Essentials? Perhaps not...

First, an apology; I have been very slack with my blogging of late and for this I apologise. It’s a busy time of year, and I often find that by the time I get Little Lady into bed at night I’m ready for bed myself! Also, this will be my last blog entry for the year, as on Boxing Day we are headed off to Freshwater Creek for 2 weeks. So, I will not be blogging again until mid January. I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a prosperous New Year. Thank you for following my journey over the past three months.

What are the essentials on your weekly shopping list? Bread, milk, toilet paper, washing powder, soap, butter, eggs? Those items that we use daily and always seem to be running out of. Over the past three months I have talked about a number of these items, and I will be discussing more in coming entries. Because, after all, if these are items that we buy and use all the time, then these are areas of our lives where we’d like to save money right? Today I’d like to discuss that most essential of essentials for mothers with young children like myself; baby wipes.

Take a look inside the nappy bag/hand bag/ pram/ stroller/ car of any mother with children under 3 years old, and I guarantee you will find baby wipes. Essential not only for nappy changes, but for sticky fingers, spills, spews, snotty noses and little accidents, let’s hear it for the humble baby wipe, friend to mothers everywhere! But with so many uses, baby wipes run out quickly and need to be purchased on an almost weekly basis by most mothers.

Personally, I buy my wipes in bulk. Cheaper in the long run, and it means that I only have to purchase them once a month. But, in the last few months I have discovered even better ways to save money when it comes to baby wipes.

The humble face washer for example. Everybody has a stack of them in the bathroom cupboard right? I have discovered that a damp face washer does just as good, if not better job, as a baby wipe. Well “duh!” you say? Sure, but did you know that by putting a damp face washer in a zip lock bag and popping that into your nappy bag or handbag, you’ll save on baby wipes when you’re out and about? A face washer will clean dirty hands and face, plus any spills on the pram or stroller, quicker and more efficiently than baby wipes, and it can be rinsed and used again. When cleaning up Little Lady after a snack or meal when we are out, I will easily use 3-4 wipes at a time. That’s money being tossed in the bin.

So, that’s one saving. But the main purpose of a baby wipe is for cleaning dirty bottoms, so they’ll always be an essential purely for this reason right? Maybe not.  Again, the humble face washer comes to the rescue.

A frugal friend of mine was telling me some months ago, how she made her own cloth wipes using flannel, which she used when money was tight. Buy a length of flannel or soft cloth, run a seam around the border and they can be dampened, used in place of baby wipes, and washed. Not being overly fond of spending hours on the sewing machine, I bought a couple of packs of thin, soft face washers from Big W which I now use in place of wipes. One pack of 12 is $5. I keep them in an old icecream container filled with water so they stay wet and put them through the washing machine with my cloth nappies.

These two changes have meant the purchase of baby wipes is no longer a weekly essential. I now only use them for nappy changes when LL and I are out and about. Cloth wipes can still be used when you are out of the house though, simply by damping them down and popping them into a zip lock bag.

However, if you are a user of disposable nappies, or you simply don’t like the idea of more pooey laundry, I have another solution for you. I was sent a link to the following blog, http://thehomemadeblog.blogspot.com/, by another lovely friend of mine. It contains a recipe for making your own baby wipes. The solution for the wipes can also be put into a bottle and simply poured onto a cloth.

So, there you go! Another supermarket essential, that doesn’t have to be an essential anymore!

Merry Christmas!

Recipe for Homemade baby wipes:

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons Baby Shampoo

2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

2 Drops Tea Tree Oil (Or Vinegar)

2 Drop Essential Oil (Any Scent You’d Like)

2 Cups Water

Instructions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl.

2. Cut roll of paper towel in half. Pour 1/4 of the liquid in the container bottom then put the cut side of the paper towel roll into the container. Pour the remaining solution over top of the paper towel roll.

3. Let stand for ten minutes and then remove the cardboard center from the roll of wipes. Pull your homemade baby wipes from the center to start using.  

Cloth Vs Disposable

When Hubby and I first announced that we were expecting Little Lady, one of the first questions my Father-in-law asked was, will you use cloth nappies? Not the type of question that I was expecting since most people want to know things like; the due date, whether or not we were finding out the sex, our chosen hospital, what we were hoping for gender wise, how long I would continue working etc etc. However, it didn’t take much consideration before I answered his question with a resounding “No!”. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything worse than puddling around in my child’s poo and as far I was concerned cloth nappies were only going to add to the mountains of washing that invariably begin to pile up when a child enters the household. So, disposables it was.

However, after a few months of buying box after box of expensive disposables, as well as numerous bouts of nappy rash and constant leaking, I began to reconsider.

Cloth nappies have come a long way since I was a child. The “modern cloth nappy” is designed to be super absorbent, made with natural fibres, comes already assembled and fastened with either Velcro or press studs, can be simply tossed in the washing machine, no soaking required and is available in a range of cute colours and patterns. Gone are the days of nappy pins, plastic pants and folding, scrubbing and soaking. They are also, in my opinion, a great money saver.

I was horrified when I started to calculate how much of my monthly grocery budget was going on nappies, not to mention wipes. Of course it’s not strictly necessary to buy the most expensive disposables available. There are, after all a number of “budget friendly” brands out there. However, after trying nearly all of them, I came to the conclusion that, in the case of my daughter, the “budget friendly” options generally turned out to be simply, cheap. They leaked, ripped or disintegrated and were not suitable for more than 2 hours wear, and I felt that I was simply wasting my money because I was going through so many. So, when one of my friends started a business selling cloth nappies, I decided to try them out.

One modern cloth nappy will set you back on average, $25-$35. Most brands also offer packages where if you buy a certain amount at once, the price per nappy drops. If you are prepared to wash a load of nappies every day, then 12 should be enough. Little Lady has 18, which means that I can wash every second to third day. To buy 12 cloth nappies will cost you about $300.

 A box of Huggies disposables (the only brand that consistently works for Little Lady) will set you back about $30 if you buy them on special, which gives you about 100 nappies. This will last you 2-3 weeks depending on the age of your child and the number of nappies they go through each day. Going by these calculations, it will take you 10 boxes of disposable nappies to make up the cost of 12 cloth nappies. The average child will wear nappies, full time, until the age of about 2 ½. This works out to be about 70-80 boxes of disposable nappies, costing you 2-2.5 thousand dollars. For one child.

It’s a contentious issue, Disposable vs Cloth. Everyone has their own opinion on which is ‘better’ and which is cheaper. There is no denying that disposables are convenient and easy to use. And many mothers find that the cheaper disposables work just fine. Cloth nappies are cheaper to buy in the long run, can be reused for subsequent children, and are better for the environment, but they require more effort in terms of washing.

So, which is more frugal? Cloth nappies. The savings are not immediate, but they will build up over time, despite the cost of extra water for the washing. Even if I purchase a few extra cloth nappies in preparation for baby no. 2’s arrival next year, and purchase a box of disposables now and then for emergencies, holidays and long days out, I am still saving money in the long run.

I have to admit, I haven’t always been so dedicated with my cloth nappy use. There have been times when I simply couldn’t be bothered with the washing, and Little Lady would spend weeks in disposables. But, for the purposes of this experiment, I had to get serious again. I wash every second day in my energy efficient, water saving front loader washing machine, I hang my nappies on the line or clothes airer and they are dry the following day. I don’t use cloth nappies when we go away, but, if you are staying somewhere with a washing machine, there’s no reason why you can’t. When baby number two arrives I know I will be washing every day. But, I am happy to do this for the sake of saving money. Plus, in my opinion, there is nothing cuter than a cushy, cloth nappied bottom!

There are other ways to save money when it comes to nappy change time. I will be covering these in my next entry.