It’s about to get interesting. This year I’m hoping to roll up my sleeves and try making some of the products we use everyday from scratch. The reason isn’t so much to save money here, because it’s pretty easy to get your regular, everyday health/hygiene/household products for cheap when you use coupons paired with a sale.
No, I’m going to do this for my family’s health. Many of the products we use to clean our homes and our bodies are full of chemicals and other compounds linked to cancer. Yikes!
Since we discovered this information over a year ago, we’ve slowly been doing away with the old familiar products we’ve used in our home and on our bodies and started replacing them with safer, more natural, and organic items instead. For instance…
We replaced our face and body lotions with organic body lotions and more recently, coconut oil.
We now use fluoride-free toothpaste.
We use eco-friendly chap-stick.
I use paraban-free shaving cream.
After my beloved “hair lotion” ran out to keep my “fly-away” hairs down (and shiny), I started using coconut oil on my hair instead.
We use paraban-free body wash.
We use aluminum-free deodorant.
These are just some of the things we’ve done to improve our health in the long run. And the products we are using have been great, mostly. It’s been tough to find a good aluminum-free deodorant, and we had one fluoride-free toothpaste that no one in our family cared for except me. Then there are products that we have yet to replace or haven’t found an adequate replacement for. Those are the products I mainly want to focus on making for my DIY Projects this year.
So, here’s my 2012 list of projects shown in the months I want to complete them in….
February: Liquid Hand Soap
March: Face Wash (love that this face wash removes makeup, too)
April: Deodorant
May: Baby Wipes
June: Hair Detangler
July: Diaper Cream
August: All-Purpose Cleaner
September: Mouthwash
October: Coffee Creamer (using organic ingredients)
November: To be determined….I’m leaving this open because I know I’ll read a blog post on some amazing homemade product that I’ll want to try. When I do, I can add it here.
December: Cinnamon Rolls (throwing this one in for fun and the holidays π I’ll be trying out a recipe from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook using as many organic ingredients as possible.)
I’m hoping lots of these projects turn out to be major successes.
Are you planning on making things more homemade this year? Are there any recipes you can recommend?
*linked up to Frugal Friday at Lifeasmom.com
A few weeks ago I came across a raw honey face wash at Crunchy Betty’s website – started using it – the first week my face was peeling without being red – and now it looks better than it ever has! I highly recommend
Thanks, K! That is wonderful.
I will have to try some of these myself I am always on the look out for new make at home alternative.
Thanks for stopping by, Shelly! I am hoping that a lot of these recipes are winners and that I’ll learn a lot about making homemade products in the process.