Mar. 14: Jen follows up the D-I-Y post

Way back yonder in my blog I posted links to a bunch of recipes for cleaning products that used normal-ish ingredients. I was eager to rid our home of as many unpronounceable chemicals as possible, and things were going well.

Until I noticed, after using the laundry detergent for several months…

It made our whites all grey and ugly.

I don’t recommend the detergent recipe anymore unless you don’t care about your whites being white. Did the homemade detergent get the clothes clean? Yes, ma’am. Did it make them smell good? It made them smell okay-ish. Did it whiten and brighten where it should? Not even a little. I’m back to Tide and Oxy-Clean.

The other recipe I am un-recommending from that post is the fabric softener, an incredibly messy and not-worth-it exercise in good intentions. It made our clothes soft but the messiness factor got to be too much and we have decided to give it a big thumbs down. I’ve gone back to dryer sheets, which I don’t love, but they certainly are easy. I’m looking into dryer balls or steam softeners to avoid those hateful chemicals, but haven’t tried anything yet that I’m ready to commit to.

I stand by the rest of the recommendations in that post, and I have some more. Yay! You are happy to hear that, I pretend!

Coconut oil. I’ve been using it as a moisturizer and I LOVE it. It smells yummy, and it’s solid at or below 75° so a small chunk turns to liquid as soon as you touch it to your skin. Some people say coconut oil dries out your skin, but a lot more say it’s one of the best natural moisturizers out there. It works great for me. The greasiness disappears really quickly. Here are a gazillion ideas for how coconut oil can be used.

One of the skin care items that’s hardest for me to surrender is Bag Balm. We started using it for the kids’ diaper rash, and kept buying it because it heals the skin so well for just about everything else too (DISCLAIMER: may not work as effectively on broken bones or deep/gaping/spurting wounds, but I can’t say I’ve tried). I want to stop using ALL petroleum products (here’s a blogger’s explanation why) but dang it, Bag Balm is a favorite. In its place I’ve been using pure aloe—great for soothing my brow skin after a waxin’—and coconut oil—for extra-dry hands and heels—but haven’t found ONE exact potion to completely replace my beloved Bag Balm. More research required.

Carmex is another tough thing to give up. I’ve made some lip balms that work pretty well though—they are a combo of coconut oil, grapeseed oil, essential oils, and beeswax, mostly—and am planning to tweak my recipe until I get it just right. I’ve done some research on anti-wrinkle potions too, that are very similar.

Neosporin can be made using essential oils. I haven’t tried it yet.

Have you hear of oil pulling? It sounds crazy! Of course, I’m also totally curious.

Alright, that’s enough kooky witch doctor talk for now. Besides, this high fructose veal syrup with a trans fat chaser isn’t going to ingest itself. I need to get busy!