Natural Personal Care Products

What is this motley group of non-descript bottles and tubes???

This would be a lineup of the hair, skin and teeth(!) products I use:

I was actually surprised when I started gathering these products for a picture...I hadn't realized the number of homemade products we are now using.

I've had no less than 4 or 5 friends (IRL) ask me over the past few weeks what personal care products I use...so I thought it would be good to do a post about it.  Or postS, actually...I'm going to break this up so it is not one super-long post!



I didn't switch all these products overnight.  Over the past 2 to 3 years I have slowly been transitioning to making these products myself.


**WHY** would I want to do that?

Well, I slowly became aware (I can be slow about things like this), that many of the ingredients in store-bought products are unsafe.  Some are suspected or known carcinogens.  Some are illegal in other countries.


But the products wouldn't be on our store shelves if they weren't safe, right?!?!?   This is totally what I  thought...but I was wrong!

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no authority to require companies to test products for safety. FDA does not review or approve the vast majority of products or ingredients before they go on the market. ("Myths on Cosmetic Safety", EWG's Skin Deep Cosmetics Database)

And a motto that is important to remember about products we use on our skin and hair:

"If you can't eat it, don't put it on your skin"

Why?  Our skin absorbs what goes on it.  That is how transdermal medicines (think nicotine and birth-control patches) work.

Like I said, I've transitioned s  l  o  w  l  y ...over the past two to three years.  Sometimes kicking and screaming, as I became aware of potential hazards of what we were using, and was just no longer comfortable using the store-bought alternatives.

But it actually hasn't been hard.  At all.

And a wonderful side-benefit?  Cost.  Most (just looked back at my picture) **All** of these products are cheaper than their store-bought cousins. Some use ingredients that are already on-hand...and some overlap on ingredients, which makes it even easier.

Over the next week or two (or three?) I will go through and do posts on each of the above products....stay tuned...

BUT, in the meantime...go check out the labels on the products that you use - and the ones you use on your children...if you dare.  Can you pronounce the names of the ingredients?  Do a little research.  Think all those ingredients that Johnson & Johnson uses are safe?  Think again.   This might be a good place to start doing your research...