First time poster - funky smell

QOTR · June 2014

Hi All,

I'm sorry that my first time posting on this board is with a question, but the FAQ said it was ok.

I'm a FTM and was feeling all cocky about how well we were doing with this CD thing until I realized today that our diapers have a funky smell. The smell is not ammonia-y and not necessarily poop-y. It almost smells like a musty towel mixed with a toot.   Nice, eh?   They smell ok coming out of the laundry, but LO's body heat seems to activate the smell. Also, we're using coconut oil with each diaper change as a diaper rash preventative, and I think while it smells so yummy at the time, that the smell of that is mixing with the funk smell and creating a not nice combo.

We're only a little over 3 weeks in (we used disposables for the first several days).   I didn't think I'd need to do a stripping or special treatment this soon, so I'm thinking that I'm screwing something up in the wash cycle or maybe not using the right soap?   Per the city, our water is "moderately-hard". I'm using Ecos detergent based on a recommendation of a friend that lives in the same city and CDs, but I'm now finding mixed reviews of this detergent with hard water (https://community.babycenter.com/post/a26074421/ecos_detergent for example).   Also, I find that Ecos has it's own strange smell.

Finally, my question....    I'm not opposed to switching detergent of course, but will that alone fix the smell or do I need to strip or bleach or do anything else first?    I have a front-loader. My current routine is to prewash on delicate, cold water, with two soaked bath towels for added weight, no spin.
Then, I wash on normal cycle, hot water, cold rinse, with detergent and an extra cold rinse and extra spin.

Thanks in advance for any tips. And I'll go contribute to the "texas" thread question as my way of contributing something to the board.

PipSqueak0313 · June 2014

You must spin out the nasty water from the prewash/rinse otherwise you're trying to wash in nasty water which is preventing your diapers from getting clean.

TJ1979 · June 2014

^^wss. If you don't spin, you're washing in pee and poo water.
Try that first. That might be enough to fix your issue.

QOTR · June 2014

Ok, that makes sense and that was what I was originally doing, but then I read documentation (from our cloth diapering class of all places), that said to skip the spin in the first rinse cycle to avoid having to rewet the towels.

I really hope it is that easy!