Having read a lot about the side-effects of using antiperspirant – one of them being that antiperspirant is the single biggest cause of breast cancer, I started looking for a antiperspirant free deodorant.
I have used crystal deodorants sometimes, but find that it doesn’t work that well on me.
For the past year I have used my own homemade coconut oil deodorant and it works really well. Here is the recipe:
The essential oils are used for their antiviral, antibacterial, anti-fungal, and antiseptic qualities.
How to do it:
1. Mix baking soda and cornstarch in a small bowl 2. Add liquid coconut oil. Mix it 3. Add the essential oils and mix well 4. Store in a small airtight container. Full recipe fits 2 small containers.
I prefer to keep it on the container in the bathroom where I get ready in the morning. Sometimes it’s solid and sometimes it melts, but it can be applied either way.
I use my finger to scoop a little out (just enough to cover the tip of my pointer finger), then spread it out in my armpits. This is enough to last all day. I reapply if I have been outside sweating in the heat a lot. If you find that the deodorant is a bit stingy, just add a bit more coconut oil to dilute the mix.
One important thing to remember when you switch from an antiperspirant to this homemade recipe is that you will sweat with this deodorant, but not smell. That’s a bit of a transition if you’re used to not sweating when using a store-bought antiperspirant.
Like a normal stick deodorant, it can be prone to get white marks on dark clothing. To avoid this, don’t use too much and thoroughly work mixture into the skin before putting on clothes. If white does show up on clothing, just a little water will get it off.
Making your own toothpaste is very easy and saves you from having to use chemically produced toothpaste with glycerin and sodium flouride.
Glycerin gives toothpaste a nice creamy texture and coats the teeth for “protection”, but at the same time it also stops re-enamalization which essentially means that cavities can’t self-heal.
Sodium flouride is a by-product of aluminum manufacturing that can also be found in rat poisons and industrial pesticides).
Here is the recipe for making your own healthy toothpaste:
ingredients
6 tbsp coconut oil 6 tbsp baking soda 25 drops essential peppermint oil 1 tsp stevia (or more if you like it sweeter)
Directions:
1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Whip it really well to give it a light creamy texture.
2. Pour into a small jar and seal it up until ready to use.
I use a small stick to dip into the toothpaste and spread nicely onto the toothbrush. You can also just dip the toothbrush into the jar.
In order to avoid chemicals and save the environment; I make my own laundry soap. It works really well. No smelly clothes. In fact the clothes has no smell at all. And it also saves a lot of money 🙂 Very easy to make – all positive 🙂
The price of 20 litres of non-toxic, environmentally friendly easy-made laundry detergent is about 20 kr (3$). Any supermarket here selling this will charge you more than 50 kr for 1.5 litre
Here is how to make it:
Grate one bar of castile soap with a cheese grater or a food processor.
Put the grated soap in a pan with 2 quarts water and gradually heat, stirring constantly until soap is completely dissolved.
Put 15 litres of really hot tap water in a 17 litre bucket and stir in 2 cups of Washing Soda until completely dissolved.
Pour soap mixture from pan into the 17 litre bucket. Stir well.
Cover and leave overnight.
Shake or stir until smooth and pour into empty bottles. I use old water and coke bottles.
Use 1 cup per load of laundry. To retain colour and soften the water, I use a bit of vinegar each time.
Making washing soda is a very simple process. You basically need to bake “baking soda”.
Tools: An oven, a pan, a heat-proof utensil and the baking soda.
STEP 1:
Pour out the baking soda onto the oven-safe pan and spread it out to a thin layer. If you need a lot, use two pans.
Making washing soda
It is important that the layer is thin because that way the heat can penetrate all of it more quickly and you won’t have to keep your oven on for so long.
STEP 2:
Heat your oven to 200 – 230° C (400-450° F). Place the pan(s) of baking soda into your heated oven for about 1 – 1.5 hours. I stirred the baking soda around while it was in there.
DIY: Making washing soda
STEP 3:
The baking soda has turned to washing soda when it gets a slightly more grainy texture, less shiny, grey colour. Baking soda is fluffy, powdery, and slightly shiny.
STEP 4:
Remove your pan of washing soda from the oven and allow it to cool completely. Then use it to make your laundry detergent or just store it in a clearly labelled container. I usually make a lot and use part of it immediately to make liquid laundry soap and part of it I store (it takes much less space as powder than liquid laundry detergent).
This article will show you how to make your own castile soap bars. Buying natural or organic soap is very expensive today and unfortunately the healthy choice has become the expensive choice. And even if you are willing to pay the price for seemingly “natural products”, you will often find a long list of chemicals (non-natural additives) on the ingredient label on the back and think “what on earth is all this?”
I will advise you to never buy a product only judging from its name, because names these days are very deceptive (e.g. “herbal essence” which not only contains lots chemicals such as the carcinogen 1, 4-dioxane, which is known to cause cancer, but they also test on animals) and there is far between real natural products without chemicals inside.
This is what inspired me to make my own soap, deodorant, toothpaste, and cream. I simply couldn’t find products without chemicals – or rather I found very few (such as Miessence) but they are very expensive.
Making your own products is fairly simple, cheap and joyful….since you will be 100% sure that no additives have been added.
The recipe below uses proportions of oil and lye to create a PH balanced soap that will be very mild to the skin.
Here is the recipe for 7 bars of olive oil castile soap:
• 150g/ 164 ml coconut oil • 538 g/ 580 ml olive oil • 190-220 ml cold water • 92 g lye /sodium hydroxide/ caustic soda • 20 drops lemon oil (can use any kind of pure oils)
Alternatively you can make a double portion with half coconut oil and half olive oil. This will give you 14 bars of castile soap:
• 688 g coconut oil • 688 g olive oil • 509 ml cold water • 198 g lye /sodium hydroxide/ caustic soda • 1 tea spoon of lemon oil (you can use any kind of pure essential oil)
Here are the tools you need:
• A digital scale • 2 thermometers that can measure up to 93° Celsius/ 200° Fahrenheit. • A stick blender. • 1 high temperature plastic jars (to mix the sodium hydroxide and water). I use a plastic bucket • 1 plastic bucket to mix the sodium hydroxide mix with the oil mix) • 1 glass bowl for lye • 1 ceramic bowl for heating up the oil in the microwave • A long-handled plastic mixing spoon. • A ladle. • Soap molds – alternative you can use a water bottle (1.5 liters) and cut it open when taking the soap out.
Caution: Whenever working with lye you should use rubber gloves, protective glasses and long sleeved skirts and pants to protect your skin from accidental splashes of the liquid.
How to make the soap:
1. Add lye to water in a high temperature plastic container somewhere with fresh air (outside your house). Do not breathe fumes. Always add Lye to water (not reverse). Caution: Temperature of mixture will rise to approximately 91ºC / 195ºF. Stir mixture with plastic spoon. 2. Allow lye to cool (place in bowl of cold water to speed up cooling). 3. Mix oils and microwave to 43º C/ 110ºF (that’s about 2 minutes in my microwave). 4. When both solutions are at 43º C/ 110ºF, add lye solution to the oil mixture. Blend with stick blender until the mixture reaches “trace” where you can see a film on top of the soap that traces the line of the stick blender. Ladle into molds. 5. Leave it in the mold for the next two days. PH will be high and can burn the skin for the first 48 hrs. The PH will settle to neutral after this. 6. Place molds in freezer for 1 hour to help separate the soap from the molds. 7. Use plastic gloves when handling the soaps the first month. 8. If you use a plastic bottle to pour inside the liquid soap mix, cut up the bottle and take out the hardened soap mass and cut it into pieces. 9. Place the soaps on paper. 10. Allow 6-8 weeks to air dry before use.
Distilled water can be used to guarantee that the PH of the soap will be neutral when complete, and that no impurities are in the water that could affect the saponification process. In Denmark I just use tap water since that’s perfectly thing (very fortunate).
Lye (Sodium Hydroxide) can be purchased in cleaning section of many supermarkets. Make sure you buy the one that says 100% lye/ caustic soda/ sodium hydroxide.
