How To Use & Make Wipes & Solution
-
Thirsties Fab Wipes are made of colorful, soft velour.
If you’ve tried cloth diapers, you might have realized that using disposable wipes with them is actually a hassle: You finish changing a diaper and throw it in the pail, only to have to pick up the baby AND a dirty disposable wipe (or five) and carry it (them) to the trash can. Ew. Past a certain age, baby will be reaching for that wipe, too. Double ew. It’s really easy to use cloth wipes and solution along with your cloth diapers. The benefits are:
1) Cloth wipes are easy to use and clean along with your cloth diapers.
2) Store-bought or homemade cloth wipe solution can be much safer for baby than store-bought wet wipes, which are full of toxic chemicals that cause diaper rash, among other things (type your product name into the SkinDeep database to find out how safe it is). Not to mention the extra trash you are saving by reusing cloth.
3) Cloth wipes and solution are like a mini-sponge bath, so baby’s butt will stay cleaner and drier.
4) Cloth wipes are inexpensive and can come in fun colors just like diapers.
5) Homemade wipe solution can cost you an unbelievably small amount of $$. Recipe for my favorite below.
Using store-bought diaper wipes can cost you several hundred dollars a year. Cloth wipes cost anywhere from nothing at all (sew your own out of flannel squares or cut up an old t-shirt into 6″ squares for no-sew diaper wipes that are thin but completely free) to $1 to $2 per wipe. One dollar seemed pretty steep to me at first, but let’s run the numbers on what cloth wipes will cost per year. You will want several dozen cloth wipes in your stash so you never run out, so let’s say you want 36 wipes, which is plenty. An average price for those wipes, purchased at an eco-friendly baby boutique such as Banana Peels Diapers, will run you about $54 if you buy $1.50 wipes. These wipes can be used over and over year after year, no problem, so you will at least get one full cloth diapering run from birth to potty training out of them, which brings your comparison of cloth vs. disposable wipes up from $54 vs. $200 to $54 vs. $600 for three years of diapering. If you use the same wipes for a second kid, which should be feasible, you are talking $54 vs. $1200, $1500, and so on. All for something you wipe butts with.
-
Thirsties Booty Luster Cloth Wipe Solution is a popular store-bought wipe solution.
Cloth wipe solution is usually just a liquid soap, water, and anything else you want to add such as a carrier oil and essential oil for antibacterial or fragrance purposes. Disposable wipes, on the other hand, are soaked in chemical solutions that, for starters, give my baby diaper rash, and have ingredients that are associated with endocrine system disruption, organ toxicity, lung problems, allergies, and “biochemical or cellular level changes.” And that is for Huggies “Gentle Care” wipes. If you insist on using disposable wipes, even if it’s just for a week of travel, you might consider buying Seventh Generation or other brands of wipes that offer a chlorine-free alternative. I have noticed that my daughter gets a rash within 3 days using regular disposable wipes, but the rash is much slower to form and comes and goes with chlorine-free wipes, and that rash may be caused by the disposable diapers she uses at the same time, not the wipes. Cloth wipes have never given her a single rash, so I use those whenever possible, and I make my own cloth wipe solution with Dr. Bronner’s Baby Mild Castile Soap, water, and a few drops of peppermint or lavender essential oil. You can also purchase cloth wipe solution such as Honey Chunks and Happy Heinys Wash if you don’t want to make your own. Making your own is easy and extraordinarily economical, though. My $10 bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap is half empty after nearly a full year of using it both for cloth wipe solution and shampoo for my daughter–AND hand soap for the family. I made some of my own wipes out of old t-shirt pieces and won most of the rest of my wipes on blog giveaways, plus I bought a few on sale. So, while other parents are spending their hard-earned paychecks on disposable wipes week after week, I will spend maybe $40 from birth to potty training on wipes and solution.
Here is my favorite cloth wipe solution, a simplified version of a Zany-Zebra recipe:
1 cup water
1 T Dr. Bronner’s Baby Mild Castile Soap
3 drops peppermint essential oil or lavender essential oil
I put my wipe solution in a spray bottle, so I skip using any carrier oil that might gum up the spray bottle mechanism, but I’m sure adding the carrier oil would make this solution more conditioning for the skin. You could also soak your cloth wipes in this solution, as long as you use it up quickly so it doesn’t spoil.
