For awhile now I've been thinking about giving homemade baby wipes a try, and this week I finally got around to it. :) It was very simple, and they work well! I used them on my toddler and she told me they smell really good, and that they don't hurt like the other (store-bought) wipes...I guess whatever is in regular wipes stings a little bit. :(
To make your own baby wipes you will need a roll of good quality paper towels (I used Bounty, but I've heard that Viva works well too), baby wash (I used Parent's Choice with Lavender), baby oil (I used Johnson's), baby lotion (this is optional. I used Johnson's Bedtime Lotion....it smells amazing!!), water, and a container with a good seal.
**UPDATE**
Since I've learned more about the bad health effects petroleum products can have on your health, and THEN learned that baby oil is a petroleum product, I've switched from using baby oil to sweet almond oil in my wipes. :)
First, cut the roll of paper towels in half using a sharp knife. Apparently mine wasn't quite sharp enough as it didn't make a very pretty cut....oh well. :) It works.
Put 2 cups of warm water in your container, then add 2 tablespoons of baby oil, 2.5 tablespoons of baby wash, and 1.5 tablespoons of baby lotion. Put the lid on and shake to stir.
(I think I wound up with a bit too much liquid and it's a little sudsier than I like, so I think I'll play around with the amounts next time I make a batch, but for now, this is the recipe I came up with after reading several online.)
Put one of the halves of the paper towel roll into the container and seal the lid. After the bottom half was wet I turned it upside down to moisten the other half.
Once your roll is wet through, remove the lid and gently pull out the cardboard tube from the center of the roll. Pull up the first wipe from the inside of the roll, and you're done! :)
I've been buying Huggies wipes on Amazon.com using the Amazon Mom program (20% discount plus free shipping) and have been very happy with the price I was paying...about $0.03 per wipe. However, these homemade wipes are SOOOO much cheaper!! I bought a 6 pack of Bounty paper towel rolls for about $5.97 at Walmart...6 rolls should make about 1,700 wipes, so that works out to be about $0.003 per wipe (plus the cost of the wash, lotion, and oil, but you use so little of those that I don't think it would add much to the price. Everything I used was stuff I already had on hand so I'm not exactly sure what the prices would be). Wow! That's a pretty big difference when you use as many wipes as we do! Plus the combination of ingredients I used made some pretty awesome smelling wipes....yay! :)
