by Kris Mery

Created on: May 03, 2008

I thought the Diaper Genie would be the perfect product for my family. For one, everyone recommended it. I will admit it does work well... if you are using disposables.

We used the Diaper Genie for five months. It got a lot of use during that time and I have no real complaints. The inserts are a bit expensive, but we justified it. Personally I don't think it completely got rid of the smell (especially when there was a really rank diaper) but it helped. We added an Arm & Hammer container inside to help with it. nfortunately it had to be changed about once a week, much more often than the instructions said, just couldn't keep up with the smell in the Diaper Genie. We also had some issues with the way the bag fell. Sometimes it twisted nicely with the diapers and fit a good number in. Other times it fell straight down and held about five diapers. It definitely did not live up to my expectations, but at the same time I was happy with it.

However, somewhere during month six we started looking into cloth diapers. They are much more cost efficient (unless you go nuts with them, which is easy to do) and better for the baby all around. Honestly I wish I had started with them from the beginning. Since we already had the Diaper Genie we decided to use it as our diaper pail with them too. It works, but it is awkward. Knowing what I know now I probably wouldn't have bought one. We have to open it from the middle (as if taking out the dirty disposables) both to put diapers in and take them out. It throws the whole balance off and we've had it fall over when I'm trying to store a dirty diaper multiple times. Bags are also hard to fit in there. Right now we're using old grocery bags (to get rid of them) and they work OK, but I'm not sure how I would put a real liner that holds a good amount of diapers.

Overall I would say that the Diaper Genie is a good product. It's not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it is good. If you are going with disposables I'd say it's definitely something to look into. Plus you can use it if you end up switching to cloth (and never say never, I did!) if you need too. My suggestion would be to look into other options as well before making a decision.

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