Pepper Design Blog

Going Green: Say No to Nursery Diaper ‘Smells’

Hey all you cloth diaper mammas, this post is for you. This is a little tip I discovered after searching for solutions to get rid of that ammonia smell that comes with the diaper territory. Every nursery, whether using disposables or cloth, deals with diapers and diaper odors (blah) – but the disposable diaper market offers a host of great solutions while cloth diapering is a little behind.

You might remember that when we started this whole cloth diaper thing over six months ago, I had outfitted our nursery with the recommended supplies:

Wet/dry bag for dirty cloth diapers, smaller bag for on the go, and Charlie’s Soap for washing. We still use that great, Planet Wise zippered small bag (have two now, actually) for the diaper bag, but have made updates to our washing routine and diaper pail.

First, we’ve switched over to Tide for cleaning (Charlie’s Soap is great, Tide is a little more readily available and in the BIG cartons).

Second, I converted a traditional diaper pail to function as a cloth diaper pail. Here’s the old set up:

And the new Diaper Champ lined with a Thirsties Pail Liner:

The wet/dry bag worked well. But it wasn’t perfect. So I went on a hunt to create a smell-proof solution for the nursery and came up with only a handful of traditional pails that let you deposit one diaper in at a time (without lifting the entire pail lid and getting a smell ‘blast’) while also allowing for a reusable bag. The Diaper Champ was the solution. You pull back the handle and deposit diaper in the top, flip the handle and the diaper drops into the lower area where the liner is.

I’m so happy with this set up that I’ve invested in two Diaper Champs, when one fills up it makes its way out to the garage (and next to our laundry machine) while the other takes its place. When CD laundry day comes (twice a week), I pull the entire bag out and empty it into the machine, throwing in the bag as well. Sometimes I don’t even use the liner in the pail and just give it a good wipe with a rag to clean it out (since we fold up all diapers after changings, the inside of the pail doesn’t ever get messy).

The only times now that you get a bit of that diaper smell in our nursery is if I don’t swap out a full pail quickly enough. Other than that, problem solved!

For an update on how our CD adventure is going, check out this post. And for more on our family’s efforts to ‘Go Green’, try this link.

Project Nursery… on Project Nursery!

I shared Liv’s nursery project a while back on a great inspirational site for all things babies… Project Nursery! I thought I’d share it with you today because it’s an excellent resource for decorating and entertaining. You can search room and party galleries by color, style, type or category.

While you’re there, feel free to check out Liv’s nursery:

There are so many wonderful inspirational sites out there these days! Have you ever submitted photos of your projects to your favorites?

Project Nursery: No Sew Fabric Pennant

Hope you had a great weekend with all of the dads and granddads in your life! I hope to post a few photos of ours soon.

Crossing my fingers you haven’t seen enough of it… but I wanted to revisit a little project that you might have spotted during the nursery reveal – it’s easy to miss in the larger room photos but here’s a close up.

I’ve been looking for creative ways to incorporate the remaining fabrics from the initial nursery fabric selection (and here’s the line up before we knew whether we were having a boy or girl) from over 4 months ago, and I thought a little set of pennants (or flags) would be a great way to introduce different fun patterns while staying within the room’s color palette.

To keep the project short and simple, I turned to my trusty no sew hem tape. One hour later and the pennant strand went from squares of extra fabric to finished!

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No Sew Fabric Pennants

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Materials: Fabric remnants, no sew hem tape, iron and ironing board, scissors, ribbon the length of your final set of ‘flags’

{1.} Cut triangles (two long even sides, one short top) out of fabric, keep in mind the size of each hem and cut your triangles roughly 1/2″ wider on each side.

{2.} Fold each side of the triangle creating a 1/2″ hem, iron to create a crease that stays put. Tempting as it may be, don’t skip over this step – it makes adhering the hem tape and creating a clean, straight edge for your pennants 10x easier.

{3.} Use hem tape to line the inside of the two longer portions of the triangle, apply heat of the iron for at least 10 seconds to each side (moving iron back and form slowly over crease) to create a permanent adhesive. The bottom corner of the two longest sides may require a bit of layering of the hems to look even. Leave the top hem open.

{4.} Once each flag or pennant has been ironed and hemmed (on the two longer sides of the triangle), line up pennants along your ribbon to create your pattern layout. Flip over (you may want to mirror your trial run exactly or you may be fine with giving each single pennant a direct face as I did below) and line the ribbon up along the top edge of each pennant.

{5.} Snip extra corner pieces for a clean look.

{6.} With each pennant individually, fold the previously created top crease (step 2) over the ribbon so that the fabric crease now sandwiches the ribbon in place. Add hem tape to each side of ribbon and press with an iron. Repeat for each pennant moving slowly down the ribbon.

{5.} Now that each pennant is secured to the ribbon, flip over and hang!

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Really really love how it turned out! It also looks adorable tied to the front of the crib and will make a great addition to a birthday party or other event one day.

Fabric pennants are a really easy way to use up remnants of fabric that you have left over from other projects, and with hem tape it takes just an hour or so to iron together a short little line of adorable flags.

More Project Nursery posts and tutorials over here.

Now really, truly, honestly back to focusing on other rooms in the house , big sigh of relief for those of you who are done with seeing every angle of this space!