Pails In Comparison

Hammering Out Diaper Pail Odors

We used the Diaper Genie for the first three years of parenting. That’s because I used it at work, and found the hands-free approach useful when I had one hand on a wiggling baby and the other on a poopy diaper.

But the Diaper Genie doesn’t hold as many diapers as you’d think. When we needed a second diaper pail, we went with the Munchkin Arm and Hammer Diaper Pail. Once we got down to one diaper pail again (the two diaper pail plan didn’t last long, thankfully), we made the obvious choice. I passed along the Diaper Genie and all the refills we had for it without a second thought.

The smaller and more compact Munchkin refill boxes come with ten, twenty, or even thirty bags in them, which makes them cheaper to resupply the Diaper Genie. (It has two or three rings per box.) I find they work better than the Diaper Genie containing the smell. The snap closure on the pail liner also means I can always stuff a couple of extra diapers in even after taking the bag out of the plastic pail. With easy one-handed operation and an automatic seal each time you close the lid, I prefer the Munchkin Arm & Hammer Diaper Pail.

Munchkin bags have no ambiguity. You know how much the bag can hold and you never waste any of it except by choice, leaving you in control. I love that the door swings open, and I don’t have to flip open the entire container to replace a pail liner. I think the snap in liners are super easy to use, unlike the trickier Genie liners. And you can buy a box of 30 and not worry about refills for a much longer time.

The Munchkin’s wider base allows more diapers to fit in the pail itself. The narrower Genie stacks diapers, which basically eliminates any extra space along the sides of the pail. That means, as your baby grows and the diapers get bigger, you get fewer and fewer in. For newborn diapers? No problem. Once you get to size 5, it becomes an issue. On the plus side, they use fewer diapers then, so you have fewer to dispose of. On the downside, taking the diapers out as frequently is just plain irritating.

Diaper Genie refills come in a giant plastic donut, and the bag pulls out of the ring. You tie a knot in the bottom (using up some of the plastic bag reservoir), and you use a permanently attached tool nestled on the inside the cut the plastic and tie a knot at the top when done. You end up with a long, poopy diaper worm. Nothing wrong with that.

But the constant waste of the bag material bothered me. Often I ended up with plastic not long enough to use the end of a roll. And although I kept two or three refills on hand, they weren’t cheap and I hated to waste the capacity. With Diaper Genie, you can try to stuff that one last stinker in there, but it’s a risky business I wouldn’t undertake without serious thought.

The only advantage the Diaper Genie has was its hands-free use. But now the Munchkin pail comes in a hands-free design as well. I vote for the Munchkin all the way.