Switching Detergents - do I need to do anything in between?

MrsJJC

I am SO over the ammonia and staining issues we are having.  We used RnG almost exclusively (save for a box of Tiny Bubbles that I reallocated to baby laundry when I didn't like how the dipes were turning out) but we were still having ammonia issues.  I bought Funk Rock and it seemed to help a little, but if I used it according to direction (all the time), I'd go broke.  

We have samples of Charlie's Soap - which so far I love, and Allen's Naturally, which I haven't tried yet. I also picked up a big box of original tide and I'm really tempted to just go with that.  But I like that Charlie's and Allen's are both better environmentally and don't have dyes, etc.  

Regardless of which I switch to (and I'm open to suggestion), do I need to prep or strip before going to the next detergent?  And if so....how? Dawn? I've done that before. I just hate stripping diapers - in an HE machine it takes SO many washes and SO much water!!! Ugh.  

 TIA ladies! 

norman25

I would strip just to be sure that you get all of the crap out from the other detergent. We've been having stink issues and switching back and forth between several detergents, which makes me wonder if it all would have worked if I had stripped after I dropped my first detergent. Charlie's was horrible for us, BTW, so I can't recommend them for ammonia issues. I would also recommend using bleach.

BrittLy15

I don't think it is necessary if you are just switching detergent in general, but if you have ammonia or build-up then I would do a strip to just start fresh. There are so many options of how to strip. I read that multiple hot washes can be a way of stripping with out using dawn and thought that might be a little easier.

I started with clean diapers from the old detergent I was using and did two heavy hot wash/cold rinse cycles w/no spin and extra water and no detergent or dawn.

Then I did one heavy hot wash/cold rinse w/extra water and extra rinse with 1oz of CS(which is my normal wash for dirty diaps). Dried/lined dried as usual.

I think I might have had a little stink issue which I think was caused by the Ecos so I probably could have gotten away with just switching detergent, but I wanted to start from scratch.

So far it seemed to work very well!