After having 4 babies in 5 years, I grew frustrated with the expense of disposable baby wipes.

Even purchasing them by the case taxed the bank account. Researching homemade wipes opened up a whole world of opportunity. In general cloth baby wipes can be broken done into two categories: disposable and reusable.

Disposable Baby Wipes

A. Prepackaged
These are the most commonly used and the most expensive. These can be purchased at almost any store and join disposable diapers in the landfill by the millions.

B. Homemade Paper Towel Wipes
Many moms have had success with making wipes using a soap solution and rolls of paper towel. Paper towels are a very thin wipe and it necessary to use more than one to take care of messy cloth diapers.

Both of these methods involve waste, as they are discarded in the trash. They also present a serious drawback to the cloth diaper user. If the wipes accidentally join the diapers in the wash, a mess can result. The fibers will fill Velcro tabs.

Reusable Cloth Baby Wipes

A. Wash Cloth And Water
This is the simplest method, as it involves only a cloth and water. It requires trips to the sink and if soap is not used, there is the potential for a rash to develop.

B. Cloth Wipes and Homemade Solution
This is a simple combination of cloth baby wipes and a soap solution. It can be easily stored in a wipe warmer or any container with a tight fitting lid.

The following recipe was taken from The Urban Homemaker catalog.

• 2 cups water
• 1 tsp Dr. Bronner’s soap
• 3 drops tea tree oil
• 3 drops of lavender oil

Cotton fleece wipes, knit terry wipes or flannelette washable wipes can be purchased to use with the solution.

Baby washcloths work well, too. A stack of cloth wipes sit in a basket beside the container of wipe “juice”. Keeping the wipes immersed in the water tend to make them slimy. Using more water can cause an unpleasant odor if the “juice” isn’t used fast enough.

The cloth wipes can be easily tossed in with the cloth diapers for washing. If you are out and about, you can soak a few cloth baby wipes and put them in a resalable plastic bag, such as Ziploc for easy use on the trip.

GUEST BLOGGER

Caron Norton is the mother of four Godly, but rambunctious, children, and the wife of an even more Godly, but rambunctious, husband! Aside from being a mom she is seeking a director’s license to tutor for Classical Conversations: a home-centered education movement. She has been cloth diapering for 5 1/2 years.

If you are looking to build your cloth diaper stash NOW IS THE TIME!

For a limited TWO DAYS ONLY (8-22-09 through 8/23-2009) Soft Cloth Bunz is offering FREE SHIPPING on orders of $50 or more.

Use the code FREESHIP2223 at check-out to get FREE SHIPPING on your cloth diaper or cloth diapering products purchase!

PLEASE NOTE: - This FREE SHIPPING offer is for new orders only.

Although my family quickly jumped on the cloth diaper band wagon, we were unaware of how economical cloth baby wipes were. It had not occurred to us, in our vast research on cloth diapers, to investigate about the use of cloth wipes.

Cloth wipes can be used repeatedly, keeping disposable wipes out of the landfill and keeping money in your wallet. Cloth wipe solutions like bumGenius! Bottom Cleaner can be purchased or even made on your own with low cost (and environmentally friendly) ingredients. We have found the combination of cloth baby wipes and cloth wipe solutions are often more efficient at cleaning baby’s bottom than disposable baby wipes. After use, we simply throw them into our cloth diaper pail along with the soiled cloth diapers.

As mentioned before, parents can purchase all natural, organic, bottom cleaners, or for a cumulative cost savings over time, many websites offer cloth wipe solution recipes. All wipe solution “chefs” suggest only making enough solution for one week, throwing out what you do not use each week. “Chefs” also suggest waiting until just before the wipes are to be used before adding the solution. These practices prevent moldy wipes and solution.

Parents should be cautious with some of the recipes containing essential oils. Be sure to use a carrier oil, which helps to dilute the essential oil (thus reducing the probability of an adverse skin reaction). Also, some oils may cause skin reactions for sensitive children.

Here are some sites that offer recipes for wipe solutions:

• Homemade Baby Wipes Recipes at Natural Birth and Baby Care
• Cloth Wipe Solution Recipes at Zany Zebra
• Homemade Baby Wipes Recipe at TipNut.
• Make Your Own Wipe Solutionat Ezine.

Do you have any cloth baby wipes suggestions or links to share?

Over at Soft Cloth Bunz we realize that summer is hard on a family’s budget, so we are implementing a sale to SAVE $5.00 on orders of $50.00 or more!

If you plan to cloth diaper your baby on the way, your new newborn, or maybe even making the switch now that your baby is a little older, take advantage of this time of savings!

NO COUPON IS REQUIRED to save $5.00 off your order. Just visit Soft Cloth Bunz, select from a variety of dependable baby products, and check-out! It is that easy to save on your cloth diaper purchases!

In my last post, Reducing Household Waste, I mentioned a few ways that families can recycle.

In today’s post, I will expand on more ways that families can recycle and save money.

Below, you will find a collection of DIY websites for making different cloth diaper accessories from used household goods.

CLOTH DIAPERS

• All-in-ones: This site offers different ideas for ways to make All In Ones using shower curtains, t-shirts, sheets and towels.
• Free patterns of different types of diapers:
  • All-in-ones
  • Faux Fuzzi Bunz
  • Training Pants
  • Baby Doll/premie diapers
  • Prefolds
  • Pocket Diapers
  • Many others

DIAPER COVERS

• “Longies” made from thrift store wool sweaters
• Side Snapping Cover
• Hand-knit Wool Diaper Cover

CLOTH WIPES AND/OR SOLUTIONS

• Cloth Wipe Patterns:
  • My Happy Crazy Life
  • Make Baby Stuff
• Cloth Wipes for purchase: Sometimes purchasing a few cloth wipes is all you need to develop your own pattern–get a feel for what you like/don’t like, what size works best for you and your baby’s bum, etc…
  • Soft Cloth Bunz carries a variety of cloth baby wipes
  • …as does Zany Zebra
• Wipe Solution Ideas:
  • Zany Zebra offers over 10 different wipe solution recipes

DIAPER BAGS

• Diaper Bags made from a placemat!
• Customizable diaper bag pattern

WET BAGS AND BURP CLOTHS

• Make Baby Stuff

Free patterns for cloth diaper products can be easily found searching your favorite web browser (I used Google). Please post any additional websites that you find (or have found) helpful in the comments!

…DISPOSABLES. With the recent influx of very fancy WAHM-made custom boutique cloth diapers hitting online cloth diaper stores, and advertising in organic or natural parenting magazines, it is easy to lose the perspective that cloth diapering can ease a stretched budget.

Many parents tell us the reason they choose to cloth diaper has less to do with a heightened eco-consciousness, but rather, tough economic times. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, middle-income families will spend more than $200,000 to feed, house, and school a child born in 2007 until their 18th birthday. Given these statistics, it is understandable why parents are looking for ways to cut child-rearing costs without shortchanging their kids.

Simple, Economic Chinese Prefolds

As with any other kind of purchase, parents can select the newest rage, fabrics, and trends, or opt for higher quality, but perhaps slightly less ‘fashionable’ Chinese Prefold Diapers and simple diaper covers. Eight years ago, when I began cloth diapering, we were a single-income family; my initial cloth diaper budget was less than $80.00, so I purchased two dozen Chinese Prefolds, a few Dritz diaper pins, and a half-dozen Bummis Whisper Pants. Later on, as the budget allowed, I purchased Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers for night-time cloth diapering.

In time I opened an online cloth diaper store and was able to try several different styles, but when my children moved out of diapers the part of our diaper stash ‘worn’ from repeated use were my simple, economical Chinese Prefolds.

Simple Cloth Diapers for a Stretched Budget

Chinese Prefolds are an economical boost in any diapering budget and a cost-effective way to ease into cloth diapering. Two dozen Regular 6-ply Chinese Prefolds now cost just under $60.00. To purchase a half-dozen cloth diaper covers in rotation can cost anywhere from $33.00 to just over $100.00; this makes for a total cloth diapering expense of $93.00 to $160.00, depending on cloth diaper cover choices.

The Regular Chinese Prefolds are my favorite size; whenever my babies outgrew them I tri-folded them and stuffed them into the stride of a cloth diaper wrap or into the pocket of a Fuzzi Bunz. A very economical cloth diaper choice, my babies’ prefolds moved through three different stages: first, folded down as a cloth diaper for a smaller baby; next, wrapped around a growing, medium-sized baby; and finally, as mentioned above, tri-folded into a wrap or stuffed into a pocket diaper.

When I added up the cost of disposable diapers, I could have quickly exceeded my diaper budget, with nothing to show for it in the end. Yet, with my initial cloth diaper purchase behind me I could toss in a few fancy diaper covers here and there without exploding my diaper budget; they were fun, colorful, and made for interesting discussions with perfect strangers when we were out and about running errands. Still, for the most part, I viewed cloth diapers and diaper covers as underwear, so prints were not as important to me as function.

As a single-income family, we had less ‘disposable’ income - certainly less income to simply throw-away on single-use items like disposables. Chinese Prefold Diapers and diaper covers were, and are still, a cost-effective, high-quality way to ease the budget while keeping baby dry and comfortable.

Whether or not our country is in a “true energy crisis” is left to be seen, but as consumers, few of us in the United States have escaped the soaring prices at the gas pump, grocery stores, restaurants, etc…

Why the speedy rise in energy and transportation costs? Dow Chemical blames the cost of crude oil. Crude oil prices have doubled, even from this time last year, a 17 year high. To offset their soaring costs, Dow Chemical Co. announced a 20 percent price increase in their products, effective June 1, 2008.

Since Dow makes chemicals that go into everything from antifreeze and coolants, to toys, textiles, detergents and disposable diapers, it will come as no surprise that Americans are about to start paying substantially more to purchase basic staples and also, disposable diapers.

Dow is the biggest maker of polyacrylate, the absorbent chemical gel found inside every disposable diaper. When they raise the price of polyacrylate for their disposable diaper manufacturers, consumers will see the trickle down rise in pricing for disposable diapers.

They aren’t the only major chemical company affected either; just the first to announce a price increase-others are soon to follow.

How will this be reflected in the cost of diapering a baby in disposables?

A trip down the grocery aisle, plus a quick calculation of how many diapers a baby will go through in any given day, gives a rough expenditure of about 50 to 65 dollars a month spent on diapers–before the price increase. With Dow Chemical’s price increase of 20 percent on everything, YOURS and MY checkout receipt will reflect a rise of 10 to 18 dollars a month JUST IN DISPOSABLE DIAPERS.

For one reason or another disposable diaper prices have gone up considerably over the past few years. Day care providers who only 5 years ago paid about 22 cents a diaper for Pampers Cruisers^™ are now paying 34 cents for that same disposable diaper.

Beat the rising costs of disposable diapers - USE CLOTH DIAPERS instead!

Set aside any environmental argument you have heard regarding cloth diapers versus disposable diapers and simply focus on the FACTS - the actual COSTS. Following Dow’s announcement, cloth diapers have now become the most economical means to diaper your baby, period.

The Real Diaper Association has an excellent breakdown on the cost of disposable diapers in their Diaper Facts. According to the RDA, based on an average change of 8 diapers per day for a period of 2 years, a single baby will need about 6,000 diapers. Eight diapers a day might not seem like a lot, but 6,000 diapers certainly does-especially 6,000 disposable diapers with a trickle down price increase of about 20 percent.

Not only are disposable diapers expensive, but they are not a wise expense since a disposable diaper used just once is considered trash. Cloth diapers are REUSABLE; the initial investment pays you back, wash after wash, year after year, and through subsequent children.

Cloth Diapers cost less than one tenth the cost of disposables.

Based on estimations made by the RDA, the cost of using cloth diapers is about one tenth the cost of disposables. With the upcoming increased pricing, that will be less than one tenth. Now is the time for parents and caregivers to check out how far the cloth diaper industry has come in making modern cloth diapers that are easy to put on baby, easy to care for, much softer and more comfortable, and of course, considerably less expensive.

If you’ve been reading this blog long then you are well aware that we support cloth diapering. Not only that, we can’t imagine anyone wrapping their baby in anything BUT cloth diapers.

We’ve hit some hard topics here - about why someone would even consider cloth diapering, to how easy it is to use a cloth diaper, and we’ve even touched on different styles of cloth diapers and what works for which people.

So you just might be at the point where you are READY to try out some cloth diapers, and wow, you couldn’t pick a better time, because right now we have bought up the remaining stock of the Thirsties Pocket All In One Diaper ^V1 and we are selling ‘em cheap. HOW COOL IS THAT? A cheap price for a high quality diaper.

These aren’t seconds either - nope, these are THE Thirsties Pocket All In One Diaper ^V1. The designer took two of the cloth diapering community’s favorite diapers; the All In One Diaper and the Pocket Diaper and made it into one. Yep, that’s thinking.

Made up of three parts, with an option to stuff in a fourth, the Thirsties Pocket All In One Diaper ^V1 has an outer breathable, yet waterproof layer, an absorbent core center, and an inner lining of stay-dry microfleece that wicks moisture into the pocket diaper and away from baby’s sensitive skin.

Secures around baby with velcro sewn to wrap-around tabs, this pocket diaper is AS EASY TO PUT ON as a disposable. And let me tell you, with the way disposable prices are rising, you’ll be looking for alternatives soon if you haven’t already.

If you’re worried about those newborn blow-out leaks, check out the leg gussets on the Thirsties Pocket All In One Diaper ^V1! In all diapers (cloth or disposables, leg gussets are your final barrier against blow-outs, but the problem is that each baby is shaped differently. Disposable diapers are made of paper and aren’t adjustable enough, but cloth diapers can curve with your baby’s shape - especially the pliable leg gussets in Thirsties Pocket All In One Diaper ^V1 - they’ll seal in moisture and protect you and your baby’s clothing.

Thirsties Pocket All In One Diaper ^V1 are a sure fit for your wee little ones - wrapping baby in dry, rash free comfort from as small as 6 lbs.!

To top it all off, Thirsties Pocket All In One Diaper ^V1 are made right in the USA; they support fair trade! Not shipped here from China, not imported from Mexico. Nope, these cloth diapers are made by a group of skilled women working in the comforts of their own home.

6500 diapers X $0.31 per diaper=$2015.00

In order for us to calculate the cost of cloth diapers we need to answer a few questions.

1. How much do cloth diapers cost?

The cost of cloth diapering does vary depending on the diapering system to choose. There are a variety of cloth diapers to choose from that fits every lifestyle and budget. below we have listed a prefold package that will fit your baby from newborn to approximately 30 months.

36 infant prefold diapers 4X8X4, 24 Premium prefold diapers 4X8X4, 18 Bummis Super Whisper Wraps. (6 newborn, 4 small, 4 medium, 4 large)=$275.10

2. How much does it cost to wash cloth diapers?

We have listed an average cost of detergent, electricity, and water. Costs will vary depending on the detergent, wash regimen, and appliances. These figures have been based on washing one load of diapers every other day. A wash cycle consists of a cold prewash with baking soda, a hot wash with detergent, and a cold rinse.

Detergent & Baking Soda Cost

Detergent $0.07 cents per wash (remember you’re only using 1/4-1/2 of the recommended amount)
Baking Soda $0.06 cents per wash

Total detergent & baking soda cost=$0.13 cents per wash load

Water & Electricity Cost

The average washing machine uses 42 gallons of water per wash load. we have included both the cost of water and the cost of sewage treatment.

42 gallons of water X $0.0071 cents per gallon=$0.30 (rounded up) per wash cycle

The average washer uses 6.9 KWh per wash cycle. 6.9 KWh X $0.051 cents per KWh=$0.35 cents per wash cycle
The average dryer uses 3 KWh per dry cycle. 3 KWh X $0.051 cents per KWh=$0.15 cents per dry cycle

Total water & electricity cost=$0.80 cents per wash cycle

Now let’s add it all up!

30 months of washing diapers every other day=450 wash loads

450 wash loads X $0.13 cents per wash load for detergent & baking soda=$58.50
450 wash loads X $0.80 cents per wash load for water & electricity=$360.00

Initial cost of cloth diapers=$275.10 (based on basic prefolds and wraps)

Total for cloth diapers=$693.60

Wouldn’t you like to save more than $1000 dollars?

This comparison does not include the use of cloth wipes over disposable wipes. Cloth wipes can save another $150 or more!

Another thing to add:

Cloth diapers can be reused for subsequent children!