How To Keep Washable Cloth Wipes Fresh During Warm Weather

Updating this blog post during a spell of lovely warm weather (June 2023).

Summer seems to have taken a while to arrive this year, but it has been glorious for the last 10 days or so. Everyone is taking the opportunity to enjoy some well earned sunshine, BBQ's in the garden and days out.

When the weather does warm up, we often find we get messages from confused customers. They have been using their reusable wipes kit absolutely fine, but suddenly their wipes have started smelling musty or stinky after a day or so.

In warm or hot weather it's often a good idea to tweak your Cheeky Wipes soaking routine a little bit. This will help prevent your cloth wipes going 'off' too quickly and starting to smell stale and musty.

Here's our hints and tips on How To Keep Washable Cloth Wipes Fresh During Warm Weather:

1. Keep your reusable wipes out of direct sunlight
2. Only soak as many 'fresh' wipes as you'll use in a day
3. Increase the volume of water / fresh wipes soaking solution slightly
4. Switch to using water and wet and wipe spray
5. Keep your washable wipes in the fridge for an instant cool down
6. Dry your cloth wipes immediately after washing

1. Keep your reusable wipes out of direct sunlight

The first thing we always advise is to make sure your cloth wipes aren't left in direct sunlight. I left mine in the garden for a few hours in the garden at one point and all my fresh wipes needed to be washed that night.

I should know better!

In addition, there are a few ways that you can tweak your soaking / washing routine - see which one works best for you.

2 Only soak as many 'fresh' wipes as you'll use in a day 

This is my 'go-to' for making life easy when it's warm.

Work out roughly how any wipes you'll use in a day. To give you some idea, when I had one baby in nappies, plus 3 others who couldn't eat breakfast without getting weetabix in their eyebrows it would be around 20 a day. One baby in nappies would be maybe 10 or 12 a day.

Just soak that many each morning in the water and lavender / chamomile solution.

Dry any remaining wipes and then soak them the next day. You can still soak them all together in the mucky tub and wash every other day but it's important to dry them in between (preferably out on the line as sunlight is great at bleaching your wipes).

3 Increase the volume of water / fresh wipes soaking solution slightly 

Another tip is to make your wipes slightly wetter that usual and add a few more drops of fresh wipes oil (5 - 6). That should help keep your wipes fresh for a couple of days in total. That's because you'll have a higher concentration of the oil to water which will again keep your wipes fresher for longer.

4 Switch to using water and wet and wipe spray

Another way to keep your wipes fresh in this hot weather is to switch to wetting as you go, by running under the tap and then giving a spritz of wet and wipe spray. If you're out and about, you can use a bottle of water to wet your wipes on the go.

5 Keep your cloth wipes in the fridge

This is SUCH a brilliant way to cool everyone down! When it's properly hot, just move your wipes into the fridge. They'll stay lovely and cool and are perfect when you or your little ones have overheated in the sun.

Stick one under your arms or behind your knees for an instant refresh!

6 Dry your washable wipes immediately after washing 

You can get away with resoaking your wipes straight from the washing machine in winter now and again.

But keeping your wipes constantly wet is a sure fire way to get stinky wipes AND rot your wipes through. Bamboo wipes are particularly bad for this, they will literally rot to shreds if kept constantly wet!

However, if you're lazy like me, you don't even need to line dry in this warm weather.

I just chuck mine on the table in the garden (spread out) and they dry during the day. Slummy Mummy? Possibly, but I like to think of it as working smarter, not harder!

If you've left your wipes too long and they're musty already, we've got another cracking blog post dedicated to 'Help my Washable Wipes Smell Musty'.

And if this was of interest to you, you might also enjoy these posts:

• What's the best size for washable wipes
• What to do about nappy rash

About the author: Cheeky Wipes were created in 2008 by Helen Rankin a Mum of 4, who was on a mission to prove to parents that they could ditch disposable wipes and save money and the planet by switching to reusable wipes. Since then the company have introduced a range of 'Simple Reusables' including period pants and cloth sanitary pads which lead to them being awarded the Queens Award for Enterprise in sustainable development in 2021. The Cheeky Customer Services Team all use the products themselves and love nothing more than to chat pee, poo and periods!