Natural Baby 101: Homemade Diaper Wipes

When we made the decision to cloth diaper, it also made sense to use cloth wipes. Why throw away the wipe when it's just as easy to throw a cloth wipe into the diaper pail? Here's our recipe for our cleaning solution, and a simple price comparison of cloth wipes to disposable wipes.

Bunny Munny's Cloth Wipes Solution
-4 parts aloe vera juice (not gel)
-4 parts witch hazel
-1 part calendula oil

The aloe vera juice for soothing, the witch hazel is for cleansing, and the calendula (or marigold) oil for it's healing and emollient properties. As you can see from the photo, we use a spritz bottle to spritz the solution on rather than soaking the wipes. I'd also like to give a cheer to Brooklyn Meadows whose article on cloth wipes helped motivate me to make my own solution.

As for the cost, here's the breakdown:
1.5 L of aloe vera juice = $15
1.5 L of witch hazel = $24
750 mL of calendula oil = $13

Based on our usage to date, I would approximate that a one year's supply of solution would cost $53 (with plenty of calendula oil to spare). The wipes, which I ordered from Quilter's Nappies (fabulous products, great customer service, and reasonable shipping costs to Canada!), cost in total approximately $50. So the total cost for the my solution for one year is $102, with further uses of the calendula oil and the cloth wipes still available.

Estimating 8 wipes used per day, the average baby would use approximately 3000 wipes per year. Estimating the price of wipes (based on the sale price at our local drug store this week), 300 wipes cost $12, making the annual cost for the disposable wipes solution $120.

So the cloth wipes solution wins for being more frugal, saving $18 in the first year, and over $60 in all subsequent years!

Even if it wasn't the more economical solution, I'm happy with it because I've got a diaper-rash-free baby and less baby waste! What do you think - does it make sense to use cloth diaper wipes? Please post your comments and your diaper wipes solution recipes.