This Less Expensive Diaper Pail Works Just Fine (Even Better than Fine)

I meet new, first-time parents who happily admit their “hack” of walking a dirty diaper to the regular garbage can after they change their baby, rather than using a diaper pail. That tells me that their baby is probably younger than 6 months and not yet on solid food.

Because, yeah, those infant diapers are almost cute, and you might feel like a genius for not buying a diaper pail in those early days. It gets added to the “what you don’t need for a baby” list, along with a wipes warmer — until, that is, your baby starts consuming anything but milk.

I bought the inexpensive hands-free Dekor Classic Diaper pail, one of the parent-picked winners of the 2024 Cubby Nursery Awards, and I think it’s a great diaper pail. Here’s my review. 

Whoa! Toddler diapers are a different story. Their business is basically like an adult’s. The difference is that instead of it getting flushed away, it’s smashed in their diaper for you to deal with. This is what diaper pails are actually made for. You need to contain the nuclear bomb that is any given poopy diaper … or your entire house will start to smell like a barn.  

Here’s what I wanted in a diaper pail.

• Odor control: Obviously. Diaper pails with a twisting mechanism to turn used diapers into a sort of diaper sausage are appealing because they promise to seal in odors. But after trying one, I realized all you really need is a simpler pail with a strong trap door that blocks smells from coming up and into the nursery, or wherever you most often change your baby’s diaper.
• One-handed operation: You’re supposed to keep one hand on your baby at all times while changing them, but you also need to undo the diaper, wipe their bottom, put a new diaper on, and get the old diaper thrown away. You really need about eight hands. But at any rate, having a diaper pail that you can use with just one hand helps out. That means it needs a foot pedal, so you can just quickly drop a dirty diaper into the chute. And no twisting required!
• Option to use regular garbage bags as liners. I know there are plenty of reasons to use a brand’s signature diaper-pail refills. But what if you’re busy, broke, and/or running on fumes and forget to buy refills? It’s important, to me, to be able to swap in generic garbage bags picked up at any grocery or drugstore.

• Diaper Dekor Classic Hands-Free Diaper Pail
• Dimensions: 12.25” x 8.75” x 21”
• Weight: 6.7 lbs
• Current price: $34.95

This diaper pail has been around for a couple of decades. I used the classic version, with a 17.5-inch opening. There’s a larger pail called the Dekor Plus with a 27-inch opening, which you might want if you have twins or two kids under 3. There’s also a smaller pail called the Dekor Mini with a 14-inch opening, more suited to the bathroom, for instance, for sanitary napkins.

The Diaper Dekor is so named because it blends in and doesn’t call attention to itself, which I appreciate. When you’re thinking about how your nursery looks, I’m sure you don’t intend for the diaper pail to be a focal point. What I loved about it included the following:

• It fits plenty of diapers. According to the brand, you can fit 45 used diapers in the Diaper Dekor Classic. I didn’t ever load it up to capacity, but I did regularly use it for three or four days before changing the bag out.
• The foot pedal is easy and silent. There’s no trick there. It’s simple and well-built and because the pail is plastic, it’s quiet.
• The top only stays open while the foot pedal is engaged. The minute you take your foot off, the top shuts again. That helps with the odor control.
• It doesn’t get smelly. At least, mine didn’t. But if it does …
• You can clean the whole thing if needed. You can use water and even bleach on this pail if you decide it needs a big scrubbing; unlike a steel can, this won’t rust. But truth be told I mostly just wiped mine down. Like with the Keekaroo Peanut changing pad, you just wipe and move on.
• It’s less expensive than other premium diaper pails. There’s no point in paying a lot for something that’s essentially a specialized trash can.
• You can load any 13-gallon garbage bag in there. It won’t have the lovely powder scent of the Diaper Dekor refills, and you’ll need to replace the bag each time you empty the pail if you go this route. If you use the Diaper Dekor refills, those have a “continuous bag” system so you just pull down more plastic, tie it off, and are good to go. Using their refills is the faster (and more odor-controlling) method. But as I explained before, I sometimes forgot to order more and was grateful I could just put a regular garbage bag in there.
• You can use it beyond babyhood. This is big! But once my kids were out of diapers, I realized I could repurpose the Diaper Dekor for cat litter waste. I just moved it over to a spot next to the cat box. I’ve seen online reviewers say they moved theirs into the bathroom for used sanitary pads. You could probably use it for doggie doo-doo bags as well.

There’s nothing to hate about the Diaper Dekor. But if I had to pick a gripe: The continuous refill bag takes some getting used to. Refer to the user instructions or watch the video for how you put the refill in and tie it off. Learn where the child-safe cutter is in the door, for when you need to dispose of dirty diapers and pull more of the plastic bag down. Listen, I am probably making this sound more confusing than it is: It’s easy, and after a few times you’ll be fast with it. But I remember my bleary-eyed self initially pulling out too much bag and needing to practice with the cutter.