Day one of Deodorant from home

I had some friends over today, some close friends. Before my shower I got a friend to do a sniff test for my homemade deodorant. I had put it on last night, slept a normal night and then broke a sweat cleaning. She didn't even catch a whiff of anything funky. IT WORKS! I also have a feeling that my nightmare of white pit stains on my black shirts and clumpy deodorant pits are behind me. It's a lotion! It sinks into your skin and I daresay it will help improve the skin irritation from shaving too! So far no skin reactions anywhere, under-boob or otherwise. Can you tell I am enthusiastic? I can't wait to update for a week or even a month of happy pits and nostrils.

This is also the completion of week one on the "No Shampoo" experiment. Some would say it's a necessity but I think back to our Native American days where all we has was a lake to bathe in. I found a website with the suggestion of 1 tbs. Baking Soda to 1 cup of water for a "shampoo" concoction. I found it's hard to do, it's quite watery and I prefer more of a paste style created from mixing as little water as possible then using it exactly like shampoo. A bit gritty but so far my dandruff is much decreased and a box of baking soda goes for $.52!

Follow up with... "conditioner" any mix of water and Apple Cider Vinegar that suits your nostrils. I actually like the smell and it will rinse out of your hair with enough time under the faucet. If you want a nice mild proportion to start out with they suggest 2 tbs. per cup of water. I use it like any other rinse, with the bottle of my "ACV conditioner" I pour it directly onto my scalp and hair making sure my hair is wet and cold to make sure it's in there good, it's cheap, I use a lot. Let it set for a min. or two and then rinse for as long as you still smell vinegar. After my hair is all dry it's soft and shiny and clean as a... clean head of hair. hee hee. Just ask I'll let you fluff and molest my hair for proof.

I have some websites a friend mentioned to go through and if there are any suggestions let me be your personal guinea pig.

My beginning to an end

So lately I've been looking at how much money my family spends on luxury items such as shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, lotion, even toothpaste. Often times I wonder how we evolved to needing so many things to feel our best day to day. Our ancestors didn't have zinc oxide or special fragrances and they still thrived. How can we bring things back to basics and be more thrifty at the same time? Lately I've been perusing "naturalist" websites and blogs picking out the overly intensive ones (ie. go milk your goat). So here are the trials and tribulations of my attempt at a more Humble approach to modern Luxuries.

The Deodorant Cream

A few days ago I was on Facebook ranting about the lack of deodorant for breasts. If you are a chesty woman you know that once summer hits the cleavage starts to offend. Don't pretend you haven't felt the sweat or caught a whiff of something funky. It's ok, your secret is safe with me. I've tried regular deodorant on that area before with disasters results, rash and pain you don't want to feel in that area. On Facebook my cousin linked a costly lotion deodorant and I got curious about how prevalent these cream deodorants are in the world. I found two websites with the same recipe. Angry Chicken and Hub Pages' Homemade Cream Deodorant.

So I went about finding all my ingredients. I only had to go two places, the local Walmart, and a natural food store. Walmart had the Cornstarch for $1.00, Baking Soda for $.52, Essential Oil for $1.89, Vitamin E for $4.44 and I got some eye droppers to dole out the oil for $1.49. So $9.34 plus applicable taxes. At the local natural food center i found Cocoa Butter for $8.30 and Shea Butter for $9.25 for a total spending of $26.89. Kinda steep I know. Hang in there with me. Using the quantities given it makes 4 oz of deodorant that will last 2-3 months, not accounting for if you freeze it or not, and you only used 1/4 of what you bought. So if it is too much to stomach go in on it with a friend and make a few batches so you can play around with scents too! So to my experiment....

The ingredients:

Everything you will need, minus the baking powder oops!

3 Tablespoons Cocoa Butter
2 Tablespoons Shea Butter - I accidentally put in 3
3 Tablespoons Baking Soda
2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
2 Vitamin E Capsules
16 drops of Essential Oils

First you want to combine all the non liquid ingredients, the Cocoa Butter, Shea butter, Baking Soda, and Cornstarch in your microwave safe bowl and nuke it for about 30 seconds at a time. I defiantly found that the difficulty of the cocoa butter was and issue i tried warming it alone just to get it out of the jar and then stabbing it with a spoon to break it up which helped when mixing everything together, it melted faster in little chunks.

 Stab that Cocoa!

 Once everybody is mixed and co-mingling happily stir in those oils. Puncture the capsules safely and squeeze them into your mix, I used a toothpick. Once you are satisfied with the smell and mixture pour it into any small bottles you might have lying around from other lotions, re-purpose those jars!

I found two jars I haven't known what to do with just sitting in my room.

Let everything set up in the fridge for an hour or so and check out how quick it melts at the human touch. It slides on just like a lotion and you can really put it anywhere. You know exactly what is in it so if you have allergies or sensitivities to anything you know if it will hurt or not. 

I haven't found that the excess Shea Butter has hurt it much, it's probably a little softer and easier to melt but it will reset at room temperature. So far I am super happy.