Homemade Baby Wipes

There are many places on the web where you can get recipes for homemade baby wipes. This, however, may be the only one which suggests making them with large shop tools. I think it adds an interesting element of excitement and danger to an otherwise mundane task.

Here are the materials you will need:

Roll of paper towels
Baby soap (1 tb)
Baby oil (1 tb)
Water (2/3 cup)
Plastic container (e.g. Rubbermaid 3 Qt.)

Tools that you will need:

Measuring cup
Tablespoon
Table saw

The first thing that must be done is cut the roll of paper towels in half. I've tried doing this with serrated knives or hand saws, but I've found that they either squash the roll or produce a very ragged, chewed-up end. The best solution I have tried is the table saw. A band saw would probably do as well, but I don't have one to test on. First, put on your safety glasses, then raise up the blade as high as it will go. Then, with the plastic wrapper still on the roll, cut the roll down the center. You will probably have to spin the roll to cut all the way through.

This should produce a very clean cut, albeit with a certain amount of fine white fuzz flying about. The next step is to remove the paper core. To do this, I use a long phillips head screwdriver to run around the perimeter of the core, separating away the innermost paper towel. Then I use the screwdriver to fold the core on itself twice, as shown on the right. It can then be extracted relatively easily.

Now all the hard work has been done. Take your half paper towel roll and put it in the plastic container. Then, fill the measuring cup up with slightly more than 2/3 cup of water. Add 1 tablespoon of baby soap, and 1 tablespoon of baby oil to the measuring cup and mix it together. Pour the mixture evenly over the roll, and put the cover on the container. After giving the water some time to seep through the paper, you can use the wipes by drawing out the innermost towel, as shown below.

Now, a box of 384 premade wipes costs around $10. A bulk package of 8 paper towel rolls can be had for as low $5, and makes somewhere around 900 wipes. So the former runs around 2.6 cents per wipe, while the latter is about 0.6 cents per wipe. Plus you have the intangibles, like a personal feeling of accomplishment and the fact that you get to use the table saw.