Living in a two bedroom flat on the second floor of an apartment complex, it's hardly convenient for every dirty nappy my daughter produces (and there's a lot!) to be placed in a nappy bag and taken to the outside communal bins. It's not a good idea (however scented the nappy bags are) to build up a day's worth of bags in our standard bin at home, as the familiar 'dirty nappy smell' can permeate even the cleanest home in thirty minutes flat! This we knew, even before our little bundle of joy came along seven weeks ago today.

So, a few months prior to my giving birth, when we saw the Tommee Tippee Sangenic Hygiene Plus Starter Pack in our local branch of Mothercare, on sale at a fantastic £40, we jumped at it. The Sangenic set comprises of the Hygiene Plus Sangenic nappy bin, and six catridges.

The idea behind the nappy bin is a simple enough one. You insert a cartridge, which is a circular insert filled with what is best described as a 'sausage skin' of nappy-sack plastic, and tie off one end. When you open the bin, you push in a dirty nappy and any wipes to the plastic sack, then use a grey mini handle to twirl the sack closed. You then 'plunge' the lid down which opens up the next 'sack' ready for use. The bin fills up with a 'sausage string' of used nappies wrapped up in their sacks, and is emptied when needed - we empty ours three times a week on average, and that's with 8 - 10 nappy changes a day. The Sangenic has been a total Godsend in our home, meaning that we can hygenically dispose of numerous nappies without constant trips downstairs.

It's fairly economical, if you source your Sangenic cartridges effectively - usually I buy them on special offer in the supermarket at £8 for two, and their standard price seems to be around £5.50 each. It's far cheaper to buy them in multiples, and as they're fairly small, they're easy to store (and it's reassuring to know you always have plenty in - I tend to buy more when I am down to my last one or two, as each cartridge actually lasts a very respectable seven days for us). I must confess however to using my last £20 DooYoo voucher to buy six from Amazon for £18, a good price, and I'll probably keep on using my vouchers for Sangenic cartridges, making this review rather self-fulfilling!

I know that you can buy nappy sacks much cheaper (I myself buy the Tesco Value scented nappy sacks at something daft like 9p for 30, to use in my changing bag), and if you can get to your outdoor bin easily and frequently then you may not see the need for a Sangenic. But even if you aren't in an apartment like I am, you will certainly feel the benefit of not having a smelly bedroom or nursery when faced with night-time changes, poor weather, and even in hot weather, and certainly over Bank Holidays, when your outside bin may start to pong due to the lack of regular refuse collections.

It's easy as pie to empty the Sangenic bin. Once it becomes too full to easily push dirty nappies into, lift up the whole lid, and inside you'll find two hooks. One hook is for the knotted end of the new Sangenic cartridge. The other has a concealed (very safe) blade to cut off the remainder plastic, so all you need to do is unhook the knotted end and let loose, then cut off the free end and knot it. Then what I do is put an empty bin liner over the top of the Sangenic, and tip the bin upside down so the 'sausage' goes cleanly into the bin liner (I buy cheap bin liners especially for this task, though if you can feasibly carry the bin outside, you can simply tip the lot into the outside bin directly.) It is rather heavy though - two or three days of filled nappies tend to be - so I have to admit, I get my husband to take the emptied Sangenic into the bin outside! Then all you need to do is reknot the free end of the cartridge that's still in the bin, hook it over the hook provided, close the lid and you're ready to use it again. If the cartridge is empty but the bin isn't full, simply remove open it up, knot off the remainder and drop into the Sangenic, then install (push and click) the next cartridge, knot the free end and hook it over ready for use. The entire emptying / installing new cartridge operation takes less than five minutes in total and you'll be doing it without thinking after the first once or twice.

At an initial outlay of £40 on sale, with six weeks worth of cartridges, and around £4 a week thereafter, I personally find the Sangenic bin excellent value for money and a real asset to the nursery. Certainly my mother and mother in law find it a revelation, after having nothing of the sort when they had babies in nappies! I wouldn't be without it at all. It really is one of the things in my nursery that I am glad every single day that I made the decision to purchase.

You can buy Sangenic bins independently but the set when on offer is much better value for money and crucially it gives you that vital few weeks of 'headspace' when you first buy it for your newborn - it's one less thing to have to remember to purchase until your baby is a few weeks old and you're into a routine (that's what we found, anyway!) The Hygenic Plus is the 'model up' from the first Sangenic bin, which I have no experience of, but given that they are increasingly hard to find in the main baby retailers, I'd stick with this one as you know you'll always be able to find the cartridges in the main supermarkets in an emergency and online if you can't get out to buy them (as Amazon offers next day delivery).

You can buy compatible cartriges for the Sangenic and the Sangenic Hygiene Plus bins, unbranded on Ebay, much like you can buy compatible ink cartridges. I have never tried these and looking at the price there isn't much of a saving there for me to bother, as I can pick up the official Tommee Tippee ones for as low as £3 each. But if anyone does have any advice on these I'd love to hear it in the comments :)

Overall, I have to recommend the Tommee Tippee Sangenic Hygiene Plus Starter Pack, as it's been absolutely brilliant for us, and it's made our lives so much easier - and with a newborn, isn't that what any parent wants?

A very well deserved five out of five from me for a fantastically made, easy to use solution from Tommee Tippee.