Fairytales, French Fries and Little Baby Kisses: The Dark Side of Diapers

Fresh clean nice new fluffy white cloth diapers! So pure and pristine that even my husband smiles when he sees them. Unfortunately, fresh clean nice new fluffy white diapers only last a very short time. After several cycles of lovingly enfolding your sweet little bundle of cuteness in the cuddly cloth goodness and then washing out the nasties that your sweet little bundle of cuteness so innocently expelled into the cuddly cloth goodness, the fresh clean nice new fluffy white cloth diapers suddenly morph into tired stained sad old limp dingy.... but still awesome cloth diapers.

The problem is purely aesthetic. Underneath all of the somewhat less than pleasant discolorations is some fantastic cloth that is probably even softer and more absorbent than the pristine loveliness they once were. When desperate thoughts turn to bleach, it's time to break out the Dylon.

Could these be any cuter? Ez inspired me by dying her prefolds a rainbow of bright, beautiful colors that suited her personality and her sprite baby perfectly.

Following her lead, I turned our pile of plain infant prefolds into an assortment not quite as vivid as Esther's but definitely less inclined toward staining than in their previous state. I learned something rather obvious in the process... follow the instructions on the packet if you want RED diapers, not HOT PINK. Guess which prefolds my newborn boy used the least?

When it became apparent how, uh.... efficiently this boy processes and expels liquids, we moved from prefolds to fitted diapers fairly quickly, using the prefolds almost constantly as burp cloths. Now that spit up has become a thing of the past (YAY!), so has our pile of pretty pretty prefolds.

But our dying days began all over again when I noticed that our very very well worn night time standby Baby BeeHinds bamboo diaper was not looking quite as glorious as it once had.

When stains began to grace all of the little man's night time fitteds, it was time to spring into action.

*superhero music!*

One day, one dye packet, two bowls, three batches of diapers and inserts through the same bowl of dye, four tablespoons of salt, lots of water, and one cycle through the washer and dryer later, these dingy diapers have a renewed sense of awesome.

As might be surmised, each batch to go in the same dye is progressively affected less. Two diaper outers went in first, with the third outer and small boosters as a part of the second go round and the snap-in inserts dyed last.