Stinky cloth diapers

I wanted to address something we have discussed in the past, but over the past two weeks I have gotten numerous emails about.

The topic is “what is normal in regards to odors and what is not?”
A quick summary:

Normal:
Urine smell in the morning diaper
Urine smell in the pail with sitting soiled diapers
Urine smell in a wet bag with soiled diapers, even for a few hours

Not Normal:
Odors in clean diapers out of the dryer (take a deep whiff when you pull them out)
Strong “stale” urine odor within a few minutes of a clean diaper being on. Meaning, first urination, not the morning diaper, and not after being on for a few hours.
Odors in your washing machine when empty
Anything “fishy” while the diaper is on

Morning diapers will smell. They have been sitting in urine for 8+ hours, even newborns will have smelly morning diapers. Pail odors are normal. It is o.k. to have stink come up when you open the lid. You can work with this a few different ways, the easiest is to wash daily/every other day at most, to keep the load light. You can add other things to the pail to deoderize it, but if you open and shut quickly this shouldn’t be a problem.

For the not normal odors, remember our easy rules:
Diapers smelling out of the dryer is usually the result of
a. not enough detergent (don’t skimp, only one out of a few hundred of you need a tablespoon in a picky front loader to get the diapers clean, most of you need a healthy amount, don’t fear suds!)
b. The wrong detergent, meaning free and clears, natural detergents, etc…

Diapers smelling of stale urine after a few minutes means you have buildup, you need to rid the buildup by stripping (please, do not boil them or run them in the dishwasher), and start with a new wash routine.