I’ve always been a bit of the tree hugger type. When we found out we were expecting our little girl, I immediately started considering cloth diapering. I had a couple of friends who had successfully done it, and loved doing it, so I thought we’d give it a go too.
My cousin Amanda was one of these moms who had successfully cloth diapered her little ones (and still does). She gave me so much great advice about cloth diapers and all of the stuff that goes with it. One of these little bits of information she passed along was about cloth wipes. She’s used her own homemade cloth wipes for quite a while now and taught me how to do the same. I ordered my wipes from an online moms co-op (for about $40) and looked up some formulas for a baby wipe solution to use with them. I also indulged in a cloth wipes warmer (about $45). I figured I could justify it because of all of the money we’d save on wipes? Maybe we won’t save that much, but that wipes warmer sure is nice to have. If you don’t want to splurge on a wipes warmer, it certainly isn’t necessary.
This is the recipe for the baby wipe solution I use now. It’s all good stuff – just coconut oil, tea tree oil, and Dr. Bronner’s baby mild organic liquid soap. A note about Dr. Bronner’s – if you don’t already use it, it’s FANTASTIC stuff. It lasts a long time, and is very gentle. We love it.
Cloth wipes can be anything at all that is nice and soft for your baby’s bottom. You can sew up the edges of some flannel, buy some bamboo wipes like we did, use baby wash cloths – just use whatever you have that you like.
To use your cloth wipes with the solution, you can either do like we do – soak the wipes in the solution and store in the wipes warmer, or you can put the solution in a spray bottle and spray each wipe with the solution as you need it.
To make one batch of homemade baby wipes (this makes 12 8×10 wipes), you need the following:
3 1/2 cups boiling water
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 drop tea tree oil
1/2 Tbsp liquid baby soap
Just combine all of those ingredients. Let cool and use.
I soak my wipes in the solution, roll them up, then put them in my wipes warmer. The wipes warmer holds 12 wipes.
I’ve started combining the ingredients for multiple batches at once, except for the water, then forming the solution into cubes and storing the cubes in the refrigerator for when I need them. Here’s how I do that:
I combine 2 cups of coconut oil, 36 drops of tea tree oil, and 1 cup of soap. I melt this all together in a pot on the stove.
Once the ingredients are all combined, I let it cool slightly, then pour it into an 8×8 pan lined with plastic wrap. Then I put it in the fridge to solidify again.
Once the solution has solidified in the refrigerator, I take the solution out of the pan and cut it into 36 cubes. I just leave these in the refrigerator for when I make up a batch of wipes. It makes it a lot easier for me, and it much less time consuming than tracking down the ingredients every time I want to mix up a batch of wipes.
