OK, I can't sleep because I'm frustrated... so I'm asking for advice. And thanks for listening. I'm trying to potty train my almost 4 yr old special needs son. (Yes I have worked on this several times over the last 2 yrs) He'll poop on the toilet but doesn't like to potty on the toilet, he'll hold it and eventually have an accident. At home he wears the cotton training pants, kind of like underwear. It's the only way I'm gonna be able to do this with this kid so that he knows when he pees. Otherwise, he'd be more than happy to live out his days peeing in a pull-up.
Anyway, the weird thing is that that is not why I'm writing. The problem is- what to do with these pee soaked undies?? I don't want to wash them with regular clothes, so I wash the wet undies together. Last night I washed several pairs of them from the last 2 days and they still came out of the dryer smelling like pee. Maybe it's because it's the Gerber ones that are double layered in the middle. I know it's not an issue with the washing machine. Tonight I have 4 pairs of wet undies (2 accidents, I double layered them) and it's almost not enough for a load in the washing machine, but they stink, even after soaking them in hot soapy water. I know this seems like a silly question, but what do you all do with the pee soaked training pants? Getting these things clean shouldn't be this difficult!
Try washing them with a lil bit of vinegar. Vinegar will remove the amonia. Also if he's pee'd in a room somewhere and you can still smell it try hiding a bowl of vinegar under the bed or some where unreachable to evaporate.. it will take the smell away.
Wearing rubber gloves, rinse them out in the toilet. You can soak overnight in bleach or vinegar water, wring and rinse. Then wash them with the bath towels. I bleach my bath towels and sheets, but the weight of those training pants whould work out best with towels for drying.
I have found that putting about a 1/2 cup (or 1/4 cup for small loads) of white vinegar into the washer with your detergent gets rid of urine odors. If it's especially bad, I run it through two wash cycles with vinegar each time with at least one wash temperature set to hot.
Soaking them in "HOT" water isn't helping. Soak them in COLD water with White Vinegar.
White vinegar in the wash load. Don't use any fabric softeners or dryer sheets because those leave a sticky residue that traps in the smell and pee in them. You might have to double wash them.
An extra rinse cycle with some vinegar
I wash the accident pants in the washer by themselves too. I put them in a diaper pail type thing, with a lid to control stench in the house. I always rinse the pooh out in the toilet. Then I start the wash load and add the detergent. Then I add a lot of vinegar or bleach. The bleach really works best but if I am out I will use the vinegar. It works usually. On the odd occasion I will run the washer a second time through the whole cycle.
We only have clothes in this instance, I would not use training pants, the floor and other stuff is just too much to add in to the mix. I have other things to do besides laundry...anyway. Once they have been dried they should smell fresh and clean. Like I said, bleach always works and when I am out I use the vinegar but when I use the vinegar I often have to run them a second time around.
I use the very same Gerber white training pants, too, and use Arm & Hammer Oxi Clean gel detergent and Tide Stain Release tablets and they get white and have no smell. Also, two pair had somehow gotten pushed to the side a few weeks ago, hidden behind something and they had yellowed when I found them, and I thought they were ruined, but I washed them with the others and they came out just as clean and white and absolutely no smell.
When I used them, I'd soak the wet ones overnight in the washer, then run them through, and I did wash them alone.
I have found that soaking them in a bucket of water and vinegar helps ( I have no clue why) I also put baking soda in the water with them when I wash them. I do not use bleach, bleach does not seem to help ( at least it has not helped in my case)
My washing machine does not have hot water...all I have is cold, so I started buying the special cold water detergent.
I have not had any issues with pee smelling clothes...and I even forgot a closed up walmart bag with a pair of pee soaked khaki pants that sat for more than 24 hours...I used my bucket method and no pee smell = ) Good luck!
I think your issue is probably similar to issues people have with ammonia in cloth diapers, so you could probably use some of the same tips & tricks that cloth diapering mama's use. First of all, I wouldn't let them sit very long. I wash diapers every other day. When I wash, I always begin with a cold rinse with no detergent to wash away as much of the urine as possible before starting the "real" cleaning with detergent. If you can rinse out the underwear before the urine dries, that's even better. Urine converts into ammonia crystals when it dries and those are hard to wash out. I have the most ammonia issues with my overnight diapers, so I rinse those out in the tub as soon as they come off of my daughter and then I store them in a wet pail (a bucket with water) until wash day so that the urine doesn't have a chance to dry on the diaper. Some add Biokleen Bac-Out to their wet pails. You can also spray Bac-Out directly on the diaper/underwear to help with the odor. My other thought is that if you are only washing four pairs of training pants in your washer all by themselves, you might not have enough of a load for the items to agitate against each other enough to get clean. Part of what gets our clothes clean in the washer is when they rub up against each other. I wouldn't worry about washing them separately, I just don't think that's necessary. You could run a rinse cycle with just the training pants (or rinse them out by hand) before adding the rest of your laundry items to the load. That way most of the urine should be gone and won't "contaminate" your other clothing or towels or whatever you choose to wash them with.
