How can I fix ammonia smell (from detergent buildup?) on "clean" cloth diapers?

Question

I have been using cloth diapers (this kind: https://www.amazon.com/Leekalos-Diapers-Reusable-Inserts-Undersea/dp/B08PBHP749/ref=sr_1_2) for about 8 months on my 10 month old and the diapers are really starting to smell. When they're fresh out of the dryer, they smell. When I air dry the inserts they smell up the room with mustiness. When she pees in them they reek powerfully, I believe of ammonia. We wash the diapers every day. About 15 diapers get washed a day and I have about 36 diapers on rotation.

We have hard water. I use All Free Clear detergent on the diapers. When washing, first I put them on a cycle without soap and two rinses with cold water (to save on warm water), next a wash cycle with detergent and warm water. Then the inserts go in the dryer in a laundry bag to tumble dry a while before air drying more later, while the covers air dry.

I believe my problem is detergent buildup on the diapers. I have researched and come across all types of hearsay info online about what's wrong with my wash routine and how to properly strip my smelly diapers. I haven't been able to find reliable info.

Help?

Thank you in advance!

Edit: I'm studying all of the answers and comments and experimenting with washing variables daily. Thank you everyone! I hope to post updates soon.

Sep 27, 2023: Apparently our washer is only running cold water no matter the temperature setting I select... no wonder the diapers aren't getting clean.

Update Aug 8, 2024:

I feel that we have tried “everything” yet we cannot get these pocket diapers clean. We have used them exclusively (except for a trip or two) for 1.5 years and have been dealing with recurring stink and leaks for significantly more than a year. We retired the cloth this week and are using disposables, which at this point is a relief. But I still want to know why we can't get our diapers clean.

Let me describe all we have tried to fix the stinky pocket diaper problem.

@MonicaWasMistreated suggested we're using too much detergent. I think she was right. I began using less detergent and repeating rinse cycles until no more bubbles remained, trying to be careful to use only so much detergent as required one extra rinse. The diapers still stink.

We strip intermittently (every several months when the stink becomes absolutely atrocious) with RLR in the bathtub. We use this guide: https://clothdiapersforbeginners.com/faq/what-is-rlr/. This is a full 24 hour process with our ~38-46 pocket diapers. It worked the first few times. When we stripped a couple weeks ago, the stink was back in a day. So frustrating after all that work!

@Mast asked what temperature we wash. We have replaced our washer since last year and I have been using the “hot” cycle this year, at 120F / 50C. Our old washer from last year seemed to be malfunctioning and always using cold water regardless of my temperature selection. The diapers have not improved despite all these hot water washes. I'm unwilling to set our water heater higher and risk scalding us and our child when running the water.

@j4nd3r53n mentioned cloth nappies, boiling, and vinegar as a water softener. We have been placing about a cup of white vinegar in each wash for the past several months. This seemed to be helping for a while (the diapers still stunk but didn't seem to be worsening as fast) but in the end, the vinegar did not prevent increased stink and we gave up adding it.

I have some prefolds and flour sack towels we use intermittently when stripping the pocket diapers. I find these a big pain to use. They don't stay in place and they are a process to put on. Bottom line they don't work for me. I wish they did and then I could try boiling diapers as suggested.

@anongoodnurse suggested Borax as a water softener. I haven't tried Borax due to concerns about risks that resulted in it being banned in the UK and EU.

I have not tried baking soda as a water softener / additive.

In sum, adding vinegar (acidic element) doesn't work. Hot (120F/50C) water doesn't work. Adjusting (lowering) the detergent doesn't work, and associated fiddling with number of rinsing cycles doesn't work. Now even stripping with RLR doesn't work.

It's possible I don't have a detergent buildup problem like I thought, at least maybe not anymore. There isn't really suds in the water when stripping. The water does turn pale brown-yellow though.

Despite the pocket diapers' obvious filth, our daughter has not had any issues with rashes from the diapers.

Struggling with our wash routine has been a very frustrating and futile experience. Maybe the water is too hard or too cool, but it's all guesswork anyway.

If anyone can direct me to some research on how to wash pocket diapers... instead of guesses about what's wrong... I'd appreciate it.

Answer 1

When I was young, when nappies were still made from cotton, they would be boiled, literally, in soapy water, then rinsed in water + vinegar. Ammonia is produced when bacteria break down urea in the urine, and it is basic, aka alkaline, and vinegar reacts with it, presumably to form ammonium acetate, which neutralises the smell, if any is left after the boiling. Vinegar is also a good conditioner that softens the water and makes the cloth softer. My mother would even use it after washing her hair, which probably made her feel like a pickle.

Answer 2

Ammonia is a bacterial end product of the urea in urine. I haven't looked online about detergents, but if you have hard water, detergents don't work as well. Also, as ammonia is a cation and hard water is caused by an excess of cations, rinsing the diapers (with hard water) will not flush out the ammonia as well as if the water were "soft".

If the product can withstand it, the diapers should be washed in very hot water (kills some bacteria) and the water should be softened by the addition of Borax to the load. It's cheap and effective.

Instead of pre-rinsing (which isn't doing much to help), try a pre-wash and regular wash cycle on the highest temperature possible, and add an extra rinse (or two) at the end. Hopefully you'll see a difference after the first or second time doing this.

Answer 3

A traditional treatment for smelly diapers is to run a rinse or an entire cycle with vinegar. I don't know the mechanism by which this works. It seems plausible that vinegar, being a mild acid, is able to dissolve hard water deposits that have accumulated in the diapers. I have no idea why that would make them smell better. Whether it's that or something else happening, my experience is that it does indeed work.

Answer 4

ah, the ammonia stink. We are thankfully no longer washing nappies, but we had some issues.

We did: A long rinse, as long as your machine can do, with no detergent. We did cold. A long, hot (40-60C was suitable for us but you can probably do an odd 90C with no issue) wash, with a LOT of high quality, powder, detergent. The side of the box should indicate dosage for 'very dirty' and hard water. Use that to start with. Follow with more rinses. Until there are no suds/soap bubbles left.

The detergent quality was what made the biggest difference for us, using a store own brand just was not as effective as using a 'big name' brand.

Answer 5

Your problem sounds like it might be due to detergent buildup, which can happen especially in conjunction with hard water. The mixture of scale and detergent on the fibers may become a breeding ground for microorganisms, hence the smell.

There are two aspects of the problem: (1) solving the current situation, and (2) revising your washing routine so that it doesn't happen again.

To address (1) my suggestion is to run a so-called "stripping" washing, as follows:

• start with clean diapers (so after your normal wash cycle). You only need to strip the inserts, not the covers
• start a long, warm/hot wash program (the max temperature allowed by your diapers) without detergent, but add a natural descaling agent e.g. citric acid or vinegar
• when the machine is full of hot water pause the program and let the diapers soak in hot water for up to 1h
• if the problem is detergent buildup, you will see foam in the water at this stage
• resume the program and let it run to the end You should check the water in the last rinse, if there is still some foam you may run another full washing cycle without detergent (it is not necessary to pause the second time)

The gist of it is simply to do one or two washing cycles without detergent and with descaling agent to strip away the substances that have attached themselves to the fibers. The stripping washing however is not something you should do too often as it reduces the diapers life. So if the stripping does indeed solve the smell issue this time you should take care of (2) revising your washing routine.

There have been some good suggestions already, based on personal experience I can recommend the following:

• use low doses of detergent, if your diapers allow it a 60C wash from time to time (unless there are special reasons I usually do one in three washes at 60C, the other two at 40C) is enough for cleaning them without using too much soap
• never forget the descaling agent especially if your water is hard
• rinse the diapers once before every wash and run a program which uses plenty of water (there's usually a "sensitive" option on most machines which adds an extra rinse)

Good luck!

Answer 6

At the risk of repeating many of the things other posters have said, you should try changing some of these variables. Eventually you should settle on something that just works! Best thing to do might be to ask the parents (or grandparents) in your area because every town's hard water is slightly different.

• Rinse time:
  Extra rinse cycles could be working against you if you have issues with hard water - reference here - a tradesperson selling water softening kits. Extra rinse cycles in soft water work differently.

• Water softening:
  Water softening in general could help, because soft water cleans things more effectively in general. Hard water specifically has problems when washing things like diapers - reference. Aside from using commercial water softener or installing some mechanical system in your house, you could experiment with adding acid (vinegar) or base (baking soda/washing soda).

• Acids / Bases:
  Using acids (like vinegar) or bases (like soda) in washing can be done in a few ways - pre-soaking before wash, addition during wash, or addition during rinse. Experiment with all of them if you're game. In your particular case, figuring out how to add soda to both the wash and the rinse cycle could help (see previous ref). That possibly requires micromanagement. For my machine, in order to add soda during the rinse cycle, I'd have to run a separate rinse cycle where I add soda to the detergent dispenser.

Answer 7

I'm not sure if this will help, but it wasn't on the list of things you've tried.

Occasionally, my son will wet his bed and because of this, the mattress and the whole room will stink something fierce. The mattress has a plastic cover, but simply changing the sheets and wiping the mattress will often be insufficient.

In the past, what I've done for this problem is haul the whole mattress out of his room and just leave it in the backyard sun for a day to just expose it directly to as much UV as possible. This has consistently done a good job at resolving the odor issues in his room following an accident.

This is effectively sun bleaching as a treatment method and can generally work pretty well depending on the UV resistance of the material. For the product you cited, the interior is cotton, which doesn't offer much UV protection which means if you simply turn them inside out and hang them up, the sun should be able to easily penetrate through.

UV exposure does an excellent job at killing bacteria. So if there are any present on the diapers, leaving them exposed to direct sunlight for a few hours will most definitely kill them.