Home-made Non-Toxic Chemical-Free Unhyphenated-Glue

So sorry about that title - I think I'm funny.

Anyhow I had a craft in mind that was going to call for glue and shocker of shockers I preferred to keep my project as natural and child-safe as I felt I could.

I found this recipe for home-made glue using a simple Google search.

I got all my materials together.

Put the flour into the jar first.

Then water.

Then the sugar and vinegar.

I gave it a good shake but saw there was still a noticable amount of flour at the bottom so I used an iced tea spoon to reach in and stir the rest of the mix.

I tried the glue out and it was a bit watery and didn't seem to be bonding my items at all.

I ended up just using Gorilla Glue to make sure my choking hazard wouldn't be coming off any time soon.

After letting the glue sit for a while the glue would separate so I would just  shake the jar a bit.

After all that work when I began to write my post I realized I spaced out on a pretty important step. I needed to heat the glue. No wonder it wasn't working for me!!!

Pintesting - Making Makeup

With the decision to be as chemical free as possible came the difficult task of throwing out a lot of beauty products I'd come to really love. This, of course, included 99% of my makeup. I don't tend to wear a lot of it anymore but I'm a big fan of powder.

Today's pin test comes via this pin and the info found here.

Starting with a base of arrowroot powder

slowly add in cocoa powder

and cinnamon

until you get something close to your skin tone.

I didn't really see any change at all similar to powder when I first tried brushing some on using my finger tips. Because I had already placed an order for some tins and bottles to hold some of these things I've been concocting as a result of all of these pintests, I decided that I might be happier if I tried the more solid base.

Pintesting - Chemical Free Beauty - Mud Scrub

I absolutely cannot explain why but I was super excited to make this particular scrub.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

Ingrediants:

1 C Sugar (white, brown, cane)  - I used white sugar

 5 TBSP Coffee grounds  - I don't actually drink coffee so i had to go out and buy the smallest amount I could for this pintest.

1/4 C oil  (veggie oil, almond oil, extra virgin olive oil, baby oil…) - since it was alreayd out and is SO wonderful I used coconut oil

1 tsp Peppermint Extract

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Following Directions:

Because my peppermint oil wasn't here yet I set my mix aside to finish once it arrived. That's when I remembered I hadn't added the vanilla extract so I went back, added it, and stirred it with the opposite end of my wooden spoon.

So how was the scrub? So excited was I that I tried it the very night I made it even though I didn't have the peppermint oil yet. When my husband came into the bathroom he remarked, "Coffee?" He's no coffee drinker either but said he liked the smell. When I had him touch my skin afterward he said it felt like I'd just put on lotion.

I also feel confident that the scrubs I use that contain coconut oil will be of great help with the stretch marks from my pregnancy, both to moisturize the areas where my skin is expanding and to help curb how bad my stretch marks may end up without some sort of attention. 

Pintesting - Chemical Free Beauty - Vanilla Brown Sugar And Coconut Scrub

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information here.

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups of brown or raw sugar - I used brown sugar because it's what I have and isn't that the general idea we're all striving for when we make these things at home?

6-8 tablespoons of organic unrefined coconut oil - if you want to get technical I added 16 1/2 TBSPs because I couldn't find my TBSP

15-20 drops of vanilla essential oil (may be substituted with vanilla fragrance)

Following Directions:
I'd ordered vanilla oil but it wouldn't be here for a few days so I set this aside for the time being.

Once it arrived I was more than happy to add it and mix up my new wonderful scrub. 

I was able to put most of it into a half-pint jar. Guess I need to test this out ASAP so i can get my quart-sized jar back.

It says that your scrub needs to be stored in an airtight container and used within 6 months. I kinda doubt this will make it 6 months.

So how was it? Heavenly. The smell was completely amazing. I shaved my legs after using it and no moisture was stripped from my legs as a result. I can't recommend this one enough.

Pintesting - Chemical Free Cleaning Let's Kill Some Mold!!

Mold is a problem I have run into more often than I would care to over the last few years. We ran into it the last place we lived and we've run into it a few times in the current place we are.

The places that we have these issues are in our bathroom over the shower area,

 and in the laundry room in a few spots.

Typically if you call your landlord or leasing office and complain about mold they send someone out to spray or wipe the area with bleach. In the past we have done this as well because using bleach really does work, but we now no longer keep bleach in our home.

Today's pintest comes from the information you can read right on this pin.

I purchased my spray bottle at my nearest Jo-Ann Fabrics (and I of course made sure to use a coupon.)

The tea tree oil I purchased  via Amazon.

For each cup of water you use, add one teaspoon of tea tree oil. This bottle held nearly 3 cups of water so I used 3 teaspoons of tea tree oil.

Instead of trying my very hardest to neatly pour the water into my spray bottle I used one of the funnels that come with a flask.

I noticed an immediate difference when I sprayed the wall but didn't get the full effect until I wiped the surface as well.

I wasn't going to be able to get back behind our makeshift pantry so it looked as if this would have to be a job for my husband.

I didn't notice a lot of change in the bathroom but I felt maybe that area would need to be wiped as well so once again I was going to have to wait for my tall husband to come home to give it a try.Wiping did indeed help.

This is definitely a pin worth trying. Especially for those who are either to live chemical free lives or even pregnant women who shouldn't be cleaning with harsh chemicals.

Pintesting - Chemical Free Beauty - Lemon Sugar Scrub

You may remember once I made the decision to rid my life of as many excess chemicals as I can (there are areas where I slip - we all do) I threw out a lot of beauty products I found to be harboring toxins I was previously unaware of.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the info found here.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar or 1/2 cup salt - I used sugar because sometimes I have cuts and bruises from traipsing through the woods. Who wants to come home with the intention of relaxing and rub salt and lemon into a wound!?

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

The directions are simple: Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. - I mixed mine in the 1/2 pint jar I intended to store this in.

The resulting mix was too watery for me.

I like a firm scrub that I can pretty much hold in my hand. To remedy this "problem" I just added more sugar until the mix had reached the consistency I preferred.

How was it? The olive oil tends to still keep it really loose so I had to give it a bit of a mix before using it. It had a very light lemon scent wasn't at all unpleasant to use.

Around 80% of the time I shower I shower with my little lamb. The evening I tried this scrub was no exception.

There I was scrubbing and showering away when I look over and see her laying on her tummy not far from the drain. I thought she was pretending to swim. She wasn't. She was drinking what was washing off of me! It was a small battle to get her to stop.

Once I got her off her tummy she stood next to me with her mouth open trying to catch juice in her mouth.

When we got out of the shower I heard the dog in there licking at things.

Fleas - The Waiting Game

The fleas are still here. They're very hearty little buggers (much to my chagrin). The toll it was taking on the dog was just too much.

I started waking up with more and more flea bites in the morning. Worst of all - I found fleas in my daughters hair once after she rolled around on the floor playing. I felt like I was the worst worst house-keeper and that I had my family living in some flea infested hovel (my mother didn't help me feel any better about all of this either.)

My father bought a flea spray to be applied to the dog pretty much every day, we bought the dog a flea collar, we bombed our house twice, and then we had to give the dog a flea bath. Once again we will have to wait.

I found a pin talking about an at home spray you can make using essential oils, but essential oils run around $10 - 20 per bottle at my local health food store and the mix calls for quite a few. I just couldn't afford it.

Now you may be thinking, "with all that was purchased, surely you could have afforded the natural solutions." We really don't have a lot of money, and I really didn't expect this flea problem to go this far. Maybe I'll slowly purchase the necessary essential oils to create the natural flea spray but for the moment I have a lot of other things on my plate.

It seems that a kitten our daughter was playing with at my mother-in-laws house was patient zero. I heard a lot of my brother-in-laws friends found themselves victims of a flea infestation. It just seems my own household was the one that suffered to this extreme degree.

One of the friends said that his mother suggested banana peels. He he said he bought some bananas and left the peels in the corners of a few of the rooms and the fleas were gone in days. He also made sure to point out he's never home so they may have just starved to death.

Pintested - Chem-Free Cleaning - Dishwashing Detergent (part III)

You can imagine how absolutely sick of dishes I must be by now. If it weren't bad enough that I was already doing multiple loads in a day - lately I've been getting nowhere, fast.

Today's pin-test from from the info here via this pin.

Considering how terribly this has all being going for me and that I read in the comments of someone's blog about home-made, chemical-free, cleaning agents that citric acid cancels out Castile soap somehow I wasn't feeling too confident that this would work.

It didn't. Again I had a bit of a chalky residue. I'm considering packing it in and just buying some Meyer or Seventh Generation . . . .

Pintesting - Chemical-free cleaning - Dishwashing detergent (Part II)

Unhappy with the way my last attempt at home-made dish-washing detergent was going I decided to try another recipe.

Today's pin-test come from the info here via the this pin.

The biggest change between my last dish-washing detergent and the one I tried today is the addition of lemi-shine and kosher salt. Feeling a bit hopeless at this whole home-made cleaning supplies thing I made only as much as this recipe called for rather than a large batch like I previously had. I'm glad I did.

Today's results were again disheartening. Upon opening my dishwasher and hoping to be removing my sparkling clean dishes I was met with that same chalky residue. At this point this particular load of dishes had gone through at least three times. I ran it once more, on heavy duty, with just water.

Residue. Frak.

Pintesting - Chemical-free cleaning - Dishwashing detergent

I saw quite a few pins saying that a mixture of half borax and half washing soda would give you a good powdered dish washing detergent.

The first pass through the dishwasher left me really happy with the results but for whatever reason all subsequent uses of it left me with powdered residue on the dishes. Frak.

The use of white vinegar as mock Jet Dry in combination with the mixture didn't remedy the issue. Back to the drawing board I suppose.

Pintesting - Coconut Shampoo

After digging through our house for toxic chemicals I found myself without a chemical free, ecologically friendly shampoo.

Today's pin-test comes from the information found here that I obtained via this pin. I recommend you read the entire post before you begin mixing anything.

My biggest dilemma about following through on this pin with the ingredients I had was that Thai Kitchen's canned coconut milk is known to have BPA in the lining of the can.

How much good am I doing myself or the environment by making and using this shampoo? I decided that I would go ahead (this time) and try it out using what felt was a pretty questionable ingredient.

1 can of Thai Kitchen's coconut milk contains 5 serving sizes of 1/3 cup. This recipe calls for 1/4 cups of coconut milk. This all means that 1 can of Thai Kitchen's coconut milk contains 6.5 "servings" available for use in this recipe.

If you are planning to use the entire can the recipe would be:
2 C. Castile soap
11 Tsp. Castile soap
1 Can Coconut milk
3 1/3 C. Vegetable Oil or Olive Oil

I was interested in how I might like this shampoo if I used coconut oil in addition to the coconut milk but I still wanted to try the original. If you, like me, want to split this into two mixtures your recipe would be:
1 C. Castile soap
4 Tbsp. Castile soap
1/2 Can (or 3 1/4 C.) Coconut milk
1 C. Coconut Oil
10 Tbsp. Coconut Oil

You have my husband to thank for all of this math.

What I ended up doing:
1 Can coconut Milk
2 C Olive oil
3 C Castile soap

The result smelled like enough coconut that I didn't feel like I missed out by not using the coconut oil. The mixture was a bit more sloshy than I anticipated, so maybe I should have used that coconut oil anyway?

I finally used the shampoo a few days later. In the shower the shampoo no longer smelled as coconutty as it previously had and smelled much more like olive oil. I worried that the shampoo may have had a tad too much oil but in the end I think it all worked out just fine.

The mix was still a bit watery but nothing problematic and it bubbled up just fine.

Is this one worth a try? It sure is!

Washing In My Own Laundry Soap

There's a chance my mother was even more excited about my first use of my home-made laundry soap than I was. In fact, right before she'd called I was already getting ready to wash some clothes.

When I first drained the detergent into the little cup that comes with the container it was that same watery consistency from when I first poured it in. I put a bit more in and started the washer. Still pretty nervous about the soap I stopped the washer about half-way through and poured some in from the other end (after a good shake.) Still a bit watery but nowhere near as clear or thin as it seemed before.

After I washed it you better bet this girl gave the laundry a sniff test before I went forward. I didn't smell a thing, no chemicals, no foul odor, not even wet clothes. Into the dryer they went while I started another load of laundry. For the second load of laundry I used vinegar as my fabric softener.

The consensus: I'm happy with yet another positive change being made in our household and say this one is worth a try for all of those who are interested.

Pinners Beware!

It's really easy to just somewhat mindlessly click and add pins and I have the sneaking suspicion that a lot of people who say "pin now and read later" may be more likely to pin now and forget later.

We're all at least occasionally guilty on mindless pinning; unless of course your my husbands grandmother. When I tried to teach her to use Pintrest she was reading each pin on the opening page with such care I think she only read four or five pins (this included visiting the source websites.)

I say all of that to say this - take at least one minute longer before pinning to your boards with titles like "natural living", "chemical free", or "green." Some pins will have the basic ingredients for a recipe listed right there without your needing to visit a website and even more have pictures of the ingredients you can expect to use. While looking for chemical-free recipes I found a disturbing amount that included Suave shampoo or conditioner, Herbal Essences shampoo or conditioner, Dawn dish soap, and even on occasion ammonia!

If you're not sure why all of these ingredients (sans the ammonia) don't count as chemical-free I've looked up the ingredients of these products so I can show you a few of the most commonly used toxic chemicals you will find in these products.

Suave

Fragrance (Parfum), propylene glycol, methylchloroisothiazolinone, methylisothiazolinone, dmdm hydantoin

     According to LIVESTRONG:
              "All shampoos in the Suave lines include ammoninum lauryl sulfate, a surfactant that reduces surface tension in water so that it can lift dirt from your hair, and sound-alike ammonium laureth sulfate, another surfactant and a skin conditioner."

Herbal Essences

Fragrance (Parfum), PEGs, 


Dawn

Fragrance, sodium laureth sulfate

Although the overall health rating for these may not be off the charts terrible, the fact that these items contain these chemicals is enough for me to feel that using them in your "home-made" products isn't the greenest choice possible and not very chemical-free.

Learning at least a few of the more hazardous chemicals will make checking labels simpler than you may think. I can tell you from my own personal experience that there you will learn where in the list of ingredients to find some of these offenders while others jump off the label and you spot them almost immediately.

Just remember that DIY isn't interchangeable with "green" or "eco-friendly."

Pintesting - Chem-Free Cleaning - Laundry Detergent

The Christmas before my daughter was born my mother gave me a bottle of Dreft telling me that it was gold. Dreft, as it was explained to me was the laundry detergent I should be using to wash my little ones clothing. I was left with the impression that it was gentler and perhaps contained less of the harsh chemicals I was using on my husband and my own's clothing. Since that time I have been dutifully using Dreft to wash my little girls clothes.

But wait a minute! Why didn't I ever stop to think that if it wasn't so great for my little lamb to snuggle up in sheets washed in the same detergent I was using on my own, maybe the detergent I was using simply wasn't so great.

If you're using a chemical free laundry detergent there's should be no reason to have to do your childs' laundry in separate loads with and entirely different detergent. You're already saving money by only using one type of detergent rather than two.

Today's pin-test comes from the information I got here via this pin.

Grating Fel Naptha proved simpler than I expected. The soap is really soft so it grates quickly and easily. I was able to do it despite having a sprained wrist (on the side that would be holding the grater).

I opted to use empty containers from my husbands juice. He wasn't happy about this. Because the juices are so sweet he usually saves an old container and splits the juice equally between the containers and then adds water. When he realized there was really no talking me out of using his containers for a short while to make the new laundry detergent he told me what I already knew: to clean them very, very, very well because if I didn't and he mixed juice in a contaminated container he could get very, very, very sick. His faith in what I do and don't know is just amazing.

While I was constantly stirring the soap and water mixture there were more suds than I expected. I was pretty worried I'd already done it wrong. I soldiered on . . you know . . . for science (and because I can be a bit hard-headed and had nothing else to do anyway.)

The resulting pudding-like mixture left me feeling pretty satisfied and amused. I used a measuring cup to put the soap into the bottles. One cup in one bottle, One cup in the following, one cup in the last, one cup in the last, one cup in the center, and one cup in the first - then repeat until you run out of soap.

The tops of the bottles ended up getting a little messy.

I did my best to eyeball where the half-way point for the bottles was when I added the hot water.

Shaking up the mix was again, something that left me feeling more satisfied than I expected. It was a little bit fun.

Come morning I was hoping to find a gelatinous blob that would slide when I moved the bottle. My blob did not slide when you moved the bottle. I stuck a wooden spoon in and began breaking up the blob. Then I filled the bottles the rest of the way with hot water. You will need to do a lot of shaking to get your detergent to mix well. I thought my husband would have done well enough but when I began transferring the mix to an empty detergent container it was downright watery. The reason for this was that there was still quite a huge blob left untouched by the shaking. So really go to town on the shaking.

I actually ended up rendering two of the jugs (in my opinion) useless. My husband was cleaning out one of our very messy rooms and throwing things away. Wanting to see what he was throwing away with reckless abandon I headed out to our trash can to look through the boxes. Aside from a $300+ pair of jeans I found some shirts that would make perfect baby rompers and some rose scented laundry water.

Without checking the label I added the laundry water to two of my jugs. When I checked the label I saw that it contained "fragrance", which I now know is a synthetic, toxic, ingredient. I was still able to completely fill our emptied laundry detergent container. I'll need to make more to replace the Dreft but next I plan to replace our fabric softener.

Pintested - Chem-Free Cleaning - Pans

Even after my last two cleanings and a trip through the dish washer my husbands pan was still just not clean enough for me.

Today's pin-test comes from this pin, all the info you need is actually right there on the pin.

I filled the pan with 2 cups of cold water and then added 3 tablespoons of kosher salt. Knowing that if I just left the pan sitting in the sink I moved it into the laundry room to sit overnight (actually I filled the pan that afternoon instead of that evening but this pan needed help!) I also made sure to spread the salt over the problem areas.

Here's what the pan looked like the next morning.

Not a whole lot of change if any. Not feeling too confident this would actually work I put the pan on the stove and heated it on medium - or as close to that as I can assume it is since I have a gas stove.

The only thing this experiment accomplished was creating a hot, salty crust around the edge of my pan. The treatment did nothing for the pan. The pin says that this can take a few tries but I feel unconvinced that multiple tries would result in a nice, clean pan.

Would I say this is worth trying? No, save yourself the time and effort.