Is Your Skincare Safe Enough to Eat?
When you ditch processed foods you start scanning ingredient lists on food packages. Chances are, this new ingredient awareness will spill over into other areas, like your skincare products. The trouble is, it’s hard to distinguish which ingredients on skincare products are okay, and which are toxic.
On a food label, it’s easier, right? When you read down to the weird numbers and the things you can’t pronounce, the item goes back on the shelf.
Skincare ingredients aren’t edible, so they all kind of sound the same.
Unless they are edible. What if everything you absorbed through your skin was something you could eat? How’s that for safe?
It would certainly make understanding the ingredient label a lot easier!
But…most skincare products that you buy in the store just aren’t made that way. I got tired of trying to decode ingredients and decided to just make some of those products myself!
You can buy bulk ingredients like cocoa butter, jojoba oil, and clay for what it would cost you to buy just one conventional product that contains those ingredients! Don’t buy the $10 jar of body butter “with moisturizing shea butter and almond oil!” that contains 20 other ingredients you can’t pronounce. Just buy the shea butter and almond oil and make your own, 2-ingredient body butter!
Making many of my body products from scratch has helped me simplify in the bathroom. I replaced a lot of conventional products and just stuck with some basic homemade versions that use nourishing, healing ingredients. Here’s what I currently use homemade:
- Face wash/makeup remover– I use a blend of castor and olive oils for the oil cleansing method. If I don’t need to remove makeup, I sometimes just use a quarter-sized amount of homemade yogurt.
- Body butter/lotion– a whipped butter of cocoa butter, almond oil, and coconut oil. (Also works as a great lip conditioner.) Sometimes I just use plain coconut oil. (Here’s the recipe.)
- Facial moisturizer– a dab of jojoba oil
- Deodorant– a mix of coconut oil, baking soda, and cornstarch (I also buy it pre-made from Lexie:Naturals)
- Face mask– a bit of rhassoul clay hydrated with water
I don’t use the “extras” that are marketed to us like eye cream, night cream, blemish cream, eye makeup remover, ad infinitum. The ingredients in my homemade products pack a punch and cover all my bases.
Next week, we’ll look at some of the top ingredients that you want to avoid in shampoo, body lotion, facewash, and other skincare products.
The following week I’ll share some recipes for simple, healthy skincare products that you can make yourself! (Or maybe give as Christmas gifts!)
[question]How safe is your skincare? Have you made any products at home?[/question]
I don’t actually do much. I use a natural deodorant but when it’s gone I’m going to make my own, do a tea tree oil face wash or use honey, and seldom use lotion. I probably actually need to come up with a plan and what works for my skin and just do it! 🙂
Simple is always a great place to start…looks like you’re doing just that! 🙂
Thank you for hosting 🙂 I am sharing my Carrot Zinger Juice and Multi-Seed Carob Breakfast Cookies.
I’m mixing my own toner,lotions/lotion bars, deodorant, homemade soap and shampoo bars. We feel so much better about using them and my husband even shaves with the shampoo bar.
Sounds delish! (The recipes!)
Yes! I love to make homemade skincare products. My favorite is homemade healing salve with calendula, arnica, chamomile and lavender.
Ooo, do you have a blog post about that?