One winter Saturday, my family and I spent the day rummaging for antiques and walking the streets of our neighborhood, before ending the day with Americana food. Halfway through the restaurant’s delightfully greasy meal, it was time to change our 8-month-old’s diaper. I did the usual eagle-eyed scan of a new place, in order to locate the bathroom. Then I unbuckled our child from her seat and rested my forearm under her butt.
Big mistake. She’d pooped.
I cleaned her thoroughly and quickly, awash with the panic that changing a poopy diaper in public provides. (For the uninitiated, it’s similar to going through the TSA.) Once I’d gotten through it, I realized I had nowhere to put the landmine.
I should’ve known better.
My approach to having a third child was to keep everything minimal. The things I swore I needed as a first- and second-time parent—like wipe warmers and bottle warmers—got the boot as I determined they weren’t essential. Munchkin’s scented diaper bags didn’t seem consequential, until that fateful day in a restaurant bathroom when I surmised that they were very much needed.
This dispenser contains scented plastic bags that mask the smell of poop. These bags are great for on-the-go use or when a diaper pail is out of reach.
I received the bags at my first baby shower. The experienced gift-giver slipped them into an actual diaper bag, so they’d be waiting for me when I needed them most.
They are, essentially, just a roll of plastic bags—not so dissimilar from a roll of dog-poop bags, and they even come in a similarly styled plastic dispenser. So, in some ways, it’s not incorrect to just use plastic shopping bags for this situation. I’ve found that they work in a pinch, but shopping bags are prone to holes and tears, and they do nothing to mask the inevitable stink.
And you don’t really need these bags when you’re at home, where diaper pails are great at masking scents and containing messes. I’ve owned a diaper pail with each of my children. But sometimes the pail is upstairs, and you’re dealing with a blowout that needs to be handled right then and there. Or maybe you’re at a friend’s house. Or perhaps you’re in a rest-stop bathroom trying not to have a meltdown.
These are the times when Munchkin’s Change & Toss bags are best.
These bags are infused with baking soda and a lavender scent, so they can cover the smell of a dirty diaper. In my own experience, this scent really does overpower the stink. And there’s a science to it, too. Dr. Raven Baxter, a molecular biologist, said this phenomenon is called olfactory masking.
“When you have something like a deodorizer that’s introduced into a scented diaper bag, the molecules in the diaper bag compete with the odor molecules from the dirty diapers,” she explained. Your neuron’s olfactory receptors detect the odor molecules from both the diaper and the scented bag. But only one scent can run the show, and, thankfully for us all, it’s the more pleasant one.
“If a deodorizer has a stronger or more appealing scent, it can dominate the smell perception,” Baxter said.
For the sake of science, during one messy poop this week, I put my nose dangerously close to a full bag. I smelled only lavender.
We also recently used the bags during a weeklong holiday visit with my extended family. Everyone who changed my daughter Jade used the Munchkin bags, and then they stored them in the garage after use. The garage didn’t start to smell between trash-pickup days.
The scented bags can withstand a diaper full of pee and poop, which will weigh about a few ounces. Ultimately, the amount of poop will depend on your baby’s age and their diet. In the three years (across multiple babies) that I’ve used these baggies, they’ve never ripped due to weight.
They also don’t leak, so they’re suitable for diapers that are just wet (because those smell, too) or those that contain more-liquidy poops.
There are still some downsides. The most obvious one, of course, is that each bag is a single-use plastic and thus not great for the environment. But I don’t use these bags for every diaper change—just primarily when I’m on the go. (If you’re looking to use them at home, you could simply buy Munchkin’s Step Diaper Pail, our top diaper-pail pick. It works like a trash can and fits several diapers. The diaper-pail bags are the same lavender-and-baking-soda–infused bags in the miniature dispensers, so they address scent coverage.)
You can’t use just one hand to rip the perforation, so you have to prepare the bag (always open it!) before changing your baby. You may also have a difficult time spotting where the perforation is because it’s so faint.
It can also be a little pricey in the long term. You can get a starter pack—with 24 bags and a plastic dispenser that can be clamped onto a diaper bag or a pair of jeans—for about $4.40. That dispenser is handy for keeping all of the bags in place, but it’s also small, so it’s easy to misplace if you’re not using the keychain-like clip. And the clip latch doesn’t have much give, so it’s not great if you need to remove it quickly.
You can skip the dispenser and instead buy a six-pack of rolls for about $10. Then the price drops to about 13 cents per bag; this is still more expensive than the price per bag (about 5 cents) of our top-pick dog-poop bag. However, I maintain that the Munchkin bags in the dispenser are better and more convenient to use than those, especially if you’re in a pinch or in public.
In my six years as a mother, I’ve changed thousands of diapers and pull-ups. I’ve done it in bathrooms and nurseries, on sofas and carpeted floors. Changing a diaper is among the acts that are central to parenting. For something that I’m doing so regularly, I want it to be as simple—and discreet—as possible. No one needs to know that I just changed the biggest poop I’ve ever seen.
Diaper bags are a claw at dignity, as well as a service to my fellow man.
This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Maxine Builder
