How to Swish a Poopy Cloth Diaper

The dreaded day has come and gone: the day our baby started started eating solid foods.

What's the big deal with that? Well, the first five or six months of cloth diapering were amazingly easy, because Ian was exclusively breastfed which means his poop was completely water soluble. That means dirty diapers (yes, even poopy diapers) are tossed directly into the diaper pail (no rinsing necessary), then go through the rinse-wash-rinse cycle with all the other diapers. Seriously that easy.

When babies drink formula or start eating solids, an extra step is thrown in: Rinsing the poop into the toilet. Here is that process without a diaper sprayer for anyone brave (curious?) enough to read more.

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Use cover to take dirty diaper to the bathroom.

Once new diaper is on our baby (see our diaper change process >> here), I send him to play while I take care of the dirty diaper. If it was a pee diaper (with no poop), I would use the diaper cover to drop the wet prefold diaper into the dirty diaper pail (like in photo above), then leave the diaper cover to air out on the counter and use at the next diaper change.

If the diaper is poopy, then I throw the cloth wipes into the dirty diaper pail (they generally don't need to be rinsed), and go on with the next steps.

Hold corners of prefold and flush poop down toilet.

I separate the prefold from the cover by grabbing the clean edge of the prefold (the edge that rests against the back of the cover). Holding tight, I dunk dirty end of diaper into toilet until all poop is off. This is the old school "swishing" method.

At this point you could also use a diaper sprayer, but swishing is free and effective. When the poop is more solid, it just falls into the toilet without doing anything. Other times it takes a little swishing to get it all off. For really difficult diapers (i.e., when he's teething), I might have to flush a time or two to get it all off.

The key to keeping the poop in the toilet where it belongs is holding on tight to the clean edge and keeping hand far from hitting poopy water.

Toss swished diaper in diaper pail.

That, friends, is a close-up of our baby's dirty diapers. See, it's not so scary.

Once rinsed, I move prefold to water-free area of toilet bowl and push prefold against itself to sort of "ring out" (without actually touching) the excess water, making a drip-free move from toilet to diaper pail. (If I didn't remove the excess water, the diaper pail would become loaded with nasty toilet water.) Moving the pail right next to the toilet makes this step much easier.

Sprinkle baking soda over diapers.

While still holding onto the clean edge of the dirty diaper, I'll use my free hand to sprinkle baking soda from a shaker directly on diaper before tossing it into the pail. Every other time (i.e., pee diapers), I just sprinkle a little baking soda into pail.

Cover is also thrown in diaper pail after poopy diapers or if it smells like urine. If only a pee diaper and no smell, then the cover is set on the edge of the counter to be used at the next diaper change.


Congratulations!

You just kept a poopy diaper out of the landfill and put the mess where it belongs.

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also see:
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how to wash cloth diapers
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