Lumpy laundry from diaper washing mishap? Try this parenting lifehack!

Mothers and fathers of the world, have you ever had a washing machine accident where your laundry ended up, well, incredibly lumpy? That lumpiness might have been caused from accidentally putting in a disposable diaper, which has superabsorbent polymers that can be great for soaking up wet messes from your kids, but can be a real pain in the wash. Recently, a Japanese twitter user put out a very handy lifehack for parents out there. Click below to find out this nifty little trick to get your laundry back to normal!

While parents around the world may differ on how they raise their children, there is one truth that unites them all: laundry, and lots of it. It doesn’t matter where you are, kids are messy and parents spend a lot of time cleaning up after them. And with all that laundry, there are bound to be some washing machine mishaps.

One apparently common annoyance is when a disposable diaper makes its way into the wash. Thanks to the magic of science, diapers now have water absorbing polymers that retain a whole lot of liquid to reel in messy leaks. Unfortunately, when these polymers get into your washing machine, the whole load can come out looking like a dragon sneezed all over it.

So when a twitter user last week pointed out a quick fix to this “lumpy laundry” problem, Japanese netizens were quick to start sharing the lifehack. According to yamabuki2, the key to “de-lumpifying” your clothes is to simply add salt and run the wash cycle again. The lumps would apparently disappear, allowing life to get back to normal.

But before trying out the salt method in their own washing machine, another netizen decided to do a little experiment to make sure it worked. Twitter user tankukizamurai was skeptical that just adding salt could rid the parenting world of such an annoying problem. So first, they cut open a diaper to take out the tiny polymer beads.

▼cutting open the (thankfully) clean diaper

Then, they put the polymer beads into a glass with about 500 ml of water. After thoroughly mixing the water/polymer mixture, you can clearly see how defeated someone would feel after seeing this lumpy liquid all over your clothes.

▼The lumpy mixture

Now it was time to add the salt. They added about 3 tablespoons of salt to the lumpy water and stirred. And as you can see below, although it wasn’t pretty, the lumps were gone!

▼de-lumped liquid

▼Looking at the de-lumped water from the top

So it seems that adding salt can take the lumps out enough to get your clothes clean. Although, it looks like you will probably have to run the wash cycle a few times to get rid of the polymer beads. But a word of warning: Putting salt in your washing machine is a surefire way to invite rust in. So if you try this out, be sure to completely clean your washing machine out after using the salt to avoid getting a rusty washer.

Of course we hope that no one has to deal with lumpy laundry, but if you do run into this problem, let us know if you try the salt method! Or let us know in the comments below if you have a better way to recover your laundry after a washing accident like this!

Source: Togech
Images: Twitter (tanukizamurai)

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