Hi All, I've needed "protection" for about 3 years, first just light but progressively more. After a night episode in a drug-store pull-up I got more serious and searched on-line for something better. The first product I came across was Tranquility All Through the Night (ATN). It worked if I wasn't on my side when the flood hit. More searching and I found the advice to put a day weight cloth diaper over the ATN and then plastic pants. That's when I found ACD and got what was needed. Problem solved. Then my daytime leakage got worse and The ATNs were too hard to change due to the adhesive tabs and the plastic cover. So I ordered Slimline Breathable (the weather was getting hotter anyway), they could be changed standing up in a men's room stall but didn't hold much sitting down. Plastic pants over them did pretty well with leaks. Then I looked at the cost and a couple of months worth of disposables would pay for a reasonable collection of cloth diapers. To me prefolds took an eternity to dry but flats would dry quite quickly. My wife and I are old enough to have had kids in cloth diapers (gauze flats), so that looked workable to me. Now came the experiments of washing in hard water (mostly carbonate hardness) in a top loading washer with few cycle options. I did wash and dry the new ones several times before use. Collected a real pile of fuzz in the dryer filter! Started out with Free and Clear type liquid detergent in hot water; the cycle only used a cold rinse. After a couple of washings I noticed pilling on the fabric and stiffening as well. Then I added another hot wash cycle with just water too make sure they were well rinsed. No improvement. Then I bought a box of borax and added it to the wash cycle, better results, but the second rinse seemed necessary. After a couple of staining incidents which didn't wash clean, I added a 1/2 scoop of Oxyclean to the wash mix. That took care of the stains but the stiffening got worse. Adding about 1 1/2 cups of distilled vinegar to the final rinse cycle began to soften the fabric. Now after 3 washings they are getting soft like the vendor claimed they should be. The good news is so far no rashes even if I have to stay wet for a couple of hours and no bad smells. Borax and Oxyclean seem to keep the "bugs" at bay.
While the process seems to be working now any suggestions are most welcome as at intermediate stages I thought the process was OK (for a while). Thanks. Stan
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