When Theodore was born my husband and I decided we wanted to use reusable baby wipes with homemade baby wipes solution for diaper changes. I had been trying to avoid lots of chemicals in our house by making my own cleaners, so I was interested in doing the same thing with baby wipes. I wasn’t too familiar how it worked it at the time (with Lucy we had used disposable wipes), but our good friends were doing it and so we decided to give it a try too. (This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.)
After 18 months of using both our reusable wipes and disposable baby wipes (when we are out of the house), I strongly prefer the reusable ones. In my experience the reusable wipes really do clean better and are so much easier to use. (Not to mention you can save some money in the long run!) It’s so easy, I wish I had done this with Lucy!
Here is how our system is set up. We have a Prince Lionheart Premium Wipe Warmer
to hold the wipes and solution. I roll the wipes up and place them inside the warmer. (I’ve tried many different reusable wipes, but my favorite are the ones I got from Green Mountain Diapers. I know many people also just use baby washcloths.)
Then, I make the solution for the wipes. I pour distilled water into a Nalgene water bottle. I add about 1 tablespoon of sweet almond oil and 5-6 drops of tea tree essential oil
. I screw the lid on the bottle, shake it up, and then pour the contents over all the rolled baby wipes. That’s it! They are ready to go for the next diaper change. (Before I used the solution originally, I made sure Theo didn’t have a reaction to the almond oil by rubbing a little drop on his heel and waiting 24 hours to check for any reaction. Then I did the same thing after making my first batch of the actual solution with the added tea tree oil. There are many different recipes for baby wipe solution out there and some people even just use distilled water!)
Next to Theo’s changing table we have a regular waste basket lined with a washable diaper pail liner similar to this one. After using the wipes, we just toss them in the pail. Once we are almost out of wipes, we simply lift out the liner with all the used wipes in it and head out to the washing machine, dump them in and wash! Super easy!
I also have the Prince Lionheart Dresser Top Diaper Depot to help organize all the diapers, wipes, creams etc. I used to keep the almond oil and tea tree oil in the organizer too to make mixing the solution convenient, but now that Theo is a climber, I’ve moved them somewhere else he can’t get to.
Now that I feel I’ve mastered the reusable wipes method, it’s almost time for my next challenge…… potty training a boy! Eek!