Hippie at Heart - Making Toothpaste, Deodorant, and Shampoo

     I am what I refer to as a hippie at heart. I love the idea of being more natural and environmentally friendly, but I am so sold on convenience. With a busy college and work schedule as well as the lack of money associate with going to school I thought becoming more environmentally friendly just wasn't something I could make a priority. The upside to my situation is that I am pretty adventurous, willing to try almost anything at least once, and usually giving whatever I am trying a sporting chance. Wait, I may have lead y'all astray just a bit…. I'll give most things a try as long as it doesn't take too much time or effort lol.

     My favorite cream shaving cream (Eos, I LOVE their lip balm as well) was getting hard to justify shelling out dough for, so I started a google search for homemade shaving cream. As Google often does, it was completing my sentence for me, and one of the options was homemade shampoo…. I was intrigued and tired (leading to easy distraction) so I temporarily abandoned my original search and persued this new idea. Upon investigation it took just a few ingredients to make this shampoo, and already owning my favorite essential oils meant I could have it smell like peppermint and lavender, AWESOME! In my distraction I also stumbled across homemade deodorant. I set out the next day to obtain some ingredients. I went to HEB first, but the location I went to was lacking. I could have likely gone to the less ghetto one, but a natural food store was closer, and I DO like supporting the local economy. :)

     I am glad I decided on the natural food store instead of the other HEB because the employees where even able to give me all kinds of help, including discussing a recipe for toothpaste. The toothpaste only required maybe one item I wasn't planning on getting already, so I decided I was going to try that as well. 

     Ever the passionate, excited person that I am I tweeted and facebooked about making my own shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste. I made my mother some tea tree shampoo first (she loved some tea tree shampoo she had obtained one time, but couldn't justify spending  so much on it regularly), then proceeded to make the other care items for myself. The number one thing I was pleased and shocked about was how easy it all was to do. I literally just poured a few things in a bottle for the shampoo. The hardest one was the deodorant, and that because with it's relatively low melting temperature it was difficult to get it into the old deodorant tube I had washed out without just a bit off mess. Other positives include getting to smell like whatever combination of essential oils I want, the sheer amount of deodorant yielded (a good bit more then a normal tube) and then of course the fact that all of this is more environmentally friendly and natural. The biggest 3 cons I have found is that I literally have to keep my deodorant in the fridge, and that I don't yet have a convenient way to bring my toothpaste in my backpack and that the toothpaste isn't exactly tasty. So as far as I'm concerned, no major problems. 

     I will be posting later some more information on how these, and other more environmentally-friendly choices I have made/tried are working. :) ta-ta!