5/19/12

Homemade Cloth Baby Wipes

All right, apparently it's been a full month since my last post, and boy, did that month fly by! Here's the reason I've been so absent:




His name is Jack Oliver and he is a month old. It's been an exciting month and I'm finally settling into a new normal, so let's get back to craftin'!

We have already purchased a Costco-sized box of wet wipes and I'm realizing how we're fast becoming a wasteful family. We are doing a combo of cloth diapers and disposables, so I thought I'd give cloth wipes a try.

Today was the first big garage sale day and for once I'm actually stoked when all a garage sale has is baby stuff. I found some nice clothes for Jack but I snagged several flannel receiving blankets to craft out with.




Homemade wipes are super easy. Since I'm washing cloth diapers anyway, I figured a few scraps of flannel added to the wash wouldn't make a big difference.

Here's what you need to make 32 or so wipes:

2-3 flannel receiving blankets, or a yard of flannel fabric
An empty wet wipes box (sometimes thrift stores have these)
Sewing machine with zig zag stitch

Photo by Amber Telling


Cut your blankets into 7-inch squares. No need to be precise. You'll end up with about 16 squares per blanket.

Using a wide zig-zag (or a serger machine is even better!) sew a border around any unfinished edges. I just incorporated the finished edges into each square.

Fill up your empty wet wipes box. If you have time (and I doubt I'll find myself doing this often) overlap each wipe so that when you pull out a wipe, then next one will come out.

I plan on wetting each wipe as I use it with a spray bottle of water with a small amount of baby oil and baby soap in it. I suppose you could prewet the wipes by pouring some water into the wet wipes box after it's filled. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm sure it's fine.

Once a wipe is used, place it in your designated dirty cloth diapers receptacle. When it's time to wash the wipes and diapers, here's what I do (this is after hours of online research on washing cloth diapers using homemade detergent). I use a combination of equal parts Borax, Arm & Hammer Soda Wash (found next to Borax in grocery store) and Oxy Clean. I have a front loading HE machine and I run it through two cycles. The first cycle I run on cold and add one tablespoon of detergent. The next load I select an extra rinse cycle, add another tablespoon of detergent and run the load on hot.

Either line dry or dry on hot for more than an hour.


4 comments:

  1. I am thinking that this would be a great alternative to tissues when the next flu season starts. We make my own laundry detergent, too. :)

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  2. how do you wash them? do you rinse them after each use before washing, how do you keep them before washing?

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    Replies
    1. Hello, sorry for the delayed reply. We collected the wipes in a washable diaper bag and then ran them through the wash with our cloth diapers back in the day. I used a homemade detergent of equal parts Borax powder, Arm & Hammer Soda Wash (not baking soda) and OxyClean. Just a tablespoon per load. Washed them on cold and then did another rinse. They've kept so well that we're still using them after three years!
      -Natasha

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