You may remember that I've been cloth diapering my precious daughter lately. Once you make the switch, and are already washing the diapers regularly, there is absolutely no reason not to also use cloth wipes. But even if you don't switch to cloth diapers (yet!) ;), I would encourage you to considering making your own baby wipes at home. The money you'll save is significant. The environmental impact is nice. The confidence of knowing what you're using to clean your baby's face, hands, or bottom is wonderful.
Here are THREE EASY STEPS to making your own homemade baby wipes:
1. Buy the wipes you want to use. I bought a nice variety of wipes in fun patterns from Zannadu cloth diapers (oops, looks like they are now out of business). You can see the five patterns I chose ... the thing I love about these is how soft they are. (Well, and the fun patterns make them FUN to use!) One side is soft flannel and the other side is micro terry cloth... so they're super soft on tender bottoms but also have some grip to get gunk off skin! If you're even somewhat skilled at sewing, you might even be able to make your own!
I also bought some cheap washcloth-material mitts that they sell here. It makes for easy cleaning, and I wanted to try a variety of options. For what it's worth, these do work OK, but I do prefer the soft ones I got from Zannadu. I tend to use the washcloth ones for cleaning her face and hands.
2. You can use any wipes container you want to. Because I have so many wipes and like to do it in bulk, I double whichever recipe I'm trying and pour it over the wipes in this great container:
That way, I can keep the diaper rash cream and Vaseline (that's the yellow circle container) right there in the container and have it handy when I need it. But lots of wipes-making moms just use the wipes boxes you get from Huggies or Pampers and fold over their wipes inside the case.
3. Make your baby wipes solution and pour it over the wipes inside the box. I use the large plastic cups that restaurants give out to mix up the solution and, so far, have tried 2 different "recipes".
- 2 cups water
- 1 tbsp oil (olive oil, baby oil, whatever simple oil you want to use)
- 1 tbsp baby soap
MIX WELL and pour over wipes in portions.
An even simpler recipe, that has been great for her poor little irritated bottom (a result of the bathroom issues one often faces from changing bacteria when moving overseas) is this one:
- 1-2 tbsp of lavender smelling baby oil
- 2-3 cups of water
MIX WELL. Add wipes to box in small portions, pouring portions of the mixture over the wipes until both wipes and wipe solution are gone.
[I plan to try more entirely natural wipes solutions once I get my bearings here and have better language skills.]
JUST DO IT!
This has been such a surprisingly easy solution to buying wipes from the store, and the cost savings is significant. Even if you just wanted to use this for after-meal face and hand wipes, I believe you'd see savings and enjoy the process as well!
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