A Happy Green Life Cloth Diaper Detergent Review

When I tried to track down the best laundry detergent, I had a dickens of a time. I found that any time I used a “cloth diaper friendly” laundry detergent, it just meant that I had stinky diapers.

I generally had to add washing soda to try and give the detergent and extra boost, but I still had to strip every couple of weeks….until I used A Happy Green Life.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when I started trying this, simply because I had finally concluded that Tide was the only thing that worked, but this actually worked PERFECTLY.

I think one of the things that was KEY for me was that the people who make the detergent, we later found out by coincidence, lived less than 15 minutes from me! So their formula seemed to “get” my odd water situation (here in NorCal the water is hard, but not well-water hard).

The detergent is made up of naturally occurring chemicals and compounds: Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Bicarbonate, and Sodium Percarbonate. It is scented with essential oils, as well as synthetic fragrance oils.

I tried out a whole bunch of scents and I really liked the Rain Barrel scent, since it was so fresh. But the diapers don’t come out of the machine smelling like that (which is good because that means there’s no detergent left in the diapers). But they sure made my laundry room smell nice!

So here is how I would fill out a Padded Tush Stats Survey based on this detergent:

On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being not satisfied), how satisfied are you with your washing routine (with this detergent)?

4

How often do you strip your diapers?

Every other month

Is this product worth the Price?

4

It comes out to roughly .15-.30 per load (including shipping), and Tide costs .18/load  (if you buy from Costco) and CountrySave is .25/load, so it is a pretty great deal, especially for those of you with a front loader. But one other thing to consider is the extra cost of water for stripping once a month, which is why I couldn’t give it a perfect 5.

Although I found that had to strip my diapers every other month, I think this detergent is a great option if you are trying to use one that is considered cloth diaper safe. If I had diapers that were particularly stinky, it required a little extra washing. So I did miss my Tide, but I like that this had fewer chemicals that I’d expose my baby and cloth diapers to. But even though I had to strip every other month, they weren’t in dire need of stripping, there was just a faint smell and I like to keep on top of that. I couldn’t get over how much better this cloth diaper safe detergent performed than the several other CD-safe brands I have tried.

Price: 

$10 per bag

Where to Buy: To see who carries them, just type “A Happy Green Life” at the top of the table at www.clothdiaperretailers.com. You can see what retailers carry them and compare things like shipping, location, and even the specials going on.

Although A Happy Green Life provided the detergent for review, that did not influence any opinions reflected in this post.