Rockin' the Laundry

Clean, white diaper!  This diaper is over a year old and has NO stains!

Today's post is written by my baby sister, Liz. Seems like it wasn't too long ago that I was changing her diaper and, yet, now here she's become the expert on diapering babies. She's a working mom who is passionate about breastfeeding and other natural parenting methods. She resides in the Palouse region of Washington State with her fella and two sons, affectionately nicknamed D-Boy and Squish.

I started cloth diapering when my oldest son was about 7 months old. Most people start well before that, but I was young and naïve and believed that if I used disposable diapers, I wouldn’t have to deal with poop. After a few months of parenting (and a few hundred diaper changes), I saw how foolish I had been and was was more open to the idea of cloth diapering. Then the adventure of washing diapers began.


After exhausting myself with countless hours of research for the perfect option for our family, I turned to washing methods. Some people argued that one could use regular old washing soap, so long as it was a sensitive blend, and free of optical brighteners that leave a residue on diapers (and cause them to repel pee.) I tried this for a while, but wasn’t ever satisfied with how clean our diapers were getting: there was this faint pee scent that kind of lingered after they had been through the wash, no matter how many times I rinsed the diapers before putting them in the dryer, or how long I soaked them in hot water before rinsing. At the suggestion of a friend, I purchased a sample bag of Rockin’ Green Cloth Diaper Soap. The first thing I noticed about it was the yummy scent—it wasn’t overpowering, and almost to my disappointment it washed clean out of the diapers…but so did that lingering pee smell! I bought a larger bag of the Classic Rock (because we were living in a suburb of Seattle at the time that had neutral water hardness) and tried it again. No stink; just clean, fresh diapers.

We had a brown duvet cover and cream-colored sheets…that water is nasty!

Rockin’ Green isn’t just for diapers: I tried it on our bedding and “rocked a soak.” Now, I’m pretty particular about how often we wash our sheets because I love the feeling of crawling into a clean bed; so when I tell you that the water was disgusting…that’s how much residue was being left on our sheets from our old soap. I’ve soaked my own clothes in RnG after spilling coffee on myself (with help from D-Boy) and used it to strip our kitchen towels when they weren’t absorbing as well as they used to. Each time, RnG came to my rescue and left me with clean clothes.

In the fall of 2011, shortly before my son’s second birthday, I decided to try to save some money and switched to a different brand that claimed to be just as effective. Almost immediately I noticed a difference: my diapers were coming out of the wash still smelling like urine. If you’ve ever parented a toddler, you know how stinky their pee gets—so this was a big deterrent for me. I gave the brand until the end of the box, and then enthusiastically switched back to RnG.  I noticed a difference after the first wash, and we were back to normal within a week. This was also about the same time that I became pregnant with our second child and had killer morning sickness and “super schnozz,” so our diapers had to smell clean.

Made in the USA!

Rockin’ Green Cloth Diaper and Laundry Detergent was invented by a mom in San Antonio, TX, is proudly produced in the USA, made with a plant-based biodegradable and petroleum-free surfactant, and never tested on animals.  Rockin’ Green makes other household cleaning and baby-related products, too. Try their Shake It Up diaper pail freshener (good for garbage cans, too) or their Melody Room Spray (shown above). It’s been over 3 years since we started using Rockin’ Green, and I’ll never look back again!

(Photos courtesy of my sister, Liz.)