Homemade Deodorant

….but I am going to try making my own deodorant…

Since starting on the Waste Watcher’s campaign, (you can read all about it here)  one of things I have been doing is looking at what I am buying with reference to the waste that will be left at the end.

So with food-it is a case of trying to buy things with less/no packaging, or packaging that can be recycled.

And the same thing applies across the board, even with things like toiletries.

Now, most things in plastic bottles can be recycled (we now have a blue lidded wheelie bin in Wiltshire for plastic bottles and cardboard) as can aerosol cans (they can go in our kerbside black box) BUT what about roll-on deodorants? I don’t think these can be recycled in Wiltshire (although I am happy to be corrected), indeed, I am not even sure if they can be recycled at all.

So I am on a mission to make my own deodorant…

Is this (yet again..) a step too far..? We shall see if I end up with a body odour problem and no friends…

At the Green Clean workshop that I ‘helped’ with recently, Emma from Wiltshire Wildlife Trust showed us how to make a version of a deodorant from Neal’s Yard Remedies ‘Recipes for Natural Beauty’. And I got to take it home to test it….

If I’m being really honest, it is not that great. I tried it straight out of the shower, and it was just about ok for a ‘low impact’ day with little in the way of physical exertion (!) but really didn’t cut the mustard when I upped the pace a little! So I have been using my normal roll-on when I get out of the shower, and then using this as a ‘top-up’ instead of my normal aerosol. And it is just about coping (I am aware I am making myself sound like some extreme stinky sweater-I am not really..) BUT I want to find an effective alternative to my roll-on.

So after consulting Pinterest (you can see my DIY beauty and toiletries board here) and consulting the good people of social media-world, I have a recipe to try…(I was posted this recipe on FB by a friend-thankyou Claire!, but also found more detailed instructions here on Passionate Homemaking)

This is what you need:

• 6-8 tbsps of coconut oil in it’s solid state-I got mine from Summer Naturals-1oog for £1, and I used about half of it here. It has made a tub that looks like it will last me several months
• 1/4-1/2 cup of bicarbonate of soda-also available in bulk from Summer Naturals
• 1/4 cup of cornflour
• essential oils of your choice (I went with lemon and ta-tree oil-about 5 drops of lemon, and 3 of tea-tree)

This is what you do:

• mush it all together with a fork until it comes together into a paste

In the Passionate Homemaking post it says about scooping it into your old deodorant containers, but I have no idea how this would be achieved-anyone else have any clue?! Otherwise it suggests keeping it in a lidded container and using your fingers to apply a ‘light smear’. I was a little dubious about this, and had visions of big clumps of bicarb around my ‘pits and flaking off onto my clothes, but this stuff is like magic! The coconut oil must melt at body temperature, beacause as soon as you apply it, it just rubs in and disappears. A bit like deodorant..!!

I have now ‘road-tested’ it for a day or two, and….

…it works!

OK, so it wasn’t a massively smelly day-I didn’t go for a run or anything, but it more than stood up to a normal day’s activities.

Hubby very kindly (?) had a close up sniff of my arm-pit when I mentioned how pleased I was with it, and to quote him “I am getting a faint whiff..” (I think he means of BO) but then I am not sure he has ever had such a close encounter with my arm-pit after using ‘normal’ deodorant, so we have nothing to compare it to.

I am going to stop talking now, as I am aware that I may be coming as some stinky-pitted weirdo with an armpit sniffing hubby.

The things you do in pursuit of sustainable living…

(PS. Apologies if you have had this post twice-I pressed ‘publish’ instead of ‘schedule’ last night…!)