Diaper Disposal

October 19, 2006 4:01 PM

Should I get a diaper pail?

If so, do you have a recommendation? I also read that an inexpensive solution is to buy a load of zip-loc bags and put each diaper in one... holds in smell and is quite clean and you don't need a specific diaper pail. Your opinions please.

posted by Frasermoo to health & fitness (27 comments total)

What kind of diapers are you using? Disposable or cloth?
posted by acoutu at 4:03 PM on October 19, 2006

Disposable.
posted by Frasermoo at 4:07 PM on October 19, 2006

We used a Diaper Genie for our first daughter. Every few days we'd have to empty it out. It requires refills of the sort of sausage skin plastic that it used to wrap up the diapers. The smell, while changing it, is indescribably horrible.

For our second daughter, we just tied up the poopy diapers in plastic grocery sacks. Self-contained, free, no smell escapage, no large chore of cleaning them out every few days. I highly recommend doing it this way.
posted by Addlepated at 4:14 PM on October 19, 2006

I don't think you need a diaper pail. You might want a cheap garbage can, which you can keep in the washroom. Most municipal laws state that you have to empty the contents into the toilet. If you then fold up the diaper and use the tabs to seal it, it won't be very smelly. You will probably find that you need to take the garbage out daily anyway. Also, if you have a breastfed baby, the smell is not very unpleasant for at least 6 weeks and generally until solid food is introduced (6 mo). Even then, I didn't find things too smelly and I used cloth diapers until my son was 15 months old. (And used a pail, since that's a different matter.) Now that he is a bit older, I use disposables and just toss them in the bathroom garbage can after shaking them out.
posted by acoutu at 4:16 PM on October 19, 2006

I grew to loathe our Diaper Genie and called it our household's "Nexus of Stink" as the sickly baby powder scent perma-embedded in the plastic was more offensive to me than baby poop and the combination of the two was utterly gag-worthy. Tossing that damn thing out was the highlight of the month for me, but disgustingly, the chemical scent penetrated the wool carpeting where it sat for so long and remained even after several shampooings (that is, until our newly adopted cat chose that exact same spot to pee *six years* after the Genie left the building. Now it smells of chemical baby powder, baby poo, cat piss and a very faint overlay of carpet cleaner. The carpet getting pulled up and tossed out so very soon).

The advantages of a Diaper Genie style diaper pail is that it's a one-handed operation: no fumbling about trying to get a bag open + hold a used diaper + trying to keep a hand on Junior while he gyrates about on the changing table.

I think if I were to use a diaper pail again, I'd buy a small metal trash can with a step-levered lid and line it with plastic bags from the supermarket. If you happen to own a dog you'll want a heavy lid on the diaper pail. Trust me on this one. (o_O)
posted by jamaro at 4:29 PM on October 19, 2006

We liked the Diaper Champ, which uses regular trashbags instead of fancy liners. It still got stinky though, and I would take it outside every so often and wash it out and let it dry in the sunshine.

Honestly, once the kids weren't going through ten or fifteen diapers a day it became easier to carry them straight out to the dumpster. And by that time, they're pretty much pooping like grown men anyway--you don't want that shit in your house for long, pun intended.
posted by padraigin at 4:29 PM on October 19, 2006

We've been using the Diaper Dekor for just under two years, and quite like it. It's relatively stylish, or at least unobtrusive. You insert a big donut of plastic at the top, and tie off the bottom. It can take a few weeks to fill, then you use the built-in cutting tool to slice the plastic above the nasty stuff, and tie off the bottom again. The refills last a good long time, and it does fine at holding in the smell.

Frankly, I can't imagine wrangling a soggy diaper into a plastic baggie many times a day.
posted by schoolgirl report at 4:33 PM on October 19, 2006

I second the diaper champ. It's easy to use one-handed (a plus when there's a squirming, half-naked baby that you're keeping from wiggling off the changing table with the other hand) and it keeps the smells contained. (We had a diaper champ and a diaper genie (loans from friends with babies) and the diaper genie was a pain. Go for something where replacing the liner is easy and non-proprietary.)

You certainly could just use a sealable trash can with a trash bag, but it could be tricky to open and close while also dealing with the baby; I'm not sure the step-on kind would have a good enough seal to stop the smell. And trust me, you don't want loose poopy diapers floating around your changing area. The ziploc/individual bag solution sounds like it would be a huge hassle long-term (ok for travel and such though).
posted by leahwrenn at 5:01 PM on October 19, 2006

wait. i know baby poop is gross, etc. but we always just shook/scraped it into the toilet with toilet paper and flushed the majority of the poop away.

never used a diaper pail and never had a huge problem with stank as most of the stuff was gone.
posted by joeblough at 5:28 PM on October 19, 2006

Diaper Dekor all the way. The smell is trapped very well, the bags are lightly scented (I am scent-averse but it is really mild), and I didn't have to get a new set of (3) bags until my son was about 4 months old. I have used it for newborn breastfed to 15mo solid-food-eater, and with disposables and cloth diapers (i.e., just the poop goes in the pail). Totally pleased.
posted by cocoagirl at 5:28 PM on October 19, 2006

I started with a Diaper Genie, but I found it to be cumbersome and annoying (and stinky). So I started using grocery sacks - put the dirty diaper in the sack and tied it off, then took it out every day or two.

I enjoyed having a separate little trash can near the changing table, since the diapers needed to be taken out more often than the other trash.
posted by eleyna at 5:44 PM on October 19, 2006

Diaper Dekor is the best - we have twins and never smell a thing!
posted by OhPuhLeez at 5:55 PM on October 19, 2006

4th the Diaper Dekor
posted by clh at 6:19 PM on October 19, 2006

No. They're dumb, if you're using disposables. Just use a trash can, and take particularly offensive garbage out as needed.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:19 PM on October 19, 2006

Another vote for the Dekor, we have the Dekor Plus and it holds more. I just think that using all those baggies will be very wasteful. And when you get to larger sizes you'll need quart size bags. Seems like a lot of trouble.
posted by saffry at 6:55 PM on October 19, 2006

I had a diaper pail, and only used it for a few months, if that. They are a waste of money in my opinion, and difficult to operate, believe it or not. Mine was always breaking. I didn't have the Diaper Dekor though. I had a Diaper Genie. I haven't heard of Diaper Dekor, sounds like people like it.

If you plan on nursing, breastfed diapers aren't going to stink, so no worries there. You can chuck them in with your regular garbage.
As the baby progresses to solid food, if you choose plastic at the grocery store, wrap them in those bags or newspaper bags. Ziplocs could be pricey and wasteful.
posted by LoriFLA at 7:17 PM on October 19, 2006

I never had a problem with the Diaper Genie ... I suspect people that report problems with it aren't really grokking the concept.
posted by frogan at 7:43 PM on October 19, 2006

gDiapers

Everyone looked at me as though I were crazy when I was adament! that no one should give me a diaper genie type thing, but I'm glad I did it.

Our municiipality requires us to use special (blue, recyclable or something, stupidly expensive) trash bags for all our non-recyclable trash.

Then I bought a step-on style stainless steel trash can (one without a plastic liner) from a local medical supply store. This works like a charm. It seals well, doesn't abosorb odors, and we can line it with our regular city-mandated trash bags. We probably change the bag every 3-4 days, but our baby is only a once-a-day pooper, and has been right from the start.

I hate to say it, but how much your baby poops will play a big part in this decision. Some babies poo every time you feed them (one extreme) and some go only once a day or once every couple of days. I tend to think that if I had gotten a baby on the other end of the scale, I'd be a lot less blase than I am about baby waste disposal.

Congrats, by the way!!
posted by anastasiav at 8:22 PM on October 19, 2006

For our first child, we used the Diaper Genie the whole time she was in diapers. I thought we needed to use some fancy diaper disposal unit since they were everywhere and everyone had one. It was a pain but I had more (less?) on my mind.

For our second child, we are just using the trash can under the kitchen sink and I am much more satisfied. It gets emptied when it gets full (every 3-4 days and it uses the normal kitchen garbage bags) and there's no stink. We roll up each diaper tightly with the elastic band and sticky tabs. A++++ recommended.

A ziploc bag for each diaper could get pretty pricey. Those disposable diapers are already so expensive as it is! It would seem to me that it's not much payoff for the expense of all those ziplocs.
posted by tdogboy at 8:24 PM on October 19, 2006

I had three in diapers at the same time at one point. The diaper Genie was ok for one as a newbie. It was a waste of time after we realized how much waste was being produced and the smell lingering in the pail. Emptying it was brutal. Waste of money. Just use a grocery bag or a ziploc as has been mentioned previously. Half the time the sausage came undone anyway.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:42 PM on October 19, 2006

Those plastic grocery bags have been awesome. Gets thrown out right away, no waiting. No smell.
posted by jeanmari at 9:47 PM on October 19, 2006

In the UK you can buy nappy sacks which are just small lightly scented bags that you wrap the diaper up in and throw away. You can probably get them in the US as well.

We had a Diaper Genie for our first child and I hated emptying it.
posted by gfrobe at 12:52 AM on October 20, 2006

First kid: Diaper Genie. (By kid two, that thing was nasty.)

Second kid: Ziploc bags from the dollar store and/or plastic grocery bags.

That was much less of a pain than the Genie.
posted by mothershock at 6:33 AM on October 20, 2006

And the Diaper Genie refills get expensive.

When we had all three in diapers at the same time (two are potty trained now), we would throw the pee diapers in the normal trash and put the poop ones on our back patio. When I got home from work, I would collect up the diapers and take them to the trash. It was unsightly but there usually wasn't more than three or four and the house smelled perfectly fine. And the backyard didn't reek because it was, umm, well-ventilated.
posted by bbrown at 6:45 AM on October 20, 2006

We tried the diaper genie and hated it. For years, we've been using an office sized trashcan with a closing lid. We line it with Wal-mart bags and take them out at least every other day, often daily. Cheap, efficient, and easy.

Oh! and since plastic can gather stink and release it later I found that leaving the can outside overnight eliminates that. I'd figured that a day in the hot sun would work better, but it doesn't.
posted by kc0dxh at 8:08 AM on October 20, 2006

Thanks for the opinions. Baby hasn't arrived yet, just doing my homework.
posted by Frasermoo at 8:44 AM on October 20, 2006

Frasermoo, it looks like Toronto has a green bag program for disposable diapers. So, just shake them into the toilet, and throw them into the green bag for some sort of special composting program.
posted by acoutu at 3:10 PM on October 20, 2006