Stripping diapers

A couple months ago my husband and I purchased enough cloth diapers for a friend of mine to diaper her twins. She has since stopped cloth diapering and gave me back all the diapers we bought her. Her husband had been washing them and ignoring the instructions on how to wash them properly so they were in pretty shabby condition. They were grey instead of white and had all sorts of stains. Now that I have them clean I wish I would have taken before and after pictures but I didn't think of that until too late. After lots of work most of them look brand new again. Here's what I did:

I started out with a hot water soak with a scoop of oxy clean and a tablespoon of blue dawn and used my handy camp washer agitator(plunger with holes drilled in it) to stir it all up. I let that soak for three or four hours agitating it once and a while. Normally I would advise against soaking anything with PUL (waterproof material) but this situation called for drastic measures.

After the soak I dumped the tote out in the shower (we have no bath tub) and spread the diapers and inserts out so that I could spray them down with the shower head. I rinsed them until I saw no more bubbles coming out of them. Then I wrung out as much water as I could get out and put them back in the tote so I could take them up to my inlaws to wash.

Into the HE washer they went with 2 tbs of Ecos Free and Clear Detergent and yes, 1/4 cup of bleach. (I DO NOT RECOMMEND BLEACH under normal circumstances but there are occasions where it is needed like when baby has rotovirus, yeast or impetigo) I set the washer for hot wash and cold rinse with a second rinse. I also found that I must add two large watering cans full of water if I want the diapers to come clean. When I use anything other than  CD safe detergent I always follow the first wash cycle with a second wash set the same way except I don't use detergent. This lets me see if all the soap was rinsed out. If I still see suds in the washer I repeat the water only wash cycles until I see no more suds.

I was very happy to find that the diapers came out looking almost new. Now I need to figure out what to do with them because I certainly do not need to keep them for my son. (read the previous post)