1. It takes a lot of time and devotion to research products, companies, ingredients, and options.
Here's the link to Part 1.
2. It is expensive.
3. We live blindly with the belief that if a doctor recommends it or if it's sold at Target, it must be fine for us.
Part 2 will address the second reason and my suggestions.
2. It is expensive.
I touched on this in my first post, but the biggest way around this is to realize that most of the household products we buy, we don't really need. Sounds too good to be true? Keep reading.
Are you willing to pay more for a product that has "green" or "natural" or "organic" claims on the label? Stop! Really, most of them are misleading scams and you are actually hampering your quest to get rid of toxins by spending more of your budget on things that are still toxic.
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| A great example of a "greenwasher." This product was rated a 7 by the EWG...it's NOT safe but touts itself as natural! |
Ask yourself how what people used to get the job done 100 years ago. The answer, for me, is usually that I have no idea. But let's be honest: our grandparents and great grandparents got along just fine. They weren't stinky Victorian-aged ruffle wearers who only bathed once a year. (Well, maybe yours were or still are, but I promise not everyone lived that way.) 100 years ago, folks lived with much less in general, but they still had clean houses, clean laundry, and clean bodies. You know what else they had? A much lower incidence of autism, asthma, environmental allergies, food allergies, etc. It absolutely makes sense to see if we can go back to the "simple" times and still get the job done without much heartache. No, I'm not asking you to have a pot of lye on your stove for making your own soap. Whoa. Let's not go back quite that far! Here's my list of "simple" ingredients and I use them for 99% of household jobs:
- White vinegar
- Apple cider vinegar
- Citrus vinegar
- Blue dawn dish soap
- Castillle soap
- Baking soda
- Bleach
- Ammonia
- Rubbing alcohol
Is that list too good to be true? Sometimes, yes. But most of the time, no. You can clean any surface in your house with some combination of these ingredients. I'll post recipes in a later post or two, but you can google recipes for every surface. Here we clean walls, windows, doors, carpet, microfiber couches, laminate floors, laminate counters, appliances, metal sinks, porcelain, doggie paws and faces, the washing machine drum, dishes, hair, skin, etc using these ingredients alone.
Disposable = costly and wasteful. We rarely use napkins and paper towels anymore. They've been replaced with dish towels, cloth napkins, t-shirt rags, and bamboo-cotton "paper" towels. Has it saved us thousands of dollars? Nope, not yet. But I honestly can't tell you the last time I purchased paper towels or napkins. I don't miss them either. We keep a roll of paper towels around for really icky or greasy messes. Other than that, there is a cloth option for everything else. And it barely adds to our laundry. Oh, and it makes eating Chinese leftovers that much fancier when you get two wipe noodle grease off of your nose with a cloth napkin! We used to go through a pack of Costco paper towels every three months. That equates to $80 of paper towels per year.
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| Who can resist the charm of these "unpaper towels"?? Soft and absorbent, they snap together to pull off the roll just like your normal paper towels. We use a mix of a similar product and a smaller towel made of birdseye cotton. Gets the job done BETTER than regular paper towels. |
So what do I still pay for? Dishwasher pods, laundry detergent, body wash, body lotion, toothpaste, coffee filters, face oil, toilet paper, contact solution, q-tips, cotton balls, and loofahs. That's what I could come up with off the top of my head. Most of these items are on this list because I haven't had time to research a suitable substitution...but I'm working on it.
Dishwasher pods: I've tried several homemade recipes to no avail. I think a combination of my unwillingness to use borax, our crappy dishwasher, and our water quality makes it hard for homemade recipes to succeed. I found that most of the time, only half of our dishes would come clean at any time, even with vigorous pre-rinsing and generous spacing of the dirty dishes. For now, we are using Method Smarty Dish Plus pods, which I linked to in an earlier post. They work well and while I question some of the ingredients, they're the safest effective option available right now. Oh, I also have a bag of Honest Co. dishwashing pods. So far, they seem to work equally well, but neither product is great when it comes to being safe and non-toxic. They are better than your average dishwasher pods, though.
Laundry detergent: Sort of the same story as the dishwasher pods. I tried a few recipes and they didn't work. It's probably my fault, but let me let you in on a little secret. Being non-toxic doesn't work for me if it involves laborious, time consuming steps. So no, I haven't ground up any bars of castille soap or fels-naptha. Probably the detergent recipes with these ingredients would work better. My other hesitation comes from the fact that we will be laundering cloth diapers soon and I want to NOT being doing science experiments with our detergent on the diapers. I would be heartbroken if I ruined any of our diapers (because they are SO stinkin' cute) and I'd be even more upset if my experiments caused a rash on baby. For now we're using Country Save powdered detergent and vinegar in the softener drawer. That's it. I don't even use dryer sheets, but I'm hoping to pickup some WAHM dryer balls in the next month to play with. I will also admit that I'm hoping to switch to soapnuts as soon as I can find them for a good price because they're CD-safe (cloth diaper safe) and completely natural.
Body wash: Full-disclosure...this paragraph might gross you out. That's fine. I don't use shampoo. I don't shower every day. Eeew. Gross. There you go. If I do vigorous activity, I shower. I still don't use shampoo, though. So what do I do? Well, if I feel like my hair needs more than water, I will dissolve some baking soda in a squirt bottle and hit the roots. Most of the time, water is all I need! The major exception is after swimming in chlorinated water. I definitely like to use a little Dr. Bronner's Baby Castille. The stuff is fantastic and gentle. I will also use a half/half mixture of apple cider vinegar and water for a conditioner. But when it comes to body wash, I don't feel like I'm clean unless I use something with bubbles. I found the Bronners a little too harsh for my skin so I picked up a bottle of Method Naked Body Wash one day when I was feeling desperate. I don't love it and I don't hate it. I have a bar of wash on order from the etsy shop called GudonyaToo and I can't wait to try it out. When it's gone, maybe I'll have the courage to try my own recipe based on some other recipes that I've found which use a mix of coconut oil, essential oils, and castille soap!
Toothpaste: I currently use and love Earthpaste. Super safe, super yummy and easy to get from vitacost.com. I know lots of people make their own, but I'm picky on flavor and texture and that isn't a burning building that I'll be running into anytime soon!
Coffee filters: I've actually seen great alternatives to disposable paper filters on etsy made of unbleached cotton and finished with French seams. BUT, my husband is the primary coffee maker in the house and we both decided it isn't worth the hassle of trying to scrub out that pesky coffee dust every morning. That would sort of sap the joy out of that first steaming cup. Besides, the filters we use now are organic, unbleached, cheap, and something with a low environmental impact from start to finish. We can feed 2 used ones per week (with the grounds) to our composting worms and will probably be able to feed even more once it warms up and the wormies find bigger appetites.
Face Oil: I can't live without maracuja oil and argan oil. Oils in general are something I will always have to pay for, and I'm alright with that. I get my face/body oils from amazon.com or vitacost.com and buy the mid-priced, organic, cold-pressed versions ideally in dark glass bottles with glass dropper lids. Since stumbling upon face oils, I no longer need or use any other face moisturizers except for sunscreen and the occasional hit of toner on bad days. If you think your skin is too greasy for an oil, you're wrong! Start with a lighter oil (like argan) and see how it goes.
The last items on the list (toilet paper, contact solution, q-tips, cotton balls, and loofahs) are there because they are things that I can't make efficiently or safely, for the most part. After I recover from the baby, I am switching to using single-ply flannel instead of toilet paper for pee only. If that grosses you out, just remember that after baby comes, we will be doing a load of laundry every day or every other day full of soiled diapers and soiled wipes so a dozen extra squares with a little adult pee on them won't be a big event for us! It'll save lots of toilet paper too because I can never seem to keep too much from unspooling. Finally, has anyone tried using natural sponges instead of loofahs? I keep hearing mixed things (like they fall apart really quickly) so I need to do more research on that one.
Well, I just realized that this post was supposed to show you that being non-toxic can be inexpensive, but instead I spent hours rambling on about the things that I still spend money on. Oops. Hopefully you picked up on the idea that we no longer buy most cleaning "solutions", beauty products, or paper towels. We will also be purchasing much less toilet paper. I'll post more "substitutions" in further posts to hopefully give you more ideas and solutions.
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