What do you use for a diaper pail?

[Bliss]

Hello! First baby on the way... We're going the disposable diaper route and am wondering if a regular trash can with lid and using dog poop bags for individual diapers would be sufficient.

I'm researching all the fancy options out there and don't want to get hooked into a diaper disposal system that requires you to make ongoing purchases for bag rolls, deodorants, etc.. Seems expensive and silly.

Am I missing something?

[MrsDinero]

We only use disposable diapers at night (cloth during the day), but we just toss them in the kitchen garbage can in the morning. Changing the diapers at night, we just roll them really tight and toss them in the morning.

Using dog poop bags for each diaper is overkill. 

ETA:  We use just a plain trash can to hold our cloth diapers until washing.  We rinse poopy cloth diapers immediately.

[Spork]

Okay, we don't have kids.  Maybe I am way out of my comfort zone here.  But we have cats.  Right now there are 6 of them (2 permanent, 3 fosters and one sad case rescue.)  This is a lot of stinky pee and poop.  We have 2 litter boxes scooped twice a day.

We keep a big plastic bucket that has a tightly sealed lid. (It's actually a bucket litter comes in.)  We keep it in the furthest corner of the garage, lined with a trash bag.  When we scoop, it goes into a brown paper bag (because: cheap and has no holes) and we walk it out to the bucket and plop it in.  Open -- PUT IT IN THERE REALLY FAST -- close.  And once a week it goes into the garbage can with the rest.

[cats]

We are doing cloth also, but we've been using a SimpleHuman trash can to store the dirty diapers between washes and have been happy with it.  We chuck some baking soda in every few diaper changes to keep the odor under control.   The SH has a nice close fitting lid.  We already had it for our kitchen, then found a knockoff version on the street, so the knockoff became our kitchen trash and the SH became diaper trash. Some neighbors gave us a diaper genie and to be honest I found it to be a HUGE pain as the opening was not really large enough to accommodate the diaper easily, so I was always getting wet diaper up past my wrist (and yes, I washed my hands afterwards, but it still grossed me out, and was just more of a pain).  That might be less of an issue with disposables as they are smaller.  Our daycare also uses a regular trash can (with a heavy and close fitting lid) for their disposable diapers...they've been in business 20+ years and have presumably dealt with a lot of diapers so if they have not found a fancy diaper pail with special deodorizing products to be a necessity...

When the babies are just drinking breastmilk/formula, their poop really does not smell much, so as long as you are taking the diapers out to your trash pickup bin regularly you should be fine.  The poop does seem to smell more post-solids but it's still not (IMHO) a very strong smell (though with cloth, we are flushing the vast majority of the poop down the toilet so it isn't sitting in the bin.  I guess you could try that with disposables also if you didn't want to empty the diaper trash as often?).  So I would say you are fine to at least initially try a regular trash can.  You can always buy a diaper-specific product later if the trash can option is not working out!

[LadyStache in Baja]

We use grocery bags on a shelf.  No pail, just a bag on a shelf.  We try to take it out to the trash often.  We have used pails in the past.  I find this to be easier and less gross.

[NorCal]

We used a regular garbage can with a locking lid.  Locking becomes important when the kids become mobile.  We didn't feel the need to individually bag diapers until we started on solid food.  Odors aren't bad until then.

[screwit]

We just throw it into the kitchen rubbish and that goes out to the bin every second day unless there's a real stinker in there - then it goes out pretty fast ;)

[nvmama]

I throw the urine diapers in our kutchen trash as is.  This gets emptied every handful of days.  With diapers with poop in them, I just put in a plastic shopping bag that I tie shut.  Then I walk it outside to the trash barrel.  I normally use reusable bags when shopping, but grab a few plastic bags when shopping or I'll not my reusable bags a few times to get the plastic ones.  It's easy and I've done it this way for 3 kids.

[okits]

Wastebasket with a plastic grocery store bag lining it.  Solid poop gets flushed.  We only individually bag a diaper if it's got pasty (toddler) poo that sticks to the inside.  Emptied every 1-1.5 days.  Cost of this system: $0 (we already owned the wastebasket). 

[steviesterno]

we use the fancy pants pails. with refills.....

In the interest of keeping it MMM we bought them used and buy the refills on sale, but having a kid is a lot. I hear it gets better, but with this first one there's a lot going on and tons to watch. So not worrying about diapers or taking them out is nice. These bags really do keep the smells down and minimizes effort. we got ones with foot pedals and that helps, since a poop covered baby and hands lends itself to a poop covered everything.

[LiveLean]

Life is too short to deal with cloth diapers. Geez. Be environmentally conscious with everything else if it clears your conscience and just use disposables.

Our kids are six years beyond diapers and I still hate how DW insisted on using that freakin' Diaper Genie for our first kid. The idea of keeping 20 nasty diapers in a jar.....just gross.

If you have a trash can in your garage, take the diaper there. Every time.

[Landlady]

We use a normal, tall kitchen-style trash bin that has a lid with a foot pedal so you can have your hand on baby and on the diaper.
You'll learn to use the diaper tabs to close up poop diapers tight. If you take it out every other day or so the smell is just fine.

One tip I recommend is getting a touch sensitive light near the changing table so you don't have to fumble with switches in the dark. Another tip since you weren't asking :) is to replace a light bulb with a red light bulb so you don't ruin your night vision when you are getting up in the middle of the night.

Congrats and best of luck!

[brycedoula]

We have a 15L stainless steel pedal bin in our bathroom - purchased @ Walmart (well, we returned a duplicate baby gift there so it didn't actually cost us anything) - that takes "roommate" sized Glad garbage bags. The lid fits quite tightly & it has a removable inner can with a handle. I exclusively breastfed for 6 months & we use disposable diapers.

Honestly, it's hardly stinky at all. In the early days you'll go thru SO.MANY.DIAPERS that the bin will fill up before it has a chance to get really stinky. If you chose to breastfeed then the poopy diapers are way less stinky anyway. Now that my daughter is eating some solids the poops are certainly stinky, so I empty the bin more frequently.

Now if you REALLY want to cut down on stinky diapers I suggest researching "elimination communication". It sounds a bit weird but has saved me (& even my husband) many a diaper change!

[Milizard]

We used the Arm & Hammer diaper pail, which is like the Diaper Genie, when the babies were small and poopy diapers were frequent.   We keep a plastic grocery bag hanging on a door knob for stuff that will stink up the garbage right away, and cause us to empty it before the big garbage bag is full.  Chicken is horrible for this, BTW.  We only change the big garbage bag once or twice a week.  After the babies grew to be toddlers and dirty diapers were fewer and farther between, we'd toss those in the grocery bag used as a garbage as well.  The plastic grocery bag is then tied up and put out in the garage or taken out to the outdoor garbage bin to get the stink out of the house.  We couldn't really do this method when the diapers were more frequent, as we'd run out of grocery bags to use.

[Prairie Stash]

I you breastfeed the poop doesn't have much odour, its not till they hit solids that it becomes bad. After getting pooped on a few times the ick factor disappears, my little bundle had a big poop that leaked out last weekend and I noticed when I picked her up it was on my hand, eventually is just part of the regular routine.

We dump our disposables into the house garbage, grocery bags in garbage cans. I don't notice them smelling at all, typically 3 poops a day for both my girls (older is done diapers, in her time though she was a champ and could do 6 poops a day). There's always a sleeper or something in our bathroom drying off from poop leaks or some other stain, I love our $5 laundry bar. It also works great when travelling, takes out stains better than any laundry detergent.

Just remember to pack the Vaseline for the first week. After that it's pretty easy, you'll learn what works for you by the time it matters and they start eating solids (solid food makes poop stink, so does formula).

[Bliss]

Thank you, thank you for your thoughts and comments!

[Meggslynn]

We just used a regular garbage pail with a lid lined with those fancy pants garbage bags with the odor protection (yes it made a big difference!). No need to individually bag each diaper.  :)

[a rose by any other name]

Life is too short to deal with cloth diapers. Geez. Be environmentally conscious with everything else if it clears your conscience and just use disposables.

Our kids are six years beyond diapers and I still hate how DW insisted on using that freakin' Diaper Genie for our first kid. The idea of keeping 20 nasty diapers in a jar.....just gross.

If you have a trash can in your garage, take the diaper there. Every time.

Cloth diapers aren't that much more difficult than disposables. You're just doing an extra load of laundry every couple of days rather than running to the store to buy more diapers. Especially if baby is breastfed and hasn't started solids yet, it's just as easy as disposables--just throw the dirty diaper in the pail and wash them when it's full or you're getting down to your last 5 or 6 diapers. We use a lidded tall kitchen trashcan with a wet bag liner and it works great.