In Depth Baby Product Reviews Led by a Pediatrician
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Looking for a diaper pail to keep the nursery from smelling like a barn? Us too! We researched and tested over 30 top pails and chose 7 competitors for a final roundup. A diaper pail can be a convenient day-to-day solution for short-term dirty diaper storage and keeping the smells at bay. Critical pail factors include odor containment and ease of use, so we used each pail to reveal all the smelly details. With differences in odor control, bag-changing challenges, and the continuing cost of ownership, each product has unique pros and cons. Our roundup will surely include information that will help you make the right choice for yourself and your family.
Diaper duty will take up much of your time and energy, and we suggest investing in the best supplies to make the task easier. Let our favorite diaper gear list help you gather the essentials. We've also tested and reviewed diapers for the job, plus the best baby wipes. Bring along the best diaper bag to carry your gear and supplies on outings with your baby.
Editor's Note: Our extensive review of diaper pails was updated on July 9, 2024, to remove a discontinued Diaper genie option.
The Munchkin Step is a cleverly designed pail with features limiting escaping odors and reducing smells. It is a step-to-open design requiring only one hand for diaper deposits. It comes with a baking soda insert lid for odor-fighting and a lavender-scented bag refill ring that stays sealed when you open the door to limit the blasts of stench that happen with each new deposit. If stink-free isn't cool enough, Munchkin plants a tree with every purchase. You'll be doing something good for the environment while limiting odors in your home.
The twisting action that traps air when you close the lid can fail as the pail fills up, and the plastic walls of the container can absorb odors over time. This container also requires proprietary bags, which means you'll be investing in this system for the entirety of your diapering years. These liners add to the already high initial cost. For those sensitive sniffers or people who are allergic to scented products, the lavender-scented bags and lid insert can be somewhat overwhelming. Nevertheless, many parents appreciate the twist seal action and being able to remove only a portion of the bag when emptying the pail. If you want a triple-packed punch against diaper odors and don't mind investing some additional money over time, then the Munchkin is perfect. If you want something more straightforward, you can use it with kitchen trash bags; the simplehuman 38 Liter Rectangular Step Can is a great can you can use for years.
Bag Style: Trash Bag or Cloth Liner | Pail Material: Brushed Stainless Steel
REASONS TO BUY
Durable
Large capacity
Silent lid
REASONS TO AVOID
Large upfront expense
Plastic lid can break
simplehuman 38 Liter Rectangular Step Can is a great large-capacity solution for holding dirty cloth diapers until wash day. We recommend using a cloth diaper pail liner inside the simplehuman plastic bin for easy maintenance. Options such as the Kanga Care Cloth Diaper Pail Liner and the Planet Wise Diaper Pail Liner can go in the wash with the cloth diapers, so you'll want at least two liners in the rotation to prevent the frustration of dirty diaper with nowhere to go. The liner shouldn't get too gross because it is essential to flush solids down the toilet before putting them in the soiled bin with cloth diapers. Breastfed stools will wash out in the washing machine with no problem, and they don't stink like formula or solid-fed stools, so you don't necessarily need to rinse them. This trash can has a step pedal to open the lid, making it hands-free, and the lid design makes it hard to open by hand, which helps deter curious dogs and toddlers from investigating the contents. We also appreciate the silent lid for less disturbance of sleepy babies.
While we like that this pail can transition to an ordinary trash can, a high upfront cost makes it a less desirable choice for parents on a tight budget. While the simplehuman is one of the most expensive options we tested, we think the quality and potential long-term use can justify the higher price for some families. While the can will last for years, there are reports of the plastic lid cracking over time, making a more expensive steel lid the better choice if your wallet allows it. Overall, this can is ideal for cloth diapering parents who don't mind paying a higher price for impressive quality and long-term use.
The simplehuman step can has a slide tab to keep the lid open for easier bag changes.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Compare Products
The generously sized opening of the Creative Baby Tidy allows diapers to fall in freely.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
How We Test Diaper Pails
We tested the pails in this review for odor containment and ease of use, including ease of diaper disposal and ease of bag changes (trust us, it matters). Using used baby diapers in some homes and bagged dog poop in others, we put the pails to the test, pushing the limits of poop containment. After using the receptacles in our homes and daily monitoring odor containment, we performed further in-lab testing for functionality, ease of use, extra features, and more.
Why Trust GearLab
The diaper pail review is a labor of stinky love led by BabyGearLab founder, Dr. Spurrier. Dr. Juliet Spurrier is a board-certified pediatrician and mother of two whose quest for a smell-free diaper pail began over 11 years ago. After testing multiple pails in several reviews over the past seven years, she is the definitive expert on all things diaper pails and odor control. The team also includes Senior Review Editor, Wendy Schmitz. Wendy is also a mother of two and has researched and tested diaper pails since her first was born more than thirteen years ago and professionally with BabyGearLab since 2014.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
How to Pick the Best Diaper Pail
Specialized gear for diaper disposal can provide significant odor containment advantages over your kitchen trashcan. These pails have the unique ability to seal in dirty diaper odors in a way that ordinary cans don't. However, a snug sealing lid isn't the only thing that matters regarding the stink. A thoughtfully designed pail also considers the process of depositing new diapers; what happens when the container opens and closes? The best options have mechanisms that reduce air exchange and minimize smells when you insert a dirty diaper. Our favorite products even consider how easy it is to change a full bag and limit encounters with overwhelming odors.
Cloth or Disposable
Your first consideration is what kind of diapers you plan to use. While a tight seal and odor containment are job one, it is slightly different for cloth diapers as the ammonia can build up from a lack of airflow. Something that allows more air to circulate is our preferred option for cloth diapers. Even though the Ubbi Diaper Pail and the Dekor Plus claim that they will work for cloth diapers, we don't think these are functional options for cloth diapering due to the ammonia build-up from the lack of air. We prefer diaper duty systems designed specifically for cloth diapers.
Lifetime Costs
Each option requires some internal bag lining for containment and disposal. Proprietary bags mean an elevated level of responsibility to always have new bags on hand. It also means an investment in lifetime costs, which can end up being substantial over the life of your diaper years. Alternatively, units that only require a basic kitchen bag can be more straightforward and put less of a dent in your pocketbook and your supply closet.
Each pail does its best to contain odors with different features designed to reduce or mask smells.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Smell Containment
While smell containment is important, we encourage you to be realistic. If you are collecting multiple human waste deposits in a single bag, things will stink, and the longer they sit there, the harder your pail will have to work. No pail is perfect, but better pails can provide better smell containment and decrease how often you need to do a bag change. If you find the smell is strong or more than you'd like it might not be the pail itself, but just time for a change to the internal bag.
The Skip Hop Nursery Style has an inner plastic ring that holds bags in place.
Analysis and Test Results
Whether you're on your first baby or your fifth, dirty diapers are the one constant. We believe odor containment is crucial to diapering contentment. Because odor issues are a top concern, we put more weight on the bin's ability to control odors than any other factor. Even in tests for ease of changing the bag, the difference in overall smell is critical.
All three of these diaper pails have an easy to use foot pedal to open the lid.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Keeping the Stink Down
Keeping the smell of dirty diapers down to a slight whiff versus an overpowering stench is much more attainable if you employ the following tricks to keep things clean:
Rinse poop off the diaper and into the toilet before tossing it. This act prevents adding bio-waste to the landfill and decreases odors.
Roll the diaper into a tight ball and attach the adhesive tabs to keep it rolled before tossing it in the pail.
Change the bag frequently, even if it's not full.
Wash the pail with warm soapy water regularly.
If smells linger after a good washing, consider drying the pail in the sunlight for UV help to kill odor-causing bacteria.
What's the Best Value?
Normally, we compare the price of a product versus its overall performance scores to assess which product offers the most value. But, with diaper pails, the product's purchase price often doesn't tell you the full story. Pails that require proprietary refill bags can add a substantial expense over the lifetime use of the diaper pail. However, those kinds of pails generally offer much better smell containment than using regular garbage bags.
There are two primary varieties of pails: those that only work with proprietary liners (bags designed explicitly for the pail) and those that work with standard kitchen trash bags. Some products will accept both. Besides bag style, other factors include whether or not they have an odor-reduction accessory that may need to be repurchased occasionally. When weighing the lifetime cost of pail ownership, expenses such as repurchasing bags and odor-fighting features can add up, so you have to consider more than just the face cost of the pail itself. You should consider which features are most important to you, depending on how frequently you change the bag or where you intend to house the pail.
Estimated Lifetime Cost
To help evaluate the overall cost of ownership, we calculated the cost of the original pail purchase. We added the cost of refill bags we estimate you'll need over your baby's diapering years. We base our estimated total cost of ownership calculations on looking at manufacturer claims and then making adjustments in some cases based on our personal testing experience of how many diapers fit in each bag or refill. We compared the lifetime cost of owning each product using the same number of diapers.
The Munchkin Step offered the best odor control in our testing, but that performance comes at the highest estimated lifetime cost. We estimated the Total Cost of Ownership for the Munchkin to be $357.
If you don't want to invest cash beyond the container or prefer to avoid single-use plastic, the Planet Wise Hanging Wet/Dry Bag is a compelling option. The ability to wash the bag and avoid a disposal bag system could save you a couple of hundred dollars over your diapering years. It delivered our lowest estimate of the Total Cost of Ownership of any product we tested.
There is a big variety of size, shape and design when it comes to finding the diaper pail that will work best for your family.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Odor Control
Almost all of the pails tested did a relatively good job managing odors when closed. Each lid stays tightly sealed, utilizing either an inner bag seal or a limited opening feature. The differences in odor from closed pails that went undisturbed for hours were negligible in our experience. The more significant contrast appears when you open and close the pails to put dirty diapers inside, a frequently occurring activity when you have a baby.
The Skip Hop Nursery Style has a button that opens a trap door for stink-free diaper deposits.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Despite innovative designs to minimize escaping odors, it is impossible to contain the smell completely, and a stink puff will inevitably waft out when the lid opens. The level of stink that happens when making a fresh deposit is what makes the difference. We found that it varies from a mild poof to a nasty blast. While neither experience is pleasant, this is an expected result of storing your baby's waste in one receptacle, especially for an extended period. The stink bomb cloud can linger and become a nasal buzz kill. The competition gets heated when you begin to compare. The pail with the lowest level of escaping stink was the Munchkin Step. This pail won our noses over, and pails that didn't contain the stench were so offensive we'd pay just about anything to avoid them.
Several of the products offer an open/close system designed to limit the odor that escapes. Diaper Genies twist the top of the bag to trap odors, and they have a clamp to prevent a lot of stench from escaping. The Munchkin Step has a similar twisting mechanism for the bag. The Diaper One-N-Done performed poorly for odor control, with the lowest score in this metric because it does not have a lid. The Ubbi has no odor-blocking mechanisms when open, and it releases all the odor with each drop. This design earned them both low scores for this metric. However, Ubbi is the only non-plastic option. The powder-coated steel construction should prevent the absorption of excessive odor over time, so it may be a trade-off depending on your tolerance for smells and ability to make quick deposits.
You can rotate the lid of the Creative Baby Tidy easily with one hand.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Given that all poop products smell to some extent, we suggest storing your diaper pail somewhere other than your nursery. No matter which pail you purchase, there will be some smell (sad life truth). Containing this odor to a bathroom or well-ventilated area is smart. Baby and baby's nose will thank you.
So, what else can you do to combat those nasty diaper odors? We find the following tips helpful:
Don't dispose of poopy diapers in the pail; opt to take them outside immediately or rinse the poop in the toilet first.
Empty your container daily to avoid the odor that comes with a multi-day diaper build-up.
At the end of each day, spray a disinfectant spray (store-bought or homemade vinegar spray) into the pail.
Baking soda is a natural deodorizer and is magical for diaper pail odor control. It is helpful to sprinkle a bit (or place a whole box) at the bottom of the pail after each bag change.
It can be helpful to combat the odor with more preferential smells. Dryer sheets or coffee grounds do a decent job of tackling the stink. Essential oils can also be beneficial. Adding 5-10 drops of eucalyptus, lavender, or melaleuca (tea tree) oil to a cotton ball and placing it at the bottom of the pail can also provide relief and are usually less offensive than scented bag liners.
Finally, wash your pail out regularly with hot water and soap and set it in the sun to dry. UV rays help destroy odor-causing bacteria.
Your satisfaction with your pail will be much higher if you understand its limitations and have realistic performance expectations. If your goal is absolutely no odor, you're better off taking each dirty diaper to an outside garbage can. We think the Diaper One-N-Done is a perfect accessory in this scenario.
The lid compartment is large enough for one diaper at a time.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Ease of Disposal
When testing ease of disposal, we considered the simplicity of throwing away a dirty diaper using a single hand. A few pails feature a foot pedal to open a top lid. While this may seem advantageous, they aren't always more straightforward than the hand-operated products from above. Our favorite pails had closure styles that allowed the least amount of smell to escape with each new deposit and never allowed the diaper to get hung up on its way through the opening. Thanks to its open-top design, the Diaper One-N-Done earned top marks in this metric.
The Playtex Diaper Genie Complete is the worst-performing product in this metric due to its flawed clamp system that only works part of the time. The sliding door on the Ubbi requires downward pressure to open, and if you utilize the child lock, you may find the entire operation requires two hands, something that you don't always have when there's an infant around. As is implied in the name, the Munchkin Step has a step that opens the lid, but the bag twists after dropping each diaper to trap odors as you go. Sometimes this system can make it more challenging to squeeze a new diaper inside, especially when the pail is almost full. The trap door on the Dekor works well until the bag gets closer to full. Many users report that the hinges relax over time, which results in odor escaping with each new deposit and an interior door that doesn't close completely. Some pails need a helping hand to push a dirty diaper through a trap door, which may result in your hand coming into contact with the inside of the bag. If there is leakage from the last diaper, you'll be feeling that too. Yuck! The simplehuman 38 Liter Rectangular Step Can has a simple foot pedal that opens the lid so you can quickly drop in your cloth diaper but offers no odor blockage mechanism. The Planet Wise Hanging Wet/Dry Bag utilizes a zipper to open and shut, but most can't manage it without using both hands.
As with several of the diaper pails, the Munchkin Step uses a proprietary system of bags.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Ease of Bag Change
Changing diaper pail bags is a heavily dreaded chore. It is a job you need to do quickly before the noxious fumes make you vomit. However, you'll likely be doing this chore multiple times a week for a few years, and you will realize the importance of considering the ease with which you can change a bag without making a mess or being punched by the fumes. The top-performing product in this metric is the Planet Wise Hanging Wet/Dry Bag. Because it is reusable, you don't have to change the bag at all. Just dump the diapers and throw the bag in the washing machine.
The Creative Baby Tidy has an inner ring that helps keep the bag in place and tucked away.
The convenient blade on the Munchkin Step makes it a breeze to cut the bag when it is time to empty.
Several pails, such as the Munchkin Step, have an integrated blade to cut the bag when it is time for a change. This convenient design allows you to empty the pail as frequently as needed while still being efficient with your bag space. We like that the Step has hinges that keep the top open while you feed the bag through the blade. Not all systems are as useful, but we find that most pails with proprietary liners have a relatively easy bag change. Simply pull the plastic out and tie a knot in the end. The Diaper One-N-Done comes with proprietary liners that feed through a hole in the bottom of the bucket and pull through when you lift out the previous bag. This system has less flexibility in bag usage, but it is still fairly simple.
The Diaper One-N-Done uses proprietary refill liners, however, you could just as easily buy small trash bags from the store to use with this system.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Pails that use a regular trash bag, like the simplehuman 38 Liter Rectangular Step Can, and the Ubbi, are emptied in the same manner as an ordinary trash can. When the pail becomes too stinky to manage, you'll need to replace the entire bag, whether it is full or not. Replacing the simplehuman bag, whether using a reusable fabric bag or plastic trash bag, is the easiest as it is the same as changing out a trash bag and securing the edges. The Ubbi has a lid design with multiple layers to hold the bag in place. While we would not consider it challenging, there are more steps due to this specific system, and it earned a lower score for ease of bag change as a result.
When removing a liner from the simplehuman can, put the lid in its “hold open” position, lift the liner up about 1/5th of the way out and it will stand upright but elevated within the can for taking out dirty bag and replacing with a clean one.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Conclusion
Diaper disposal methods can be a passionate topic, and you may find some parents shouting from soapboxes about why they love certain options but still can't wait to leave them behind. The key to finding diaper pail nirvana is maintaining realistic expectations. Poop is poop, and it smells like poop (surprise!). Having realistic expectations for how much odor a pail can contain and avoiding excessive build-up by remembering to change bags regularly can make a world of difference. Our hands-on testing and research are the most comprehensive ever completed, and our results determine how well each competitor squashes odors. We love products that keep odors at bay and are easy to use. If they work with a standard trash can liner, we love them even more (think savings!). However, if achieving adequate odor protection meant using a proprietary bag, we didn't count it against the pail. Your personal preferences and budget goals will influence you when choosing the best pail, and we tried to include options to account for each unique lifestyle situation.
