TTO.... The new bane on my existence! For those of you that may not be familiar with the abbreviation of TTO it stands for Tea Tree Oil. It is a natural anitfungal and it supposed to be great for cloth diapers. In fact, a lot of cloth wipe solution recipes call for it. So I thought what the heck, I must do this since it is natural and therefor must be better for us... Boy, oh boy, was I wrong.
Tea Tree Oil is something that can be a skin irritant in higher dosages. That being said, I figured a few drops wouldn't cause an issue. So I set out on Friday night to make my cloth wipes using a shampoo with TTO in it. Well, let me back up... I live in a very rural area. So unless I find stuff online, I have one apothecary shop that does wonders to help me on my journey to eliminating chemicals. They don't carry natural oils (yet) but they happened to have this baby shampoo that was an organic lice treatment that had TTO in it. Since my recipe called for TTO and baby shampoo of my choice, I figured it was killing two birds with one stone. (And I still think it would!) Moving on....
I followed the recipe and quickly realized that whoever made up the recipe must have been making hundreds of wipes at a time. It made a ridiculous amount of solution. I went to make my first wipe and it came out very, very, very sudsy. So I diluted the solution, rinsed the wipe all the way out and tried again. Still too many suds... So I add even MORE water and rinse the wipe and try again. Finally, I got the solution to something manageable and I get my wipes in line to dunk and wring... I didn't think too much about it but the third time I put my hands in the water, all I felt was fire. I look down at my hand and they are bright pink and my right hand was starting to swell a bit. I immediately recognize an allergic reaction (hey, at least it was me and not the kids, right??). So I got to find out that I am one of the lucky few that TTO is a major irritant for. I guess I should have figured since I am allergic to the pollen and sap from most trees, but I didn't think things through. I dumped the TTO solution and moved on....
I ended up making a solution that is very basic. 1/4 of baby soap, 1/4 of baby oil, and the recipe called for 2 cups of water. I ended up adding another 6 cups of water to get the solution diluted enough that it worked for wipes. It has worked great so far and no skin irritation. My husband likes being able to wrap the wipes up in the diapers like we did with disposables and toss it in our pail. Cloth diapering is something that I can't believe we didn't start sooner... and now I am wondering why I ever thought continuing to buy wipes was a great idea.
I am using the super cheapy washcloths from Dollar General. There were 12 in a pack and I believe each pack was about $3-4. I bought the place out of what they had (3 packs) and then I also used my Gerber baby wash clothes that never seemed to get used and floated around our linen closet. I have a baby wipe container that I had planned on using for the wipes, but I have found that a ziplock back seems to work just slightly better and it is less interesting to my son.
All in all, our cloth conversion has been a great decision for our family. I never thought I would have time to do it or the means, but now that I have there is no turning back. Modern cloth diapering is not at all what you would expect. It is just as simple as you want to make it on yourself and the reduced cost makes it an easy decision for large families.
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