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Diaper Duties Made a Little Easier

It’s 2:30am, Lachlan is crying for his late night feeding, but I need to change his diaper first.

My ONLY goal is to get him changed as quickly as humanly possible so that he doesn’t wake his older brother, Will. I’ve gotten pretty good at the sub one-minute pit stop/change. But where I fall down is getting the dirty diaper actually into the diaper pail. I’ve been using the Diaper Genie since William was an infant, and, while it does a really good job of locking smelly diapers away, it’s not always the most user-friendly contraption. So, more often than not, the midnight diaper change sits on top of the diaper pail until morning. In all honesty, it’s not uncommon for that to happen during the day too, since I am usually holding Lachlan when I try to put the diaper in the pail. There are only so many seconds I can fiddle with something that’s low to the ground before my knees start to hurt and back tweaks because I’ve got an 18 pound infant wiggling away in my other arm.

About a month ago, the kind folks at Munchkin gave me a brand new “one-hand” diaper pail to test.

Like the Diaper Genie, this new Arm & HammerTM Diaper Pail by Munchkin seals away smelly diapers so you don’t get a blast of nastiness when you open it. But it’s different on a few fronts:

- You can truly open and close it with one hand. The lid opens right up at the push of a button. I’ve been using it for a week now and not once have I had to leave a dirty diaper on top of the pail until I had two free hands to deal with it.

- The seal is activated simply by closing the lid. You don’t have to twist anything to make it work.

- There aren’t any ‘fake’ scents used to cover up dirty diaper smells. Instead the pail uses natural baking soda to do the dirty work. Each time you close the lid, a little bit of baking soda pours onto the top of the bag. That’s it, and it works like a charm.

- The bag extraction process is SO easy! I have to cop to the fact that I used to delegate the swap out of the bag for my old diaper pail to my husband because I found it so frustrating. You had to hold down a “cut” button and twist the top around and whenever I did that, it never cut enough, so bits of the bag would get stuck in the top and I’d have to rip it by hand. Plus you had to tie tops and bottoms. In short, it was a pain. Worth it because it contained the smells, but a pain nonetheless. With this new Munchkin pail, all you do is lift the bag out and snap it shut. Even I can do that! To put a new bag in, all you have to do is open the top, snap the plastic pieces into place and you’re done. No tying, twisting, or cutting.

In short, I love it. The only minor issues I have are:
1) The bag doesn’t seem to hold quite as many diapers before you have to change it (but maybe I think that because I’m actually changing the bag in this one instead of delegating to my husband!). In all actuality, the Arm & HammerTM Diaper Pail by Munchkin is bigger – so it probably holds more.
2) The first time it ever gets full, you might think you’ve broken it because the lid makes a grating/popping sound when it closes and it may not close at all. But once you realize what’s going on, that issue goes away completely.

So – thanks Munchkin team for the new diaper pail. I definitely feel as though my nursery has gotten a real upgrade! And if you’ve got kids in diapers at home – I definitely recommend upgrading to this pail yourself.