# Washing with white wine vinegar?



## doggylover

Hi ladies, I need your expert cloth advice.

I just bought my first set of cloth from eBay :happydance: and I'm so excited to get them. They are listed as, and look like they are in, excellent condition. 

However, I read on another eBay item which was similar that if cloth nappies have lost their initial softness that if you add white wine vinegar to your wash it will bring back some of the softness. This seems to be in contrast to things I read on here, which basically seem to say only a little detergent and avoid anything else.

Can anyone shed any light on this for me please? Safe or not?

Also, this is maybe a silly question :blush: but I am going to be a first time mum and am a total cloth novice. Can you wash baby clothes/adult clothes in with the nappies? Or is it not a good idea?

Thank you !!


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## Rachel_C

Ok I think you mean white vinegar not white wine vinegar. White vinegar is distilled vinegar, pretty similar to the brown malt stuff but clear. I think it's cheaper than the wine stuff :)

In general I would avoid vinegar as it's an acid. Ok it's not that strong and it would be diluted in the wash but I'd generally avoid it as a normal part of your wash. It should be fine as an occasional thing. However, I would look at why the nappies aren't soft and see if you can fix that.

If they've been washed in hard water, they can have hardwater deposits in the fabric like limescale. It should come out with a few good washes but you can use water softener too and see if that helps. In fact, water softener is often helpful as a normal part of your laundry even if you're in soft water. We had hard water so I used it and it made a huge difference. Then we moved to soft water so I stopped using it. However I decided to use up the last of the water softener and I could still feel a difference. So it's worth a go! I wouldn't go for expensive brand names like Calgon, look at your supermarket's own version. I used the cheap Tesco stuff. 

If they've been tumble dried much, some nappies like bamboo can lose their silkiness. This is a permanent thing so there's not much you can do about it. Tumbling does, however, soften nappies in the short term so if they've not been tumbled and they're a natural fabric, a quick tumble can soften them for you. Or you can rub them briskly together for a similar effect.

It could also be that you're used to fabric softener and they haven't been washed in it. If you really miss it, you can use Bold 2 in 1 which is the only clay-based softener I know of. Oil-based is bad but clay-based is fine :)

Yes, you can wash nappies with other things but you need to follow the washing guidelines for the nappies, not the other stuff. So you'd use a small amount of detergent. The clothes would still get clean but you might miss the detergent smell. I often wash towels in with nappies as they benefit from the same treatment as nappies, being absorbent fabric. The only thing to really watch out for is overfilling the machine. Nappies need more space to swish around than clothes, and more water, so I wouldn't fill the machine as much as you would with clothes. I'd say 2/3 full is about right.


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## doggylover

Thank you so much for that info, I'll steer clear of any vinegar. I didn't think it sounded like such a good idea!

I don't use fabric softner at all, and only use the tumble drier in "emergencies" so hopefully all will go well!


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## RoseKitten

I use vinegar as a fabric softener, but I know it breaks the clothes down faster. However, when I switched to soap nuts, I found I never needed any sort of fabric softener at all. Might be something to look into. :flower:


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## doggylover

Thanks for that! I will have a little look into soap nuts :)


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