Wiping out with wipies

We’ve been using homemade wipies–which were working out perfectly. UNTIL we moved into the hotel.

Not knowing how long we’d be here while we searched for a house, I opted to use disposable diapers and wipes only while we lived stranded in the hotel–away from the convenience of our poop/pee buckets and drying racks.

While pregnant, I ran across compostable wipies at a flea market when home visiting my mother. Hmmm, I thought. I bet these are normally really expensive. I’ll try a few. I picked up three packages. They cost $1.50 a piece. Why in the world I didn’t get them all is beyond me. I figured I’d run up and get the rest before I left. My mother picked up a few more for me and then the next time she went to the flea market—it had completely closed down! Oh, drat.

Thick and generously soapy, but not too soapy, they didn’t carry an artificial smell. They fit perfectly in the hand and for the poopiest diaper, I only needed to use one, two max. I tried to figure out how to wipe all the poop by just using one wipe. I got really good at it! We used the homemade wipies for everything else, but I treated these like gold. They were only for the poopy diapers.

When I looked up the compostable wipies on-line I was shocked to find they ran from $7 to $9 a package. Thrilled to find them on Amazon, where I had points to spend, I thought, again—great! These aren’t going to cost me hardly anything.

I put them in the wish list instead of the cart and went back the following week—only to find they were suddenly unavailable and Amazon didn’t know if or when they’d be available again. I checked all the other sites who sold them. All unavailable.

I found the company on Facebook, a bright, happy page that seemed to have no inkling  their wipes were unavailable anywhere but, maybe Whole Foods.(IF you had a Whole Foods in your area.) The page mentioned nothing about the shortage and made me think of a blissful ignoramus. I gushed about how wonderful the product was, how much I loved them and asked why they weren’t supplying them anymore and where were these phantom compostable diapers they claimed to make? Why were they only circulated in Europe? The Facebook site stated the diapers would make it to the U.S. by December 2012. This was March 2013.

The company wrote back, “The diapers will be here soon.” They haven’t figured out how to sell them here in a cost-effective manner yet. And the wipes? In order to keep the wipies cost efficient and keep them on the shelf, the company needed to produce more. Amazon would hopefully carry them by mid-March. In the meantime, did I want to try Whole Foods?

I check weekly on Amazon. Still no wipies. I check the other sites.

Unavailable.

Oh, but I’d been spoiled. I spent hours trying to find wipes that were compostable. I found biodegradable ones but few and most not cost efficient. Many claimed to be earth-friendly and chlorine free but nothing compostable. Why in the world do they make it so difficult to find anything not harmful for the environment as a substitute to cloth diapers when you’re in a pinch? Why is it such a pain in the arse attempting to do the right thing? To waste less? To use more environmentally friendly products? Why aren’t there more products available or offered? And the ones that try struggle to keep up with the demand. Offer and they will come, I say. Offer me a good product that doesn’t hurt the earth and I’ll buy it.

So, I chose wipes made of bamboo. They have a fake citrus smell and are shaped thinner than your hand so a bit more difficult to use than the compostable ones I fell in love with. At least they are made from a sustainable resource.

I did find some biodegradable wipes I like that are about the same size and fragrance free also sold through Amazon (so I can use those points). Yet, after all that run around, if I could find the compostable wipies again, I’d buy them in a heart beat. They were that good.

Ah, the joys of motherhood. 😀

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