DIY Disposable Cloth Diaper Liners using Viva Paper Towels

Hello fellow cloth-diapering friends!

This is a blog designed for those of us looking to be as environmentally friendly as possible yet still keep our pockets full of a little extra cash in today’s economy. I have four children under the age of 6 and two of them are still in diapers. I personally use Mother-ease’s Sandy’s fitted cloth diapers but this disposable liner system should work in any type of cloth diaper. I really want to stress, though, that these liners SHOULD NOT be flushed down any toilet! I have never tried it but I'm pretty sure they are not biodegradable and would more than likely cause a clog.

A few weeks ago I went to Montana to see my folks who live in the country and have a septic system. I’m used to using the Mother-ease Biodegradable Liners that I can flush down my toilets since I live in the city and am not using a septic tank. Well, since I had to bag all my ‘stinkies’ while at my parents’ house anyway, I figured I would try something that I had been curious about. Many of you have heard of or used Viva paper towels in the past. I grew up using them and loved them because they are so soft and durable! I had fallen out of the habit of purchasing these for household use simply because they tend to be a tad on the expensive side when you go through as many paper towels as we do! But I’d been curious how these would hold up as a diaper liner since they feel almost exactly the same as the liners I’ve been using. As a side note, these towels are made of 100% virgin fiber, which means the material comes directly from the tree and is not made from recycled paper pulp.

 

I started out just using one sheet (half-sheet if you’re using full-sized paper towels, but I purchased the sectionals). This worked but not as well as my liners, so the next diaper change I used a doubled sectional Viva paper towel.

 

 

This one worked like a charm! I noticed no difference between using this and my very costly diaper liners I’d been purchasing. I pay $36 for a box of 250 liners and with two kids still in diapers I go through that box very quickly, even when washing and reusing the non-poopy liners. So the cost was adding up and I was beginning to feel that cloth diapering wasn’t saving me much money. Yes, I could cave and go the diaper spraying route but that has never been my thing! At Walmart I purchased a 6-roll package of the Viva towels for just under $7. One roll of sectional towels makes 47 doubled disposable liners.

So for $7 I get a total of 282 liners… Wow! That’s way better than paying $36 for only 250! To make disposing of my stinky liners easier, I also get those little doggie-pooh bags and keep them near my diaper station. I simply stick my hand inside the bag and then pick out the liner with the bag covering my hand. Then turn it inside out, tie it up, voila! You have your liner perfectly packaged for easy disposal into the trash. This helps keep the stink down as well.

I used to wash my wet-only disposable liners and reuse them. I have run the towels mentioned here through the wash as well and they held up very well. However, the sectional towels will separate so it's harder to make a liner out of them. I just use them as a "pre-wipe" before using my cloth wipes on the really nasty stink diapers.

I hope this helps a few of you penny-savers out there, I know it’s definitely my new “go-to” system to cut down the few expenses involved in cloth diapering. Best of luck to all of you!

View images below to see what liners look like in a Mother-ease Sandy’s fitted cloth diaper!

 

 

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