Mon 20 Aug 2007
Environmental Experiment - Cloth Wipes
Posted by Liza under Current Affairs, The Real Live Boy
The project of cleaning and organizing (well, getting started on organizing) the garage made us think more about our impact on the environment and the vast quantity of crap that passes through our lives.
Even though we cloth diaper overnight, we still produce an absolute shitload (pun intended) of diapers for the trash every week. Plus wipes, plus just tons of stuff.
What else could we do, though, that we trust ourselves to stick with doing for more than 3 days? We tossed around a few ideas, and decided to try cloth wipes.
Cloth Wipe Experiment:
- Cut most boring flannel receiving blanket (blue, no designs) into dozens of wipe-sized pieces.
- Put piles of flannel wipes into reusable wipe dispenser.
- Look up cloth wipe recipes on the Internet.
- The first site wanted tea tree oil. Surely there is a more “average consumer” option.
- The second site had 4 choices, basic, aloe vera, antifungal, and essential oil.
- Clearly this essential oil thing is part of the subculture. Decide to mix the basic and antifungal recipes. (Yeah, I think we have thrush again.)
- Mix:
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
- almost 2 tablespoons baby wash
- top-off 2nd tablespoon baby wash with Mrs Meyers geranium scented laundry detergent containing essential oils
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 6 drops grapefruit seed extract (I think that’s what they really meant, not grape seed extract; according to breastfeeding guru Dr. Jack Newman, “Grapefruit seed extract (not grape seed extract, ACTIVE INGREDIENT MUST BE “CITRICIDAL”), when treating thrush.)
- 2 cups water
- Pour mix over flannel. Happily realize it is exactly the right amount.
I’ll report back on how the experiment goes.
August 20th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
At home, you don’t need any of that. We keep dry wipes upstairs and down, and wet one with ordinary water before we change her. We don’t even use wipes for diapers that are just pee, but it wouldn’t be much more hassle if we did. We also keep a bottle of water by the changing table (we use the peri bottle, actually) in case we are surprised by a poopy dipe.
When we are out, we do use disposables, but since we only use them for poop, we don’t use too many.
So that’s another option that is VERY easy to maintain!
August 21st, 2007 at 3:41 pm
You ae far too virtous for me! I always thought that cloth diapers were harmful too - all that water usage and pollution. Since my kids are grown now, I haven’t kept track of the info. I will tell you that I didn’t like the greasiness of wipes then (30+ years ago) because I felt that the kids were never reliably clean. I used wet cotton balls and traveled with sandwich bags full of pre-wet ones. At least they were biodegradable.
In other words, all the extra work you are doing is majorly impressive and a bit daunting.
YAY Liza and thanks for the nice post on my blog. I just wish I’d know you when you got married - I’d so love to have been there.
August 21st, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Hi Cindy — I wish we had known you then, too! (Did you know that our wedding was officiated by a defrocked Catholic priest and an unordained (is that the right word?) Reform rabbi?)
I think “old school” cloth diapers and modern ones are very different.
All of mine actually look a lot like cute well made disposables, only cloth. The interior is soft fleece, and there’s a pocket where you stuff the absorbent material of your choice (I use a combo of hemp/cotton and cotton microfiber.)
No one I know who uses them bleaches or does anything particularly elaborate with the laundry. I would say it adds about 6 long-cycle loads per month, which doesn’t seem like that large of an environmental impact to me.
August 21st, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Here’s an uninformed question for you, since the recipe calls for baby wash, do you need to wipe again with a wipe that only has water to remove the soap from the child’s skin?
August 22nd, 2007 at 8:42 am
I don’t think so, Rachael. I think most wipes have a little bit of soap or some other cleaning agent on them, and the ratio of soap/water isn’t very high.
That said, I probably wouldn’t use this mix on a newborn or a baby with sensitive skin.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
We did that when our kids were babies. What is really helpful is having a pump thermos full of warm/hot water next to the changing table. It’s like having a sink there. We only used water to clean them. When wipes were out of the dryer, I put them in a tissue box to hold. Good call on not using tea tree oil. There’s a question about tea tree oil and boys breast development.