much absorbancy you want. I don't go any less than 4x8x4. I also don't use pins. What's great about prefolds is they will fit into a wrap very easily. Just fold into thirds, slip into a wrap, and slip under baby, velcro up. I like the Bummis Super Whisper wrap. (Look at the www.organicbebe.com diaper packages.) I had no idea what I was doing when I decided to use cloth diapers. I placed several posts similar to this one (Kara_PA is a lifesaver!!!) to get a general idea of where to start. Like you, I wanted to use them for financial reasons and because they're better for the environment. I hate seeing all those disposables going into the landfill. I guess this is how I'm doing my part to help. My folks used cloth diapers so I got a lot of help from them. They taught me about the presoak and how to diaper the baby. Things have changed since my brothers and I were babies, but the basics are still the same. Some people don't like cloth because the clothes fit bulkier. That is true, but it's not that bad. Besides, I figure if I'm taking DD anywhere that really matters she'll be in disposables anyhow! Who cares how their clothes look around the house! If you do decide to cloth diaper you will go through all kinds of trial and error and find a system that works for you. And, like me, your system might even change a little until you're comfortable with what you have. We had several fitted and all in one diapers on hand until I decided they weren't that much better and I couldn't justify the cost. An all-in-one Bumkins diaper costs about $11 (give or take). It will last about 6 months according to the manufacturer. You can buy disposables cheaper than that! So, I sold all of my all-in-ones and fitted diapers on ebay! Don't hesitate to ask more questions! Good luck to you!

The diaper genie type system usually works well. It probably depends a bit on local climate. To get it working as well as it will the idea is to twist off the sections securely and to twist in the diaper securely and then twist off that section securely. It should look sort of like oversized sausage links as a generalized pattern. (It seems like a big potential problem might be if there are lefties and righties doing the diaper changing and twisting in different directions inadvertently.) This one requires organization in terms of being able to get the special bag thingies and have them at the ready when refills are needed. The experienced odor is generally produced when dirty diaper contents are exposed to the room air and to people who can experience smell. A good seal is essential if there is going to be a diaper pail system of disposal. As with other odors which kind of are part of the human condition, fans and venting to the outside can help sometimes. I don't know if air purifiers help with odours but they might. Wash or wipe down the surface of the container with some bleach-containing cleanser every so often and that should help a little. If possible it might help to have the pail and changing occur in a bathroom rather than in a room where the baby or others sleep. That diaper champ thing apparently just uses regular plastic bags or re-uses ones you just might have around the house. It seems to really concentrate on the sealing part. I think there is no way to actually eliminate the odor completely so it might help to think in terms of minimizing problems. Store the pail when not in active use, somplace drafty or where there are venting fans. I like the genie, the champ seems very user-friendly and can use any bags... I don't think complete odor elimination is possible simply because infants are human beings with human bodies and all. P.S. One potential problem with the any bag system is that a lot of times there can be little holes in plastic bags (there probably can be in the diaper genie things too). It doesn't take much to, over time and with an increased number of diapers, end up causing increased odor problems.

I cloth diapered 3 kids. Washing the diapers always seemed more an art than a science. What kind are you using? The biggest thing is rinse and rinse again with plain water before washing. When they look almost clean, then wash with detergent. It was easier when I had 2 in diapers because I could do a load every night so they never sat long. I also used liners which made the whole thing easier too. Whatever you use to wash them make sure it is rinsed well. I could never get Tide rinsed out well enough and it caused some weird reactions. Charlies Soap worked well for me but my water was soft.