How to Make Your Own Baby Wipes

As you can imagine, with having four littles in my house, we go through A LOT of wipes. My kids (and husband) prefer to use a wipe over toilet paper when using the restroom as well. Wipe containers sit by every toilet in our house and I always have a pack in the car and diaper bag. Over the years, my husband and I have slowly started to try and transition cleaning and hygiene products in our house to “cleaner” or products with safer ingredients. This is definitely a process not a race to do. I am happy to say that over the years we have come a long way and I want to start with sharing our baby wipe recipe.

This recipe was originally modified from @theflakehomestead on Instagrams recipe. I tweaked her recipe some to add in some other products we like to use on our skin. If you don’t follow @theflakehomestead though, I highly recommend it! She has some awesome tips for pantry swaps and using cleaner ingredients.

Why Make Your Own Wipes?

Now over the years with four kids, we have tried several brands of baby wipes. Do you know what most if not all have in common? Sodium Benzoate. Sodium Benzoate is used in baby wipes as a preservative to increase shelf life and stop the growth of microbes. However, it can also be a skin irritant. Sodium Benzoate can cause inflammation, allergy symptoms such as itching and swelling. Most baby wipes also contain parabens and other endocrine disruptors as well as fragrances. The problem with endocrine disruptors is that they interfere with your regular hormone production. When you see the word fragrance listed under ingredients, it is like an umbrella of thousands of ingredients that could end up in the product and not pinpointed. Fragrance can contain several ingredients that are harmful to your child’s long-term health.

There are several benefits to making your own wipes, and honestly, I can’t think of any cons to making them. Let’s talk some benefits. Clean ingredients. We already talked about some of the unsafe ingredients in the commercial wipes. Well, when you make your own wipes, you know exactly what is going in them. There are a variety of wipe recipes, but my recipe has a total of 5, that’s right, 5 ingredients. It will also only take you about 5 minutes to make these homemade wipes. Lastly, making your own wipes will save you quite a bit of money. The only negative factor I can think of is that I didn’t start making these wipes years ago!! Seriously, they are so simple and I LOVE them. They leave my babes skin so soft and I know they are safe for her with no harsh ingredients.

So, let’s get you making some wipes! Seriously, 5 minutes is all you need! It is well worth your time to give these a try.

What You Will Need

• Baby Wipes. I can only speak to these and not paper towels. These are so soft and larger than a typical wipe. I’m a big fan. I use the 7×13 size.
• 2 cups FILTERED water. Tap water has tons of extra things in it that is not good for our skin. It is best to use filtered water for these.
• 1 Tablespoon coconut oil. I buy coconut oil in bulk at Costco but this is another good option.
• 2 teaspoons of Castile Soap
• 1/4 a teaspoon Vitamin E oil
• Optional: Essential Oils. I like to use 5-10 drops of Tea Tree or Lavender Oil. I use around 5 drops if I make two packs of wipes and up to 10 drops when making four packs of wipes.
• Wipe Dispenser
• Travel Wipe Dispenser

The amounts listed above are for making one package of wipes. You will have to double or triple the recipe if making more packs at a time. This is easily done. I typically make two to four packs at a time.

Start by warming the filtered water and coconut oil together until the coconut oil is melted. I do this in a small saucepan on the stove because we do not use a microwave. Once it’s melted, turn off heat and add in the soap, vitamin E oil, and essential oils if choosing to do so. Stir all of this together. In a shallow dish, I like to use a 9×13 baking dish, place your dry wipes. Slowly pour the mixture evenly over all of the wipes. Allow to set a few minutes until the wipes absorb the mixture. The wipes will be pretty wet. You can choose to leave them like this of give them a little squeeze to get some of the excess water out. Place sets of wipes into your wipe dispenser. We go through our wipes in about two-three weeks time and they keep wonderful.

And that’s it! Soft wipes with safe ingredients! I will never go back to commercial wipes again. If you try these wipes, let me know what you think!

This post contains affiliate links which means if you use my link to purchase I will earn a small commission at not cost to you! Thank you!