Cleaning the Green Family

In a continuation of my post, Cleaning the Green House, I was thinking I should write a post about green personal products.  Except that our experience with these is just starting, really, and we don't have a lot to share.  What can I say, we're a work in progress!

We have tried The Body Shop line of products, and I'm a big fan of their green tea facial cleanser and satsuma lip balm.  I've also used some products from Lush, and I love them, especially the bath bombs, but they are very expensive and strongly scented.  Although, according to the blog http://www.myplasticfreelife.com/, Lush can ship products without a lot of the harmful packaging you find with other personal cleansers, which is a big plus if you are attempting to decrease your garbage output.  Check out this post here to see the email Lush responded to her with.  In the past I've also tried Dr. Bronner's soaps, which give you a nice clean scent (I like the Lavender, personally) and something to read in the shower as well!  But, we haven't really settled on a solution and for the most part the whole family uses a brand name baby wash at the moment while Mama tries to figure out what the alternative is.

My makeup routine is pretty minimal most days although I have tried a few greener products, including ones from, again, The Body Shop (mostly lipstick and powder) and a natural powder from the Wet 'n Wild line, which seemed to be natural mostly because it was packaged in recylced paper instead of plastic.  Which is fine, just not really, you know, natural per se.  I also splurged on a shaping wax by Aveda for my hair when I cut it a few months ago.  It was very expensive, somewhere in the $20 region, but to it's credit it has worked well, when I've bothered to use it, that is.  The shaping wax is packaged in 99% post-consumer plastic and Aveda uses wind energy to make their products.  Aveda also markets itself as having plant-based products, which I think is a little vague (are other products not plant based?  What does plant based mean, exactly?) but you know what?  At least it's a start.

I've also begun making a bit of headway into switching deoderants.  I tried a stick deoderant from Tom's of Maine, but found that I had a reaction to it and got a bit discouraged.  A friend suggested I try the Naturally Fresh deoderant crystal and I went and bought one.  It was expensive for deoderant, over $7, but my friend assured me that she had been using the same crystal for two years and it was still going strong.  I have had better luck with the crystal, which is made of mineral salts, and my only complaint would be that for it to be truly effective you need to wash and shave before each application, which is a few extra minutes in the bathroom that I don't always have every morning.

Before I can really tackle the soap and shampoo issue I'm going to need to figure out our toothpaste situation, because the baby is swiftly becoming a toddler and has six teeth that I should be brushing with something!  So far I've just been browsing, but I think I might try Green Beaver for a child and adult friendly natural toothpaste solution once our current tubes are gone.  I've also got a baby-sized toothbrush for him, but have been debating trying a natural bristled toothbrush since they are reasonably priced at my local store (about $3).

As you can see we're not as far along with our personal care products as we are with our cleaners, but we're slowly working on it.  And I can't stress it enough that, for us, this has been a slow journey.  Jumping into a whole new lifestyle might work for some, but we have found that slowly acclimatizing ourselves to new products and a new way of thinking about our house and bodies has been the best solution for our family.