so i've posted here before about dealing with strong ammonia smell in our cloth diapers (GMD prefolds). it started when DS was about 14mos..after a day sitting in the pail, they started to stink like ammonia, smelled horrible. from the responses i got it sounded like i really needed to strip the diapers, bc the ammonia smell was likely coming from the pee reacting with buildup in the diapers. so i started giving the diapers an extra rinse (or two) after washing them and that seemed to help a lot at first...then i tried washing with RLR, and i tried soaking the diapers in Baby Oxi-Clean which helped too, at first. however as time went on, the smell would come back faster and faster and i'd have to strip more often (at first it was once every couple months, then it was every month, and then every few weeks). I just soaked all our diapers in OxiClean like four days ago, and today i noticed that not even after 24 hours they stink up the whole room!! also, i noticed today DS seems to be getting an itchy rash on his penis (sometimes the skin gets so irritated it bleeds a little bit)..i am worried could that be due to the buildup in the diaper, irritating his skin?
so i was wondering is there a better way to strip prefold diapers?? i've tried soaking in oxyclean, doing several rinses after washing (i use Country Save), and adding RLR to wash cycle. i've heard of using dish detergent, but i remember the GMD book advised not to, for some reason..
Or, could it be that toddler pee is just more concentrated, and i just have to suck it up and do diaper laundry every day (instead of every other day?) though, this wouldn't deal with the rash issues (though it could possibly just be a coincidence, i don't know). \
any suggestions welcome. i really really want to continue CDing (it's otherwise not that difficult, it saves so much $$ and reduces so much waste) but that darned ammonia smell is driving me crazy!!!