Washing cloth diapers

It is equally as important to know your washer as it is to have a good wash routine.  There are many different types of washing machines, you have your old school top loading with agitator, High efficiency top loading with no agitator, and front loading.  Each washer no matter the style has different wash options.  I personally have a h/e top loader with no agitator.  My wash routine before I would just dump all the pre-rinsed diapers into the wash, pour the detergent over top of them and then set it to a 'normal' wash cycle.  However, I pulled out my owners manual and read it.  I STRONGLY recommend reading your manual!  I learned that I am not supposed to add the detergent into the wash and I am instead supposed to put it in the detergent dispenser (which I do with liquid detergent but did not know I could do it with powder)  Apparently the wash cycle first wets/rinses first then distributes the detergent.  So before essentially all the detergent was getting washed off because it was added too early.  After reading my manual I have decided to wash the cloth diapers on the 'whitest whites' setting.  It adds an extra rinse and a soak.  Which with cloth diapers is good to have, means it will wash more of the remaining soap off at the end.   This will come in handy when I have newborn dirty diapers.