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Eco-Friendly Family
"Sterilizing"
So, I was flipping through some parenting book at the library and it talked about how you can't properly sterilize cloth dipes by washing them at home. I know this isn't true... b/c well we all wash at home, and it's fine, but why do people say that? Do the diaper servies wash the dipes with hotter water than you can at home?
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Re: "Sterilizing"
It's a common misconception that the diapers need to be 'sterilized'. Things can get perfectly clean and germ free with regular soap and water - boiling is not required. Diaper services may use a hotter water (that's the only thing I can think of that could possibly be different than at-home washing) but temperatures that high aren't good for the diapers. PUL and elastic break down really fast in regular boiling washes and even the cotton in pf's wears out way faster under those conditions. That's why it's not recommended to to use the sterilize setting on front loaders more than once and a while.
I think it's under the same catagory as pediatricians who whine about weight gain issues in bf'd babies because they don't know enough about breast feeding to understand.