Suck it, Palmolive

I’m still working on my quest to reduce dependency on store-bought personal care items. This week I’ve made and started testing shampoo/conditioner, deodorant and anti-frizz curl definer. This might seem like a big step, but once you buy like 3 ingredients you just combine them in different ways so it was easy and made sense. Here’s how that’s going:

Shampoo/conditioner recipe:
Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap (no lye, all natural ingredients), tea tree oil, water, apple cider vinegar (you could add vitamin E oil but I didn’t want to buy any so I didn’t). It’s in a squirt bottle and I like it so far. I’ve only used it twice so far, and this time was way better than last time (my hair kind of looked not soft). The shampoo is really a two-in-one thanks the apple cider vinegar. I’m definitely opting to keep using it as so far it’s been fine and getting better. I’ll report back alter on after more extensive use!

Anti-frizz: just a couple dabs of coconut oil melted on my hand and rubbed through my wet hair. This is working AWESOME, as I barely use any at all (like less than a pea size) and my curls are defines but not wet-looking and stay all day long. It’s as good or better than the commercial stuff I’ve used so far. Bonus: I rub extra coconut oil on my hands into my hands for a nice easy moisturizer.

Note: coconut oil is solid until warmed by the sun or your body heat, and it doesn’t smell like coconuts. Also, the stuff I found was organic and will last forever.

For the deodorant (a simple mix of baking soda, a few tablespoons of coconut oil and cornstarch) is also a big win at least for day to day usage. I haven’t done any really smelly sweaty work using this yet, so I don’t know its range. But for day to day office, walking around town it’s awesome. The texture is the same as commercial deodorant, but when you rub it into your armpit (I just pinch off a pea sized amount) the coconut oil melts and lets it all rub in nicely. No mess, no smell, no aluminum or whatever trying to give you breast cancer. So far, big win on this one.

Next, to use the last of the Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap to make some dishwasher detergent…here’s hoping because it would be so cool to not rely on cascade or whomever.

Also next...the wonderful world of soapnuts, the apparently be-all and end-all of the cleaning world. Imagine, a natural berry that contains saponin, which can be used as laundry detergent, handsoap, dishwasher detergent and more. My sister is going to test this out a little bit, so we’ll see what she says.