The Great Cloth Diaper Experiment Part 2 (First Impressions)

You know you must order to much stuff online when the mailman drives up to the house rings the doorbell and says "well hello again."  My Cloth diapers finally arrived after being lost in transit between here and Wyoming for over a week.  They came all wrapped in pretty bows just like Christmas.  I purchased 17 cloth pocket diapers, 22 microfiber liners, and 17 snap in liners all for use on my one year old and two year old (hopefully to be potty trained soon).  It was recommended that I use one microfiber and one snap in liner with each diaper during the day and three microfiber liners with a snap in liner at night.
My first impression was that they are so cute.  My second, third and fourth thought was what have I gotten myself into, I hope I can do this, I don't want to waste our money.  I spent my afternoon trying to figure out how to wash and dry these beautiful diapers.  If you do it wrong they will no longer absorb and then we have a mess...ewww.  It is not hard, there is just way to much information out there and so many opinions on how to handle all the different fabrics.  Luckily I had purchased Charlie's Soap, a recommended detergent for cloth diapers.  But the question was do I wash the different fabrics together or separate, in hot or cold water?  I finally got an e-mail back from the , manufacturer  who gave pre-washing recommendations.

Diaper Sprayer

So from all of my research from other mom's blogs and the advice from the manufacturer, these are my regular washing plans:
*Dirty diapers will be rinsed with my new diaper sprayer that Monte installed for me (thank you honey).  Don't worry the children have been strictly forbidden to touch it...can you imagine the fun they might have in the bathroom!
*Soiled diapers will be stored in a dry lidded plastic tub until washed (within 36-48 hours).
 *Diapers and liners will then go through a cold pre-rinse cycle (so stains are not set in), then through a warm wash cycle (using 1-2tsp Charlie's Soap and occasionally 1/2 cup vinegar), and then sent through a second rinse cycle (surprisingly much of cloth diapers stink actually comes from the detergent not getting rinsed out).
*Diapers will be hang dried, preferable out in the sun which is excellent for bleaching out stains as well as getting the stink out.  Drying them in our dryer is not an option.  First of all the heat ruins the elastic second the residue from dryer sheets used in our other loads will cause the diapers to no longer absorb.

My one year old wore his first cloth diaper this afternoon.  For his first diaper change he graced us with dirty pants.  Luckily it was an easy one to clean up.  We were absolutely amazed at how dry the fabric against his skin was and how soaked the microfiber liner inside was after three hours.  I was brave and put him in a diaper with three liners for night.  We will see how he does.  So far I am impressed and it seems more do-able than I originally thought.  Change is never easy but I think once I get a routine for diaper changes and washing established it will quickly get easier.