Baby wipes can fix everything

By Deana Nall
Baytown Sun

Published February 15, 2006

This week I am paying tribute to the one item I truly cannot live without.

It’s the most lethal weapon in the Mommy arsenal. It’s the baby wipe.

You wouldn’t believe what you can do with baby wipes. Don’t let the cute babies on the boxes fool you. These things mean business. I have yet to identify the liquid they are soaking in, but I know it’s stronger than all my household cleaners combined.

(Incidentally, combining household cleaners is something you should never do. That’s the only thing I remember from my college consumer chemistry class. And I only remembered that after I, as a newlywed, threw some bleach and ammonia into my bathtub one day and started seeing visions of dead relatives.)

Here are some of the messes I have cleaned with baby wipes:

• Crayon marks on walls.

• Fingerprints on TV and computer screens.

• The crib mattress after the baby, who had nothing to drink after 6 p.m. and went to bed in a nice, dry diaper, managed to unleash a torrent of tee-tee during her sleep.

• Various bodily fluids that have been projected from my children onto my clothing.

• Mud on my shoes from walking across the front yard to discover that my 7-year-old had left the garden hose running for the better part of a week.

• Assorted substances that have been spilled, smashed, or ground into the carpet.

• A black mark high on a living room wall from one of my shoes. (Please don’t ask.)

• Dried baby snot. The stickiest substance on earth. “409” can’t even get that.

• My then-4-year-old’s hair, clothes and the upholstery of our friend’s vehicle after said 4-year-old threw up on the interstate in Colorado and the only building for miles around was a truck stop, where I had to give her a bath in the restroom sink.

Do you see what I mean? Baby wipes are like sanity-in-a-box for me. How they can make these things so powerful, yet safe enough to put on a baby’s bottom, is beyond me.

And there’s such a variety of wipes out there. You can buy the ultra-cheap ones that feel more like wet toilet paper. Or you can splurge on the ones that contain aloe, shea butter and Vitamin E to help “make softness one of your newborn’s first discoveries,” offers the Huggies Web site.

I even found a web site featuring recipes for making your own baby wipes. I think the site is run by a bunch of hippie moms because the ingredients call for things like lavender, tea tree oil and calendula flowers. But hey, whatever works.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that taking cleaning tips from me is like taking a gun safety course from Dick Cheney. Or “Proper Infant Car Seat Use” from Britney Spears. Or getting marriage counseling in Hollywood.

Well, my house may not be immaculate, but I’m seven years into this Mommy thing and, believe me, I know how to clean up a mess on the fly.

And on the floor. And on the walls, ceilings, light fixtures ...