Gravitating to a Genie? – Don’t

When coming up with a list of "must haves" for your baby's needs, I would recommend dropping the Genie from your list. Here's why...

Poop is poop, and there are only a few ways of ridding yourself of your baby's poop, without becoming overly creative. But in my opinion you are throwing your money away by purchasing a Genie and endless amount of re-fill cartridges. The Genie itself is about $30.00 and basically it's a poop silo. It stores all the used diapers, and is supposed to contain the smell, which it generally does, but after awhile, you will begin to smell a perfumey poop smell. My husband and I would either play rocks, paper, scissors, or barter with each other to finally decide who would get the lovely task of emptying the Genie, as the smell would be atrocious.

The re-fill cartridges are essentially long plastic garbage bag tubes. You tie one end, insert the diaper, close the lid of the Genie, twist and the diaper is sealed in a ball of plastic. Do this about 15 more times, you end up with a long, gigantic, smelly string of "pearls." Unless of course, the tie you did at the beginning, comes undone, and the balls of old diapers come spilling out when you empty it. Not a scratch and sniff sticker you want to scratch and sniff. The re-fill costs between $7-$9 and we would go through one every two or three weeks.

When you add the cost of diapers, and formula, and the inconvenience of having to constantly having to go out and get those items, (unless you are uber-organized,) the diaper genie, just became more of a hassle rather than a necessity. Our solution, which many environmentally friendly people may object too, was to simply use a plastic grocery bag for the down and dirty diaper and throw it in the garbage, and with the little poop factory we had going on, we were constantly taking the garbage out, not giving the dirty diapers much of a chance to emit it's odour in our house..... (or so we think, someone who doesn't have kids may think otherwise.)

Regardless, in my opinion, go out and buy a new pair of shoes, or 15 weeks worth of lottery tickets, either way, you'll be happier with your investment.