Overcoming Build-Up

Hello, everyone!  It has been several months since I have posted!  I apologize.  Sometimes life gets in the way.  I hope you are all well.  :)

The last few months have proved to be a little bit of a cloth diapering challenge for us, but we stuck it out and have come out on top.  After my last post, we fought with an ongoing ammonia problem with our diapers, and discovered it was a problem with our washing machine.  We had a high-efficiency front loader, and it just wasn't getting our diapers clean enough (i.e. wasn't getting enough water to clean them well enough).  After a lot of trips to my mom's to do diaper laundry, we decided to swap our front loader for a top load, and we have been much happier doing diaper laundry!

Do any of you mamas have stories to share about any problems with cleaning your diapers?  Build-up from detergent/fighting with the dreaded ammonia or barnyard smell?  What kinds of methods did you try? 

I felt like we tried everything under the sun to get our diapers clean.   I first tried stripped with various methods (Dawn, Bac-Out, RLR, etc.)  I even used bleach.  When I realized that our front loader was part of our problem, it became easier to figure things out.  I boiled inserts several times, and changed our washing routine a little bit, and I have much less problems with build-up.  We have EXTREMELY hard water where we live, so I have to boil inserts every few washes to keep the hard water build-up out of our diapers.  It is a little more work, but totally worth it to keep my sweet boy in fluff. 

Do any of you have special names for your diapers?  We usually just say cloth, but I find myself calling it fluff quite often.  I know some people even call them nappies.  Whatever you call them, they're sweet.  :)  Take care, guys!  I promise I will post again soon!  I am afraid that I am terrible at keeping up with blogs, but I do try my best to post when I'm not busy.  This summer has proved to be terribly busy so far! 

Keep your cloth fun!! Happy diapering, mamas!