My mum’s Eighties nappy routine

I asked my mum to recount her experience about washing cloth nappies in 1980s New Zealand. These were the days of terry-towelling squares, safety pins and wet pailing dirty nappies in a Napisan mix.

Here I am recalling the mid-eighties when I had a toddler of 19 months and newborn twins – and consequently heaps of nappies to deal with on a daily basis.

Back then nappies were the nappies which are now called flat nappies. They were white cotton, fluffy on one side, smooth on the other, which you folded into shape and lined with a separate liner (the liners may even have been a second nappy folded into a rectangle, especially at night). They were pinned at the front with two safety pins. 

Completing the outfit was a pair of fluffy pants called bunny pants made of some kind of awful synthetic material. Bunny pants were critical as they helped keep the nappy on and also contained the inevitable overflows.

Our main discussion point/debate back then was about who supplied the best quality nappy – in my opinion that was hands down, unequivocally, no doubt about it, the white nappies with red border supplied by Evans Drapery of Wellington. Our other pressing discussion point was the best way to fold the nappies. I think that once you settled on your ‘fold’ you stuck with it.  Bunny pants didn’t require discussion – they were either pink or blue. 

1980s nappy routine with three-under-two

For the first few weeks after our twins arrived my nappy routine was easy. I had a toddler and twins, so I was eligible for a free nappy service. So all I had to do was pile them all into a big bag and once a week a sack of clean nappies arrived and the used ones were taken and laundered by the hospital. Magic!

The nappy service ended quite soon and the following became my daily nappy routine:

• at some stage during the day/evening sit and fold a big pile of clean nappies and liners ready to go
• have a lidded bucket or two filled with the recommended mix of hot water and dissolved Napisan permanently on hand in the laundry
• a stick to stir the mixture and some rubber gloves
• at each nappy change
  • rinse liners and remove any heavy-duty soiling from nappies
  • add liners and nappies to Napisan mix
  • give it all a good stir to ensure the material’s all thoroughly saturated
  • replace lid on bucket
  • wait for next nappy change which, trust me, is just around the corner
  • repeat
• for survival, I had to keep to a routine so around 8.30am each morning
  • empty buckets and tip the nappies and liners into the washing machine for a rinse and spin
  • peg nappies out on the line for final sanitising in the sun
  • refill buckets with fresh hot water and dissolved Napisan
  • carefully rinse and wipe down the laundry tub and surrounding areas – oh man, Napisan could turn your laundry tub into a rust bucket in no time
• repeat yesterday

I don’t remember disposable wipes being around. We used cloth wipes, and they got the Napisan treatment. I can’t remember what we used as cloth wipes but I imagine it was some kind of cotton square.

Bunny pants were generally washed like clothes as they weren’t soiled.

Over the next year or so disposable nappies became more readily available. They seemed very expensive compared to using cloth nappies and by then the nappy routine was such a part of my day that I never did use them much.  Having said that, disposables were a revolution when it came to overnight nappies and for outings.  I quickly found I had no nostalgia at all for the particular sulphuric smell of a sodden early morning cloth nappy.  

And how’s this for the robustness of cloth nappies – after all these years I still have a couple that get dragged into use whenever I’m cleaning. Some things never change!

A note from the present day

The main difference in this routine is that the nappies were single-layer, and Napisan’s ingredients were drastically different.

Napisan no longer contains chlorine bleach. We do not recommend soaking nappies in Napisan or equivalent laundry boosters. Soaking nappies forms a bacterial breeding ground and is a drowning hazard.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the active ingredient in Napisan was potassium monopersulfate (KHSO₅) which oxidises sodium chloride to sodium hypochlorite (chlorine bleach). The formulation has since changed, with sodium hypochlorite replaced with sodium percarbonate (oxygen bleach).