happy arm pits = happy planet

In our never-ending quest to live a greener lifestyle, one of the major changes we've recently made is switching many of our personal care products to more eco-friendly and healthier options. After watching this video about The Story of Cosmetics as well as just doing a heck of a lot of research on my own, mostly through the Environmental Working Group's website, my eyes have been open to the hazardous toxins we put on our bodies every day. Did you know that the personal care products industry has NO regulations as to what ingredients they put in their products? AND, even worse, these companies don't legally need to disclose the ingredients on the label. So, we literally have no idea what we're putting on our bodies. The problem with that is these prodcuts contain thousands of toxic chemicals. And those chemicals get absorbed into our bloodstream, mostly through our skin. But you can read all about that on the above mentioned websites.

Our family has already changed all our cleaning products. (But that's for another post.) And we've made many other eco-friendly changes as well. But the thought of changing our personal care products was downright overwhelming. What I have discovered is that making these changes wasn't as scary as I had originally thought. In fact, I love it. I am much more knowledgeable and totally empowered. I'm happy to make these changes for the health of our family AND the health of our planet.

My friend, Lisa, posted on her blog about the homemade deodorant recipe she used. So a few months ago I made the exact same recipe. It was freakishly easy (and kindof fun!). I will tell you right now that I have very VERY powerful arm pits. They can sweat on the coldest of days. Literally. All my life I've had sweaty pits (I'm blaming that gene on my dad's side of the family...) and I've never found a deodorant that I've been totally happy with (that was affordable). Even the eco-friendly brands of deodorant haven't worked. Well, they worked for about a month and then instead of masking any odors, my pits decided to constantly smell like a high school boys football locker room after a hot August afternoon practice. Yuk. I'm happy to report that this homemade deodorant recipe has been fantastic! It is by far the best deodorant I've EVER used and there has only been one day that I noticed any odor under my pits, and that was on a non-shower day.....I've been using it for a few months now and I think I'm kindof in love with it. My husband even uses it and likes it too. Here's the recipe:

1/4 cup baking soda

1/4 cup corn startch

6 Tablespoons coconut oil

Mix all together till it is solid-ish and then mash into your container. Matt wanted his in a deodorant container. So, we cleaned out the remains of an old deodorant container and mashed some homemade deodorant in it. But for me? That wasn't happening. The coconut oil starts to melt at around 76 degrees, which if you recall, your body is warmer than that. So, when you start applying it to your pits, it starts to melt. And then it runs down the side of the deodorant stick. Not ideal for me. For some reason, my husband doesn't seem to mind this. I decided to just put some in a small plastic container. And I just scoop out a VERY tiny amount with my fingers and apply.

So its better for my armpits because I'm not adding nasty toxic chemicals like aluminum into my bloodstream. And its better for the environment because I'm not throwing away old deodorant tubes. And its better for our budget as well. I figured out that it costs approximately $1.60 to make one batch of deodorant that will last both of us for months. MONTHS. Not too shabby, even for this coupon-clipping mama.