Squeaky clean and ready to use.

Before cloth diapers, we used Freddie’s laundry sheets, simple, low-waste, easy to toss in. But cloth diapers ask a bit more of a detergent. A few things matter here that didn’t with regular laundry:

• Real cleaning power. Diapers are heavily soiled, so the detergent needs enough surfactants (and ideally enzymes) to actually break that down, not just freshen things up.
• No fabric softener. It coats the fibers, which blocks absorbency and leads to leaks.
• No optical brighteners. They make fabric look whiter but don’t actually clean, and they build up over time.
• No heavy fragrance. Modern fragrance is often designed to cling to fabric instead of rinsing out, and that residue can irritate skin.
• Clean rinsing. Nothing left behind in the fabric after the wash cycle, or it builds up wash after wash.

That ruled out a lot of what’s on the shelf, including some detergents marketed specifically for babies.

What we switched to: Nellie’s Laundry Soda with POW Powder

This is Nellie’s classic formula with added enzymes for extra cleaning power, exactly what heavily soiled diaper laundry needs. No fabric softener, no fragrance, no brighteners. Dissolves well in both hot and cold water, and it’s been the fix for the issues we were having before.

A note on traditional detergents

This isn’t about fear, just what the research actually shows. A University of Washington study found that air vented from machines using a top-selling scented liquid detergent and scented dryer sheets contained hazardous chemicals, including two classified as carcinogens. Researchers tested top-selling laundry and air-freshening products and found they emitted dozens of different chemicals, every single one giving off at least one substance classified as toxic or hazardous under federal law. University of Washington

The reason most of this doesn’t show up on the label: manufacturers combine multiple chemicals to create a single fragrance, and they’re not required to list those individual ingredients due to trade-secret protections. Annmarie Gianni

Source: Steinemann et al., University of Washington — “Fragranced consumer products and undisclosed ingredients,” published in Environmental Impact Assessment Review

This is part of why we look for detergents that are fragrance-free and clean-rinsing, not because every conventional detergent is dangerous, but because there’s less guesswork when fewer undisclosed ingredients are involved.