Back in July I mentioned wanting to use reusable cloth wipes as a part of our cloth diaper routine. Originally I wanted to make my own but it ended up being a much bigger pain in the behind than it was to just purchase some baby washcloths. I bought a 12-pack of 100% cotton 9"x9" Carters brand for $3.99 from Marshalls, a 12-pack of 75% cotton / 25% polyester 9"x9" Luvable Friends brand for $3.99 from Ross, and a 10-pack of 75% cotton / 25% polyester 10"x10" Cutie Pie brand for $3.99 (I'm not sure if it was from Ross or Marshalls.) This seems to be a more economical route than purchasing specifically branded reusable cloth baby wipes.
So far these have worked out great. They all have a smooth side and a terry cloth side. The smooth side is great for cleaning up pee-pee only or wiping a messy face and the terry cloth side is good for gripping and wiping up poop. The cool thing about using cloth wipes is that I only have to use one (or maybe two if it's particularly messy) per diaper change compared to the 5 or 6 per messy change when I was using disposable wipes. These clean up the same way as the cloth diapers and can be washed in the same loads as the diapers.
One of the neat things I learned online while doing research about cloth wipes is that they can be folded in such a way that you can use them in a pop-up wipes dispenser. There might be YouTube videos of how to do this but I have a few photos showing how and once you try it, it's very easy.
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| I've chosen 4 different colors to help visually see how to fold them. The colors are, from top: light blue, green, dark blue, white. I'm using the 9"x9" size because they fit into a standard size disposable wipes container a bit better. |
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| Lay down the light blue wipe. Lay the green wipe on top of it so it's overlapping the light blue wipe by half. |
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| Fold the light blue wipe over the top of the green wipe where it overlaps. |
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| Lay the dark blue wipe on top of the light blue wipe that was just folded in half. |
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| Fold the green wipe over the dark blue wipe. |
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| Lay the white wipe on top of the green wipe you just folded in half. |
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| Fold the dark blue wipe over the white wipe. Continue adding wipes until you've folded them all together. |
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| Stick your cloth baby wipes into your adorable Winnie-the-Pooh disposable wipes container. |
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| Here you can see that when I pull out the top wipe, the one below it comes up too, just like traditional pop-up wipes. |
There are a ton of cloth wipe solution recipes on the internet. I looked at quit a few of them and ended up going with Baby Bum Drops by Knickernappies. They are tiny cubes that you dissolve in hot water and pour or spray on your wipes. When I make a batch I pour 3/4 cup of boiling water into a Thermos, drop in a cube (or sometimes a half of a cube if it's a bit bigger) and then fill it the rest of the way with filtered water from the refrigerator. The Thermos keeps it warm the whole day and that amount will typically last me two and a half days using my current dispensing system, which is kind of wasteful. I pour the solution onto a wipe over the sink and then wring it out a bit. I used to pour it out over a Rubbermaid container and then dump the extra back into the Thermos but I've gotten lazy. I need to start doing that again.
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| The Baby Bum Drops are safe to use with cloth diapers and cost approximately $13.99 for 50 of the little blocks. |
Here is a link discussing our switch to cloth diapers.
Here is a link with information about our cloth diapering experience.
Here is a link to a comparison between the BumGenius 4.0 One-Size Pocket diapers and the FuzziBunz One-Size Elite Pocket Diapers
This is really cool. I wish I'd have thought to do this stuff when The Princess was little...would have saved a ton of money and kept five and a half years of diapers out of the landfills.
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