Tag: essential oils in soaps - Timber Creek Farm

Castile Soap – Make Your Own Personal Care Products

How Castile Soap Has Replaced The Chemicals In Our House

It is like opening a can of worms, actually paying attention to the ingredients in every day cleaners, body washes, face washes, shampoo, hand soaps and more. It?s alarming, to say the least. The side effects of a lot of the ingredients range from mild skin irritant to nervous system toxicity to carcinogen. Lovely, huh? READ YOUR LABELS, FRIENDS. This is about when I started using became obsessed with EWG’s Skin Deep database.

Castile Soap

Finally, I discovered castile soap . It is concentrated and many uses call for it to be diluted. You can either pre-dilute or dilute as you are using it. On a side note, do not mix castile soap with vinegar- they will react and cancel each other out, becoming ineffective.

I began replacing items in my house using Dr. Bronners Castile Soap. In a previous article, I told you how I use the soap in my homemade baby wash. Here are the other ways we have incorporated this soap in our lives

? Body Wash

o Keep undiluted in the shower and squirt a tiny bit on a loofa or wash cloth and lather up!

? Hand Soap

o I use in a regular dispenser at a 1:1 ratio of soap to water, however it?s much better to use the regular castile soap in a foaming dispenser at a ratio of 1:5 , soap to water. In the regular dispensers, the soap clogs the dispenser and it will occasionally shoot out in any direction it pleases, I just unclog frequently so I don?t have to spend more money on foaming dispensers. Another method is to keep it in its original bottle by the sink and just use a small squirt to wash your hands.

? Face Wash

o For face wash I use the baby mild unscented version. I use a ratio of 1:1 soap to water and add 4 drops each of Lavender essential oil, Tea Tree essential oil and Frankincense essential oil. (My bottle is only 4 oz, so add more essential oil for a larger container)

? All- Purpose Cleaner

o You can find tons of different variations of all purpose cleaners using Castile soap online. For mine I use a 32 oz squirt bottle, add 3 Tablespoons of any scent castile soap and add 10-20 drops of Tea Tree essential oil. (again, do not mix with vinegar or another acidic ingredient, even lemon.)

There are many more uses for Castile soap, too! One of these is shampoo. You can find a recipe for this homemade shampoo over at our friend?s blog here Once Upon a Time in a Bed of Wildflowers.

If you?re interested in trying your hand at making your own Castile bar soap you can find a great recipe here

Simple Life Mom

And Little Owl Crunchy Momma has a perfect solution for making laundry soap.

I really hope this inspires you to start checking labels on your everyday use items. Even the ones that claim they are natural could still have potentially harmful ingredients. Many of the natural products out there are tainted by their choice in preservative. The cosmetic as well as the cleaning industries are not required to test the safety of their products, it is extremely under regulated. Cleaning products are not required to have their ingredients listed on the bottles. You can, however, find most product ingredients on the company?s website. There are good companies out there that offer safe and effective cleaning products as well as cosmetic companies that strive to make safe products if you do not want to make your own. If companies aren?t going to care about what they put in their products, you certainly should.

http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/2011/04/12/why-this-matters/