How to Make Cloth Baby Wipes and Foaming Hand Soap at the Same Time

Whether you use disposable diapers or cloth diapers, making and using your own cloth baby wipes is really easy, economical, and healthier for your baby's bottom (or nose, hands, face, high chair, mommy's hands, etc.... all the many things that need to be wiped with little ones around).  With 3 kids, I was going through packages of disposable wipes too quickly.  Using cloth wipes helped cut down that expense and gave us a wipe without all the nasty chemicals.  Just throw them in the hamper with the soiled cloth diaper & wash them together.  Even if you use disposable diapers, you could have a small bag at your diaper changing station to place the soiled cloth wipes in.  Then just wash them in hot water with a small amount (about 1/2 Tbsp for a medium load) of your regular laundry soap.


Making the Wipes:
Cutting up old T-shirts into wipe-sized squares can give you tons of wipes!  Using the packaged cheap baby bath wash cloths you find in department stores is an easy and effective option.  They have a smooth side, the textured terry side, and are the perfect size to fit into wipe containers.  I also love Birdseye cloth wipes.  They're thin enough to wash out very well, dry quickly, and have just the perfect texture for wiping messes (If a wipe is too smooth, like fleece, it just glides over the mess instead of picking it up).  I've bought some Birdseye wipes from Green Mountain Diapers and they are my favorite quality wipes.  If you are crafty at the sewing machine, wipes are easily made from any scraps of fabric sewn into approximately 8"x8" squares.


Folding the Wipes:
I like to fold my wipes in an interlocking style, just like disposable wipes, and place them inside an old empty wipe container.  They pop out of the box, easy to grab.

1. Lay out 2 wipes, overlapping halfway.

2. Fold the bottom wipe over the top one, into a rectangle shape.

3. The top one is folded over the edge of the other open wipe, into a rectangle.

4.  Lay the next wipe over folded wipe, lining up edges.

5.  Continue folding each wipe over the first until you get a full stack.

6.  Place into the empty wipes box.  Ready to use!

Wipe Solution Methods:
Most of the time, I like to pour my wipe solution over the wipes in the container so that they're ready to go.  Sometimes, however, I just keep the wipes dry in the container and use a squirt bottle with solution to wet each wipe before use.  This method just takes an extra step at each diaper change.  The dry method with a squirt bottle is best for diaper bags.  If wet wipes aren't used for a while, they will get funky.


Wipe Solution Recipe (and foaming hand soap!):

Ingredients for Cloth Wipe Solution and Foaming Hand Soap

The recipe I prefer for my wipe solution is as follows-
2 cups of filtered, clean water.
1 Tbsp. of Dr. Bonner's Pure-Castile Liquid Soap, in "Unscented Baby Mild"
1 Tbsp. of Glycerin
Several drops Essential Oil- Tea Tree or Lavender (Tea tree oil has natural antibacterial properties and smells great, so it's my regular choice.  Lavender is calming and relaxing, making it perfect for baby.)

I swish all these ingredients together in the cup of water, then pour it over the folded stack of wipes until they seem pretty damp.  Give the stack a little squeeze to remove excess water, and put them in the  empty wipe box.  Done!  Then I squeeze an extra small shot (about 1/2 Tbsp) of glycerin into the remaining solution and pour it into my foaming hand soap container & BAM!  Foaming Hand Soap, too!

Homemade Foaming Hand Soap