Mothers have used a diaper pail to store soiled diapers for a very long time and the most common problem was the smell. Diaper pails usually consisted of a plastic bucket with a lid but the lid was often not a good fit and so they were not effective at containing the odors that wet and soiled diapers give off. Of course, before disposable diapers, there were only cloth ones which needed soaking, then rinsing and washing before being hung in the sun to get them thoroughly clean and stain-free.

These days, the diaper pail is still a container where you throw wet and soiled diapers but the majority of mothers are now using disposable diapers to cut down on the work of washing and drying cloth ones. This means that the diaper pail is often a place where the dirty diapers are stored prior to disposal and it is really important that the smells associated with used diapers can be contained within the pail. No diaper pail is capable of retaining diaper odors indefinitely and so it is important for health and hygeine reasons to empty the diaper pail on a regular basis. They get really "ugly" after a few days!

Go into any baby supply store and you will see a wide variety of diaper pails, from simple lidded buckets to complex diaper handling systems. Diaper pails also seem to have become a decorator item and there are plain and decorated pails in all colors and designs. However, the proof of a "good" diaper pail is in its ability to retain smells and it is this feature (or lack of it) that separates the good from the bad and the downright ugly! Ease of use and cleaning are also important features to look for.

Read the multitude of reviews on diaper pails that you will find online. Ask friends and family for recommendations about the most favorable diaper pail to use; someone might even buy you one but it is a good idea to know what is available and what type you would prefer. As you start to look around, you will find that many diaper pails do not accommodate cloth diapers, so if you are going down that road you may have to search a little deeper. As it is best to launder cloth diapers as soon as possible, they only need to be stored for 24 hours or so, and a bucket with a tightly fitting lid may surfice. It worked for your mother and grandmother!

One of the most highly-praised diaper pails in online reviews is the Baby Trend Diaper Champ. It features a one handed operation that flips a lid to drop the diaper to the bottom of the pail and then closes the top to keep smells in. It is one of the cheapest on the market and you don't have to use specific bags or cartridges; ordinary kitchen bin liners or grocery bags will fit. However, the manuacturer does state that the best results are obtained, in the smell stakes, if the Baby Trend Champ bags are used. Some reviewers claim that the unit does start to smell after a while, but maybe you just need to empty the unit more often to prevent this.

Other highly-rated diaper pails include the Playtex Diaper Genie, which rates highly for odor control and the Diaper Dekor has hands-free operation.