This time, I came across a site for homemade deodorant. I was pretty skeptical, though to be honest I’m not sure why I would be, since my homemade cleaners and bug sprays seem to work as well if not better than any chemicals from the store. But I was. However, after reading the reviews I decided to give it a try. The aluminum in most deodorants has been linked to Alzheimer’s, and since my grandmother has it, I’d like to do whatever I can to lessen the probability of me getting it too. If that means making my own deodorant, so be it. If it saves me money in the process (and it does, even using organic ingredients), even better. It took me all of five minutes to make, using ingredients I always have in the house anyway, so for me it was quicker than running out to the store too.

Natural Deodorant

• 5 TB coconut oil (I used extra-virgin, cold-pressed, organic)
• 1/4 cup baking soda
• 1/4 cup corn starch
• essential oil

Melt the coconut oil on low heat. Coconut oil has a very low melting point so it won’t take long. Remove from heat and add the baking soda and corn starch. Stir until smooth.

Add a few drops of essential oil depending on your preferences. I put five drops of tea tree oil for it’s antibacterial and antifungal properties, and orange because I love the smell. Next time, I might also add a couple of drops of lavender. Once it has cooled somewhat, give it another stir to prevent the oils from settling.

The only thing I forgot to do was figure out a container to put it in once it was done. All I had in the house were plastic, two-cup rubbermaid containers. It didn’t even fill one of those halfway. I like the idea of reusing an old deodorant container, except that coconut oil has such a low melting point that I would be worried about it leaking. It would have to be somewhere upright and it wouldn’t work for traveling. I think next time I will see if I can find some squat glass containers to use.

So far, it seems to work as well as any store-bought ones I have tried. The true test will be to see how it holds up over time though.

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Guidelines:

1) Link to Green Meme Bloggers. (use image if you like)
2) Link back to whoever tagged you. (no need to wait to be tagged!)
3) Include meme number
4) Include these guidelines in your post
5) Tag 3 other green bloggers.

1. Do you use baking soda toothpaste or baking soda shampoo? If not, would you consider it?

I use baking soda shampoo. My toothpaste is not homemade but does have baking soda in it and I would consider it a “green” toothpaste.

2. Do you make any home cleaning products?

Yep, pretty much all of my cleaners are homemade. Love them! And it’s so cheap.

3. What is your top green issue at the moment?

I really want to start composting but haven’t found a good composter for an affordable price. It’s something we’ll start this Spring though, even if it means having to buy one of the really expensive ones. I hate throwing away vegetable trimmings and food scraps that could be composted. I tend to freeze a lot of our veggie trimmings and either use them when I make stock, or bring them to the SPCA for the animals there.

4. Given unlimited cash, what is on your fantasy green wishlist?

An acreage I can homestead on. I’d love some chickens, a couple of goats, maybe a cow, and a lot of land to grow our own produce.

5. Have you implemented any new green act/behaviour/product this month?

We sold our car and chose not to buy another one. We’re going to try a car co-op instead.

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Like earwigs.  I’d never seen an earwig before moving out here.  I don’t know what it is about them, but I find them nasty.  I’m sure they exist in Alberta, but if they did we ignored each other and were both much happier that way.  Not so here.  I was lying in our hammock the other day, and it started raining earwigs on us.  I’m not kidding.  I don’t get freaked out by bugs, but I have to say that getting rained on by an already really creepy bug is a little much.  Needless to say, we moved the hammock out from under the big tree behind our house that I used to love.

There are other bugs too.  I worked at a vet clinic for 4 or 5 years in Calgary, and I saw a flea once.  The vets stuck it under the microscope and invited us all to come have a look, since none of us had ever seen one before.  Then I moved here.  I worked at a pet store my first year here.  That pet store has a program where they will house and feed a few cats at a time from the SPCA.  It was my job one time to take a couple of new kittens to the vets.  Turns out, they were both covered in fleas.  The vet said this very nonchalantly.  I was shocked.  “What does that mean?” “What should we do?” “Do we need to quarantine them?” She looked at me like I had two heads and handed me some flea drops to put on their necks.

Side note: Way to help the animals.  Advantage (and all the other big ones that I know of) has a huge poison symbol and the words: “Keep out of reach of children. Harmful if absorbed through the skin.”  So we’re dripping a poison that clearly states on the warning label not to allow it to come into contact with skin, on to their skin…  Remember what I said in an earlier post about cats being like canaries?  Still applies here…

Then we got our pets and experienced fleas for ourselves.  The bites I got turned huge, red, and itchy.  I refused to use flea collars and drops on the pets though, and discovered diatomaceous earth instead.  Now, the fleas don’t bother us.  I think feeding the animals a raw diet helps too, but when we do have problems I use diatomaceous earth and that seems to solve it.  I’ve never had to use it more than once or twice a summer.

I think the worst part for me right now is the mold.  I was shocked when I saw mold on our ceiling.  I mentioned it to a native BC’er and his comment was “So? You’ve probably got it on the windows too.”  We did.  We had someone come in and look at it, and it’s covering our attic too.  And while 99% of the time we really love living in a co-op, this is one time that it’s not so good.  With a landlord, we could tell them to fix it and they would fix it and quite possibly our rent would decrease while that happens.  In a co-op, it’s more likely the rent will have to increase in order to fix it.  There are all sorts of hoops that have to be jumped through, and since it’s likely in all the roofs it’s going to be extremely expensive.  We’re going to have an air quality test done probably next week to determine how bad the air is.  If it’s really bad I’m going to buy an air filter.  (Unfortunately, the co-op won’t pay for it.)

I’ve tried to clean the visible stuff numerous times with no luck.  People kept advising me to use bleach, but I’ve been  a bit hesitant.  For one thing, I’m not as worried about the visible stuff as I am about the stuff in the attic anyway.  For another, I haven’t even owned bleach in years.  I finally bought a bottle of bleach, and the next day someone gave me a recipe to try.  It was a bucket of soapy water with lemon juice, and add 20 drops of tea tree oil and 20 drops of lavender.  I was skeptical, but tried it out, and it worked fabulously.  So now no more visible mold on our windows/ceiling.  Though after cleaning the mold off, we realized there are tiny little holes going up through the ceiling where the mold was.  I don’t know if they were there before and that’s how the mold got down from the attic, or if the mold caused the holes.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what the air quality test shows.

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1. Homemade Deodorant

Here is some information about Deet from the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry.  From that site: “The most frequently reported symptoms of DEET toxicity in children were lethargy, headaches, tremors, involuntary movements, seizures, and convulsions.”  From Wikipedia: “As a precaution, manufacturers advise that DEET products should not be used under clothing or on damaged skin, and that preparations be washed off after they are no longer needed or between applications.”  There are many other sites that cite studies and research regarding the health effects of Deet, but likely I’m preaching to the choir on this blog so I won’t elaborate further.

So why do people use Deet? It’s often been touted as the most effective bug repellent.  The effectiveness of citronella (which is one of the most popular ingredients in natural bug sprays) is debated, with the best result I’ve been able to find being 19 minutes.

A 2002 study by the University of North Carolina and the University of Florida (published in the New England Journal of Medicine), found that products containing about 24 per cent DEET protected people for almost four hours. By contrast, products with citronella provided just 19 minutes of protection. The study said the most effective natural repellents contained eucalyptus oil, which provided almost two hours of protection from bugs.

I have seen sprays available with eucalyptus oils, which doesn’t have the known toxicity of Deet and lasts about half the time.  Another very interesting natural bug spray I have been using for the past couple of years with great luck is catnip.  The insect-repellent qualities were actually first reported in the 1960′s by Thomas Eisner.  More recently, two researchers reported their results of studies done on the effectiveness of catnip at the American Chemical Society in 2001.  They actually found that catnip worked better than Deet.  One thing to note is that while their results showed that catnip repelled more mosquitoes than Deet, it doesn’t say anything about how long that effectiveness will last.

Catnip is best known for making cats crazy.  But is it safe for use on our skin?  I haven’t found a lot of safety data for it.  There are cautions for pregnant and lactating women to avoid it due to a lack of safety information, which basically means it could be safe, but we don’t know.  However, it has been eaten and steeped in teas for generations for a variety of ailments, so it doesn’t seem to have to toxicity when ingested that Deet does.  Also, cats are known to be much more sensitive than dogs and humans (much like canaries), and it has been established that catnip is safe for them.

Given all of the above, I’m fairly comfortable using catnip bug sprays, especially considering the alternatives.  I try and keep it to a minimum, using them only when I’m walking in areas or at a time when I know there will be a lot of mosquitoes out.  Mosquitoes love me normally, and I react strongly to their bites, getting enormous red welts wherever one of them has snacked.  I try and wear long sleeves/pants, and spray my clothes rather than my skin.  Meredith hasn’t seemed to get any bites yet, so we don’t spray her unless the mosquitoes are extremely bad (and again, only her clothes).  I think we’ve only used it once on her.

I’ve found it very difficult to find bug sprays that aren’t citronella based.  I don’t know how citronella got its reputation as a great bug spray considering the evidence that it really doesn’t work.  So I did some searching and found some recipes for making your own, and thought I would share a couple of them.  I’ve also added these to my Earth-Friendly Products page.

Catnip is easy to grow, and you can add the herbs to apple cider vinegar in a jar, shake frequently for two to three weeks, and then strain and rub the liquid on or put it in a spray bottle.

You can also use the essential oil.  I’ve seen various combinations of oils suggested, including pennyroyal (with cautions not to use on pregnant women or small children), tea tree oil, eucalyptus, and cedarwood.  Use a carrier oil as a base.  Neem oil and soybean oil are also known to repel mosquitoes, so might be a good choice for the base.  Even a 1% concentration of catnip oil has been shown to be effective.  A 5-10% concentration would be about 2.5-5tsps of pure catnip oil to 1 cup of carrier oil.

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For me, the worst is chemical cleaners. I hate them. I can’t stand the smell and they make me feel claustrophobic, plus they give me headaches. One of the very first things I did when I moved in with Kris was buy a book about natural cleaners and make some of my own. I was amazed at how well they work, and they are way cheaper than the store-bought ones. Plus if I run out I almost always have the ingredients on hand to quickly make more. I’ve posted some of my recipes here: Earth-Friendly Cleaners. These are cheaper to use, easy to make, and I don’t have to worry about venting my rooms or whether Meredith is crawling on the floor ten minutes after mopping it.

Cosmetics and perfumes are another big one for me. A little bit of perfume is fine for people who like it, but I avoid those people who douse themselves with it the same as I avoid a smoker on the street. It makes me cough and feel gross. I don’t like the smell of make up on myself, and never used it even as a teen.

Sunscreen is a big culprit. I recently read an entry on one of my favorite natural health blogs about sunscreen and whether it’s really as important as we’ve come to think: Throw Away the Sunscreen. I’m not ready to throw away the sunscreen yet, but we use a physical sunscreen with no parabens or fragrance sparingly and otherwise try to limit exposure in the sun in the afternoons. We cover up and stay in the shade when possible.

Shampoo, conditioner, and soaps seem like a huge part of every day life. Part of the reason our life expectancy goes up and disease rates go down is attributed to cleaner living conditions. This is true to an extent, but at times we replace one problem for another. The Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database gives sometimes frightening information about these products. There is an “extra-gentle” shampoo for kids whose ingredients are linked to: cancer, developmental/reproductive toxicity, allergies/immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, organ system toxicity, irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), enhanced skin absorption, contamination concerns, and biochemical or cellular level changes. (The Skin Deep site is a great read for choosing cosmetics and cleaners. They link to studies and explain the reasoning behind all of their ratings.) Since I stopped using shampoo and conditioner (see Annie’s post for what I do now) I’ve actually noticed an improvement in my hair. It’s less greasy, doesn’t tangle, and I don’t need to wash it as often. I use handmade soaps or baking soda for my body. We’ve only used soap on Meredith once, and it was a little bit of Dr. Bronner’s on her body. Otherwise, water does the job just fine. Deodorant is one place that I feel stuck at sometimes. I know that deodorants with aluminum in them have been linked to Alzheimers, among other things, but I tend to sweat a lot. However, this year I don’t seem to have nearly the problem I used to. I wonder if it’s because we’re making such a big effort to eat better? I use Green Beaver deodorant now and it seems to work really well too. I’ve tried the crystals and they don’t work well for me.

While it has its place, antibacterial soap on a regular basis is unnecessary and, often, worse than useless. I was a microbiology major in university (I don’t have a degree but that’s another story for another time). We got to grow bacteria on petri plates and then try to kill it off. The bacteria that antibacterial soaps worked on, worked well, but when it didn’t work it often didn’t work at all. Regular soap did a better job. And the more you use antibacterial soap, the more resistant the bacteria become to it, so when you really need it, it may not work. (And along these same lines, vinegar was about equal with bleach when it came to destroying bacteria. I don’t have bleach in my house, we use vinegar and sometimes the sun if we need a little extra.)

I’m not a germophobe in any shape or form. I think one thing people don’t realize is that germs, even “bad” ones, are actually necessary and good for us. Most people have heard that kids growing up on farms are often healthier than kids growing up in a sterile environment. This is because the farm kids are exposed to small amounts of all sorts of different bacteria every day. Their immune systems learn how to handle those germs, and my own theory is that, like anything else, the immune system needs practice to stay in shape. A kid growing up in a sterile environment who gets exposed to even a small amount of bacteria may not be able to handle it, and so they become sick. A farm kid who is exposed to a large amount of a bacteria they’ve never been exposed to before is probably far better equipped to fight it off, especially if the immune system is allowed to do its job without fever-reducing medications. (These examples are obviously very simplistic, but hopefully the point is clear.)

I use Green Beaver toothpaste too. Check out the warnings for one of the toothpastes I have used in the past. There is a lot of controversy about fluoride lately, and from the reading I’ve done my opinion is that it should not be added to our water and parents should have a choice about whether their kids should be exposed. I would choose not to use it. Green Beaver toothpastes have xylitol in them which has been shown to clean teeth and doesn’t have the toxicity associated with it that fluoride does.

Until recently, laundry detergent has been an issue for me. Our skin is the biggest organ in our bodies and absorbs everything, yet we use toxic laundry detergents every day. I stopped using dryer sheets and started using dryer balls instead years ago (which saves me money too, since they last years so no more buying dryer sheets). I also will often add a little vinegar to the final rinse to help rinse out any detergent and it doubles as a fabric softener. I have tried all sorts of “natural” laundry detergents, but some had funny smells, or still had chemicals in them I’d rather avoid. I recently discovered soap nuts, which are natural and scent free. They leave my clothes soft and clean, and I can add essential oil to the wash if I want to. (Though I don’t add oil to diaper loads as I’ve read it can coat the diapers.) Soap nuts can also be used to make hand soap, dishwashing soap, and cleaners.

All right, there is lots more I could talk about along these lines, but this is long enough. It is one of my own personal “causes” I guess you could say, since I think some people are more worried about bacteria than about chemicals in cleaners, which is backwards. I learned a lot about both in university and doing my own research. Our bodies have evolved to handle bacterias and germs, but chemicals are new and are doing a lot of damage to us and to our children. (Which could get me started on vaccines too, but again, another post for another time.)

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So I grew up with a love of nature and the outdoors. When I was 18 I moved away from home with my best friend. She was a neat freak, and would use Lysol, Mr Clean, etc a few times a week to clean our kitchen, our bathroom, our windows… I got lots of headaches, and I knew they were probably connected to all those cleaners. I’d also discovered through my biology degree that germs and bacteria really aren’t as scary as those companies like to tell you they are, and that even the so-called “bad” bacteria could be useful to us.

I couldn’t convince my friend to stop using them, but I bought a book (Clean House Clean Planet) on how to make my own natural cleaners, and from the day I moved out I’ve been using those instead. I was amazed at how well they worked, some of them even work better than any commercial cleaner I’ve ever used. I think that success really helped me see that my ideas I had growing up about chemicals and toxins really aren’t as crazy as I thought they might be, and led me to be willing to question many other practices that were acknowledged as “safe,” like vaccination and the foods we eat.

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