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What do I need to use cloth baby wipes?

Our cloth reusable baby wipes use just water and essential oil to gently cleanse your baby - easy, eco friendly and will save you money!

Using cloth baby wipes is really very simple.  To make it easy for you we recommend starting with our all-in-one cloth baby wipes kit as it contains everything you need to get started, whether you use cloth or disposable nappies.  Here's a bit more about what it contains:

Wipes

Wipes are the one item you DEFINITELY need.  Cheeky Wipes come in a range of fabrics to suit your needs.  We've got standard 'workhorse' cotton wipes, organic washable wipes, bamboo terry and bamboo plush to choose from.All of our wipes can be used on both bums and hands and faces (except microfibre, which we recommend is only used for hands & faces) but which fabric you use depends on your preference.  

More information about which wipes fabric is best for you here, but our white cotton terry wipes are our all-round gold standard wipe which we have been using for 10 years here at Cheeky Wipes HQ, you can't go wrong with them!  Alternatively, choose a wipes trial set to try 5 each of our best-selling wipes and see which work best for you.

How many wipes do I need?

If you have one baby, who poos an average of 5 times a day and you wash every other day, then 25 wipes should be enough for you and that is what comes with our kit.  When you get to weaning, you might want to add 25 extra wipes for hands & faces or an add-on weaning kit as weaning is a messy business.

For twins, or a toddler still in nappies and a newborn, then 50 wipes to start with.

These numbers do vary, depending on how often your baby poos, how many wipes you use to clean a poo (at Cheeky Wipes HQ we like to wipe and fold and can usually get away with just one or two wipes per poo, see our Cheeky Wipes Clean up video!)

Soaking Solution

We do recommend presoaking your wipes at Cheeky Wipes.  Running to get water every time you want to do a change is a bit of a faff and using a squirty bottle and a dry wipe just doesn't get your wipe wet enough to do a good job.  Believe us, we tried both!

You can of course just use plain old tap water to soak your wipes and in fact that is what the NICE clinical excellence guidelines recommend for the first 6 weeks after your baby is born.  However you can only soak as many wipes as you will use in a day (10 at a time) as the wipes can go musty.

That is why we recommend using our fresh baby wipes soaking solution to soak your clean wipes before use.  It is gentle and safe to use on your baby wipes and keeps them smelling fresher for longer.

It's also a good idea to use our mucky wipes oil to soak your mucky wipes.  It is anti-bacterial and keeps the mucky wipes fresh in their box until it's time to wash them.

Containers

If you're soaking your wipes, then containers are a must!  Our containers can hold up to 50 wet wipes at a time and come with a hinged lid which opens easily, perfect if you have a wriggly toddler.  They are also splashproof, but not waterproof (the hinged opening means it can never be completely waterproof) so we recommend keeping out of reach on youngsters.  Always a good idea to keep mucky wipes away from little ones anyway!

Our mucky wipes box also comes with integral hooks to keep your mesh wash bag open.  This makes it easy to remove and chuck into the washing machine, without touching the mucky wipes.

Wetbags for out and about

Washable wipes aren't just for using at home, but they are great for using out and about for all sorts of things which you may not necessarily first imagine.

Using your wipes out and about is easy but you need either separate fresh and mucky bags which come with the kit or one of our double wetbags

As you are heading out, just grab 4 or 5 damp wipes straight from your fresh wipes box.  Givem them a good squeeze out so that they are just damp and not dripping.  Then pop into your fresh bag.  Once you've used them, slide the used wipes into your mucky wipes bag which has a mesh bag that unzips to go straight into the washing machine.  Easy and you don't even have to touch the wipes!

As always, if that doesn't make sense or you need any further advice, drop us a line using the form on the 'contact us' page.

And if you'd like further reading, then this post about why reusable wipes are more natural and better for the environment might be of interest.