Cloth Diapers Smelling

vinegar can usually take out most smells and a natural more gentle disinfectant than bleach, do a soak with that you can even put it in the rinse cycle .. Another great thing to do is always hang them out in the sun. The suns UV rays do a great job with sanitizing and refreshing the fabric and removing any stains. When they are newly washed hang them outside until mostly dry and then take them in and throw them in the dryer to soften them up. Baking soda in the wash cycle should help as well..

Soak them in a mix of white vinegar and water. If that doesn't work on it's own, add oxyclean to soak (it's basically hydrogene peroxide). Then wash as regular.

It's a little bit difficult to trouble shoot when you don't give any detail about your normal wash cycle. Smelly diapers is almost always the result of detergent build up. First make sure you are using a detergent that is good for cloth diapers and only use half the amount that you would for a normal load. Next, are you doing an extra rinse after your load is done? If you have soft water one thing that can help restore the pH balance of your diapers and eliminate the smell is to add 1/4 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle. I just put it in where the fabric softener would normally go. I have also read that adding a bit of baking soda to the wash and then vinegar to the rinse helps, but I never needed the baking soda. I also only had to do the vinegar in the rinse when we had very soft water, after we moved to a different city I stopped using the vinegar and we didn't have a smell problem. You also want to make sure they aren't sitting for more than 2-3 days before you wash them. Finally, I would ignore everything Gamma G said, it's clear she doesn't know how to wash cloth diapers. You can use bleach on your diapers once in a while, but I wouldn't do it more than once a month.

The smell is caused by build up of detergent. You need to use HALF of what you are currently using.

Wash them again with Dawn, rinse a million times in hot water, and then go from there.

Stay away from vinegar and everything else. You need to get rid of the build-up. So add less, not more stuff to the mix. Throw them outside in the sun too.

Once I realized that you need barely any soap, I never had smell problems again. You literally need to just play around with the amount of detergent you are using. Also, I recommend Rockin Green.

The ONLY thing that got the smell out of my diapers was washing them with a 1/2-1 tsp. of Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds (bought on Amazon) with AS MUCH WATER AS I COULD GET.

If you have an HE machine, you will need to trick the machine into thinking the load is bigger/heavier than it really is to get enough water to really wash them well.

I don't have a sink in my laundry room, so I would throw the diapers in, and start a rinse cycle. When the diapers were really soaked through, I turn the machine off. The water drains, but it won't spin out the water.

Then, I started a "quick wash" on my machine to get the nasties off, and would repeat the soaking process before the normal wash. I always would do an extra rinse and they were like brand-new!

I tried everything to get the ammonia out, but nothing worked until I discovered how to get enough water in the machine to really get them washed. You should be able to see water sloshing around with the diapers when they're washing.

I think using cloth diapers is nasty, sorry. If our guy poops in his underwear I have found that no matter how many times I wash them they still smell like pooh and then the whole washer makes all the clothes smell like pooh and often pee too.

The washers just don't have a high enough spin to actually get all the soiled water out of the items in the washer. I then have to sanitize the washer at least once to make sure the pooh and pee have been neutralized.

I have to use the hottest water I can and then add bleach to get the smell out, the germs are still in the fibers and that is why they smell. The bleach will wash out.

I use about 1/4 cup for a large load, one load in my washer overloads the 7 sq. foot drier if I put them all in together. With almost a whole scoop of detergent that makes the clothes sanitized and then the washer smells much better.

I also add bleach to almost every load of clothes I wash. Bleach kills bacteria and germs. I add it to the dispenser and if I am washing navy, blacks, and reds I always put it in the water directly and then let it fill up first.

I have very nice looking clothes so I know the bleach does not hurt them. I just do not put in anywhere the clothes can accidentally get some on them.

maybe use an arm and hammer detergent?