How to make your own baby wipes at home

While it may never have occurred to you to worry about how healthy your stash of baby wipes is for your kid, in actuality, some brands of wipes contain a lot of chemicals, with some even being deemed unsafe.

The website Skin Deep Cosmetics Database shares information about different brands of wipes, listing all of the ingredients used, and giving each brand something it refers to as a hazard rating. The hazard rating is a scale from 1 to 10, with a score of 10 meaning that the product reviewed might not be the best for your health. Disturbingly, some big-name brands of wipes were listed at a hazard level of 7, with the explanation that the ingredients used in the wipes had been linked to cancer, allergies, developmental problems and even organ system toxicity.

I don’t know about you, but that was enough to make me want to seek out alternative options. And while there are baby wipes on the market that don’t include a long list of unfamiliar chemicals, some of them can be a bit pricey. So what’s a momma to do?

It turns out you can make your own baby wipes! There are plenty of recipes online, and most parents who’ve made the switch to homemade say they’re saving money, too. One mom who shared her recipe for DIY baby wipes on Wellness Mama said that when she buys the ingredients in bulk for her homemade wipes, they end up costing less than one cent each. Over the course of a year, she saves her family with two young children almost $200 a year.

The ingredients in her recipe include aloe vera, witch hazel and Liquid Castille Soap, as well as several different types of oils. Mixed with water, she adds the ingredients in a container that can hold half a roll of sturdy paper towels.

You can also store homemade wipes in a store bought container. The blogger behind CouponCloset does just that with her simple recipe using only coconut oil and baby wash mixed with water.

Most recipes I’ve found use heavy-duty paper towels, but you can also make wipes using reusable cloths. This blogger shares a tutorial on how she makes her own cloth wipes using cut-up squares of fleece. How creative!

Have you ever made your own baby wipes? I’m hooked on making my own DIY disinfecting wipes, but making homemade baby wipes also sounds like a great—and money-saving—solution.