One of the most unpleasant parts of cloth diapering is - without doubt - removing poop from dirty diapers. As much as we love our little bundles of joy, their poop rarely inspires joy. Modern cloth diapers can be effectively cleaned in a standard home washing machine, but you must take care to remove all solid poop before throwing your diapers in the wash. Feeling squeamish? Here are a few tips and tricks that may help make it a little better:
The Basic Ploop
Some children (and lucky parents) have more solid poop that leaves very little residue. To deal with this, simply shake, or as we like to call it, ploop the poop into the toilet. The diaper will require no additional cleaning. Having said that though, not every family has the great fortune of experiencing the right type of poop for this, which brings us to our next method..
The Dunk & Swish (or the 3-Pointer)
We call it the three pointer because it’s simple: you dunk the diaper in the toilet bowl, swish it vigorously to remove the bulk of the poop, and then flush to allow the suction from the flush to remove any particularly stubborn pieces. If a little bit of stool is left from these 3 steps, we say kudos to it and leave it for the washing machine to deal with. Do note that nothing 3D should stay on the diaper!
Poop Scoop
Some people procure a specialized spatula in the bathroom to scrape off solid poop from the cloth diapers before washing. This does eliminate the need for direct hand contact and can typically be a pretty pleasant process. Prying or scraping off the solids does offer a lot more control than the dunk & swish method described above. I don’t know how I feel about a spatula in the toilet, though..
Disposable Bamboo Diaper Liners
Designed specifically to catch solid waste, you simply lay it inside the diaper while putting it on. At changing, you simply lift it out with any solids and throw it away. Whilst some manufacturers claim they are flushable, we’re uncomfortable with flushing something that has such high potential for clogging down the toilet — we’d much rather just trash it. It is commonly said that though it makes the whole process easier, it defeats the environmental-friendliness of cloth diapers due to the amount of waste (both poop and rubbish) generated.
Diaper Spray
This is by far our favourite method because of how good at its job it can be. Typically, it’s a handheld toilet bidet with high water pressure to spray any residual poop off your diaper and into the toilet. You can also look for a Spray Pal — you simply clip the diaper to the backboard, snap the edges close, and spray away. No more dodging rogue jets of water and the possibility of poop going where it’s not supposed to!
A note on breastfed baby poop
Babies who are breastfeeding are passing water-soluble poops and their diapers technically don’t require scraping or dunking. However, sometimes we observe milk suds still in the diaper when it’s dry-pailed for main wash, so we’ve resorted to spraying everything off with a Spray Pal and a powerful bidet as we would with solid poop. Once babies start solids, all solid waste must be removed before laundering.
