All Is Not Lost: Yet.

I know my diapers are not clean.  When your nose curls from the waft of ammonia from your child's night time diaper, or the lingering smell from the diaper pail, you know you are not doing something right.  I came across a very enlightening conversation on DiaperSwappers.com on when ammonia is normal and to be honest, ammonia is not normal when talking about cloth diapers.  Ammonia is normal in that it is a product of urine, but in your cloth diaper ammonia is a build up which needs to be washed out completely.  

Okay, so pretty much every diaper I own has been holding onto ammonia.  So I started with all my pockets.  Those are my go to diapers.  They are the easiest to use, my husband can use them, even my 9 year old is able to use them.  So I decided to start with a soak.  I unloaded all of my pockets and inserts into the tub and began to fill with hot water and three scoops of my homemade detergent.  I did this in hopes that the borax and washing soda would penetrate into the microfiber and release the ammonia crystals.  I soaked them for most of the afternoon occasionally going in to agitate them a little bit.  After the soak I put them into the washer (and here I think I may have goofed) and simply ran a hot wash cycle with no extra detergent.  I'm starting to think that I should have either added a half a scoop of detergent or maybe some bleach.  I don't know.  I haven't used the diapers yet!  HA!

In the mean time I decided to use my stash of flats and prefolds.  In light of the DiaperSwappers conversation, I decided to take any flat or prefold that smelled like ammonia after use and put them in a wet pail with 2 caps of bleach.  I pretty much knew right away that all of my unbleached cotton prefolds were going to have ammonia.  So those along with the flats used for night sat in a wet pail.  Also, I decided to pre-wash any unused flat by adding 2 caps of bleach to my pre-wash on cold, then a hot wash with detergent.  The pre-wash with bleach seems to have helped with the flats.  I smelled many of my son's pee diapers and there was no ammonia.  What I have also learned is that bleach helps break down the ammonia as well, but bleach is something I'm trying to avoid using so often.  However, if using it once a couple weeks for maintenance, then I can handle that.  

The verdict so far seems to be pretty positive.  My flats have no ammonia smell.  What they do have (including the prefolds) are stains.  Stains were not very common when using Tide, so that may be something to consider.  When I bury my nose into the stains, there is no smell.  Stains I can handle.