Homemade Baby Wipes

By Carrien BlueI like to make stuff

I started making my own wipes many years ago. That way I know exactly what’s in them and don’t have to worry about what’s on my baby’s skin. (Or mine. There have been train trips where access to a baby wipe sponge bath has come in handy.) The wipes that I make are strong enough to clean up the mess but they will actually degrade in a land fill, unlike most commercial wipes I’ve encountered. Oh, and they’re way cheaper and only take a few minutes. Honest. You can do this in the time it takes for a diaper change.

You need:

A roll of Viva paper towels, cut in half. (A bread knife works for this. Yes, they need to be Viva in my opinion. Other paper towels fall apart because they aren’t strong enough.)

A container big enough to hold half a roll of paper towels. Yogurt or cottage cheese containers usually work.

1-2 tbsps glycerin hand soap. (I like the lavender scented one from Avalon botanicals, or I snag a bar or two of my MIL’s homemade olive oil soap and use a small chunk of that.)

1 tbsp Olive Oil (Olive oil has the same PH as skin and it’s really good for cleaning and moisturizing.)

1-2 cups water

Mix together oil, soap and 1 cup water in container. Pull the cardboard tube out of the center of the paper towels. Stick the paper towels in the container. Flip the roll over and stick them back in so both ends get wet and have a chance to soak up the liquid. Add just enough water to soak through the paper towels. I like to squeeze them a bit to distribute the water more evenly without getting them too soggy.

And then you are done, just pull them out from the center as needed and tear at the perforations. If you want to be really fancy you can cut a hole in the center of the container lid and pull them out through there. Just cut an x through the middle with scissors or a knife, and then snip the sharp points off the little triangles that appear so they don’t shred the wipes. To be even more fancy cut some self adhesive shelf paper to size and wrap it around the outside of the container to make it pretty. You can even put some on the lid.

all content © Carrien Blue

4 thoughts on “Homemade Baby Wipes”

  1. Thanks for the recipe, my kids are too old for needing baby wipes for diapers but I like to keep them in my car for sticky messes and other cleaning. This will actually be better than the standard wipes since the container will keep them from drying out while sitting in my car.

  2. I've made my own before, but I really wasn't pleased with how they worked out. First off, cutting the paper towels with a bread knife was waaay messier than I liked, it shredded the paper towels too much. They also kept getting moldy!!! (Within a week!) I used baby wash for the soap and added lavender oil and boiled water (cooled) to try to keep them from molding, it didn't help at all. How do you keep yours from getting moldy??

  3. Purplemoose-I haven't really noticed a problem with mold, maybe I go through them too fast. But then I got to thinking, I often put s little extra in my solution, a few drops of grapefruit seed extract to counter rashes, which are often caused by candida, or some colloidal silver or witch hazel. That may be why I don't get mold on my wipes as well.

    Maybe you could give that a try?

    Also, if you use an exacto knife to cut they don't shred at all. I just keep rotating the roll an I don't get that much shredding even with the bread knife.

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