Cloth Baby Wipe Information

Originally posted to Livejournal on September 24, 2007.

Okay, this one is mostly for me, too. Thinking about cloth diapers leads to thinking about the dreaded baby wipe. Both ingenious and heinous in one little piece of...paper?? What are those things made of, anyway? When I started daycare, I found myself using wipes for hands, faces, bottoms, noses, the highchair tray. What a waste!! So, I bought some baby washcloths and use those for hands and faces after eating. I do still use paper towels on highchair trays, but I'm trying to find a way around that, too. Probably just a dishcloth will do. Anyway, wipes are expensive, wasteful, and a totally replaceable item. I want to record some prices and figures for my future use. Maybe someone else will someday surf by and feel compelled to change their wasteful ways. Or not. Whatever. :)
Okay, I've established I'm 'frugal'...buzzword for cheap and occasionally poor. So I'd buy wipes at Costco. Huggies wipes are sold at Costco for (according to www.costco.com) $19.99 for 832 wipes. That's actually not bad at all. I average 5 wipes per dirty diaper, so this case would last through 166 diapers. I actually doubt that, but we'll go with the numbers. Figure three dirty diapers per day, and that's 55 days. In 2 1/2 years of regular diaper changes, there are 913 days (how did I get 912.5?!). So, we'd need 17 cases of wipes. At $19.99, if there is no price change, that is $339.83. That is actually a ton more than I thought....
For cloth wipes, www.fuzzibunzworld.com has great wipes for a bit more money than I'd like to pay, 6 for $10.95. That comes to $1.82 each, which I guess isn't horrible. www.sweetcheeksdiapers.com has wipe in full and half sizes for either $2 or $1 each. At five wipes per diaper, keeping enough for a half-dozen dirty diapers sounds like a start. So, 30 wipes at least. No matter where you buy them, that's far less than $339.83...... www.wildflowerdiapers.com seems like a great source too, and has mama products. Their wipes are 12 for 9.99 for flannel ones, which is .83 each. Much better!! So, I'm going to figure 3 dozen to be on the safe side. That's 36 wipes for $29.97, not counting tax and shipping. There are various recipes for wipe solutions and Baby Bitz wipe solution is available at Fuzzi Bunz World, too. It's seriously starting to look like having a baby is going to be the cheapest thing we've done since we met!!