Monday, September 13, 2010

Did the cats pee in here?

The ammonia nasties have hit our house. With only a few hiccups in the wash routine, everything was going so well when bam! - ammonia stink. I hadn't read much about the ammonia problem because I wasn't having it. I had ignorantly thought I would smell it on washed and unwashed diapers. Now I know the smell comes out when combined with urine. I don't even know how long I've been having the problem; it was my mother who noticed it when watching Little Man this past week.

It's interesting that the ammonia smell can come from detergent residue not rinsing out, as well as from not using enough detergent. How's a mom to know which one is the problem? I'm first tackling the problem as if it were residue not rinsing out and if that doesn't work I'll go for the not enough detergent.

Two days ago I Rocked a Soak for 60 minutes and ran them through a hot wash without detergent, plus a couple of rinses. No dice. Last night I Rocked a Soak overnight, ran them through a hot wash without detergent, and rinsed a couple of times. They are now in the dryer while I'm at work. I was hoping that would solve the problem, but now I'm thinking I need to strip them more.

I thought running them through the wash and rinse without detergent was stripping them, but as I read up on stripping diapers, I see that I should rinse in hot water too. I don't have a hot rinse on my machine, so I will have to do a warm rinse.

I am also going to add an extra rinse to the end of my regular routine. I was doing one for awhile but have been lazy and cutting it out.

I think for now I'll stick with the amount of detergent I'm using and add back in the extra rinse. We have hard water, and I'm using 2 scoops of Classic Rock with the highest water level possible. If this next stripping doesn't work, I will try 3 scoops.

I guess the cats didn't pee in here after all. My apologies to Shepherd and Figaro for jumping to conclusions.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Life of This SAHM

Unknown said...

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dreamingmommy.blogspot.com

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Marissa Berghorst said...

I just had to strip my diapers. I used a bit of blue dawn dish soap. Then rinsed like crazy. My washing machine only has a cold rinse option. It worked great!

Good luck!

aWomanCalledMom.blogspot.com