If you’re using disposable diapers for your baby, you need a spot to stash the dirty ones. Dedicated diaper pails supposedly have a leg up on a regular trash can because they’re designed to be easy to drop the diaper into while promising to contain odors.
The Dekor Eko Diaper Pail features a pedal-operated lid with a secondary trap door to drop diapers into. Its liner bags can be cut and re-tied for custom bag size, and the refills are simple to swap in. The pail comes in three sizes to fit your space. (I own the Plus and Mini).
Dekor Eko Diaper Pail
Disappointingly, the Dekor diaper pail slowly failed on containing odors. In less than a year of use in my home, the pail was holding onto the smell of dirty diapers even when empty.
Specifications
- 3 Sizes: Plus, Classic, Mini.
- Colors: White, gray (only white for Mini).
- Material: Closed-cell ABS plastic.
- Refills: Dekor brand.
- Warranty: Limited lifetime.
Pros
- Is fragrance-free.
- Is made with 70% recycled materials.
- Features a clever bag design to save plastic.
Cons
- Requires Dekor bag replacements.
- Held onto diaper odor over time in my experience.
Choosing the Dekor Diaper Pail
The Dekor pail has a lot to offer for those who want mainstream products but are conscious of what they bring into their homes.
The pail and liner bag are fragrance-free, meaning you aren’t subjected to additional scents or chemicals around your baby. Dekor also calls out its environmentally friendly practices, including manufacturing the plastic pails with 70% recycled materials.
As a plus, the Plus can be used with a cloth-diaper bag if you’re looking for a pail for cloth diapers as part of your laundering system. Dekor even sells a Cloth Diaper Liner in a set of two that is compatible with the Plus size pail.
Using the Dekor Diaper Pail
I initially liked the Dekor Plus diaper pail enough to also buy the Mini size pail for a second diaper-changing station in my house.
The lid is easy to operate, with the exception of when the pail is getting close to full and you have to shove the diaper in to let the trap-door snap shut. I like that you can use the foot pedal to operate the lid, or you could tip the lid up using the slight lip on the edge if you were wrangling a diaper change on the floor.
As my baby got more mobile and started exploring, the Dekor pail successfully prevented her from getting into it. The double lid design, coupled with the lid-lock option, worked well. However, the pail is fairly light, and she wasn’t a year old yet when she could push it over.
I found the capacity pretty true to the product description, which is up to 60 newborn diapers for the Plus size. However, that number goes down pretty quickly as the diaper size goes up for your growing baby.
Replacing Liner Bags
Removing dirty diapers from the Dekor pail is straightforward. The liners are a continuous bag, and the pail has a hidden cutter on the inside. You simply pull the bag down, cut it at the top, tie it off, and you’re good to go.
The liner refills are also simple to insert, as long as you read the instructions for which side goes up. While I liked the design, I didn’t love having to keep buying special bags that are more expensive than a normal kitchen trash bag. I did use Amazon’s Subscribe & Save to make sure I didn’t forget to reorder.
Controlling Unpleasant Odors
The double lid-and-trap-door design is intended to contain odors when dropping diapers in. I thought it did a good — although imperfect — job at this.
For the first eight or so months, the closed Dekor also contained odors. I kept the Plus pail in my living room and the Mini pail near her bassinet and then crib, and there were no discernable smells surrounding them.
However, as time passed, I noticed a pungent stale-diaper smell when changing the liners — even after the dirty bag had been taken out of the house and I was just tying the liner replacement.
Eventually, this turned into a faint stale-dirty-diaper smell surrounding the Dekor pail where it sat in the corner of the room. I tried baking soda in the pail to absorb odors, but to no avail. The Plus pail was the first to go when my baby was around 11 months old, and I put it out in the garage with more baking soda in it to see if that would absorb the odor while no additional diapers were being added.
The Mini didn’t last much longer before it joined the Plus in my garage.
I pulled the diaper pails outside to take photos for this review and was pleasantly surprised that the odor has mostly (but not entirely) faded several months later. I’m used to my new disposal system of using a closed-lid trash can or walking smelly diapers outside right away, though, so I don’t plan to bring the Dekors back inside.
Dekor Eko Diaper Pail
Choosing Again
The Dekor Diaper Pail held a lot of promise with features including a clever lid and bag refill design that made it my choice when my daughter was born. I liked that the pail and liner bags are fragrance-free, and changing the bag was simple even in my sleep-deprived haze of the newborn days.
However, while the design holds up — I even purchased the Mini size as well — the odor-containing promises did not. If I had to choose a diaper pail again, I’d probably spend the money on a stainless steel trash can with a foot pedal instead.
