My Experience So Far!

 My Reflection!

Many things have happened during my journey into creating natural and non-chemicalized products. I have discovered that, what started out as just an idea, has now turned into my new passion. Although I haven’t completed all of the 16 products I set as my goal because of time and money so far, I still hope to accomplish it and continue to go beyond my goals.

In the beginning, when I found out what horrible ingredients there are in our every day products, I wasn’t really sure what I could do about it. But now, looking back on everything I’ve done, I really feel like I know how to fix the problem and continue fixing it.

What I’ve Discovered As Well As Some Issues I’ve Faced!

I’ve learned that sometimes creating the products may be difficult and time consuming because you have to make sure all the ingredients will work. I’ve also learned that the products may not work as well as expected and you might have re-make the product all over again.

Some issues I’ve faced have been getting money for the products, thinking of creative ideas, and making sure they work well. In the future I hope to keep becoming more knowledgeable about the harsh ingredients in the things I use and continue making those products better! Overall, this has definitely been an amazing and incredibly eye opening experience that I feel will not only benefit me for the future, but also other people.

Thanks For All The Help!

I’m so grateful that I got a lot of help and ideas from Wellness Mama and my mother’s best friend Priscilla! Their feedback and creative ideas really gave me confidence in creating my own natural products.

Here are my top 3 favorite products so far during the process!

This is a hair rinse that works as a surprisingly great conditioner and helps restore the hairs pH levels! I just put a little bit of apple cider vinegar and water!

Cleaners the floors and counters great and with no nasty chemicals!

To me they’ve done the best job cleaning in replace of their bad products! The vinegar rinse really helped my dandruff and made my hair feel just as conditioned as regular conditioner. I use the all purpose cleaner for almost everything! It smells amazing and it always does an amazing job of cleaning. The dishwasher soaps also turned out to be one of my favorites because they make my dishes really shiny, sparkly, and smelling great!

Overall, this has been an amazing and invigorating experience and I will most definitely be continuing making healthier, more natural products!

I hope you guys have liked my products so far and have gotten useful information from my blogs! Stay tuned for more upcoming posts!

A Post That’s a Little Different From the Rest!

I don’t normally make slideshows, but I wanted to changed it up a bit so you guys can see all the natural chemical free products I’ve made so far! So here it goes. Hope ya’ll like it!

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Although I’ve only made a few products, I will continue making more and more natural products without the harmful chemicals.

Behind The Journey!

After searching for new and natural products, I realized that I might need some more help from a professional. Then, it all came to me at once, I already knew someone who could help me!

This is a picture of me and Priscilla!

She’s one of my mother’s good friends. Her name is Priscilla and she’s just like a grandma to me, with all of her wisdom and knowledge and she’s such a nice lady.

This is a woman who has dedicated her life to making a healthier lifestyle for herself by creating her own natural products and has given me ideas along the way! So, I decided to ask her some questions about her journey into the healthier lifestyle she has today, and show them to all of you!

“Do you find it hard creating healthy products?” 

“No, because instead of making the unhealthy products that I used in the past, I’m simply switching out the ingredients for better healthier options.”

 “Have you ever had adverse reactions to products you’ve made?”

“No, although that problem could arise in the future, I have not made anything that has given me or anyone else an adverse reaction.”

“Do you have trouble coming up with ideas?”

“No, because the deeper I dig into the health world, there seem to be more options and, because I’m passionate about it, my creative side comes up with many ideas.”

“What are some of your favorite ingredients to use in the things you make?”

This is a picture of the coconut oil she loves using!

“Well, there are so many, but the two that I love to use the most are coconut oil and apple cider vinegar. I have to say I absolutely love coconut oil because it’s a great moisturizer, it helps restore natural oils in your hair, and it has anti-bacterial properties! So, I always love to put coconut oil in as many things as possible. I also really love apple cider vinegar because it’s a great conditioner when mixed with water and it helps restore your hair’s natural PH levels! It’s also really great for your body, so I try to use it!”

“Have you run into any problems creating the healthier options?”

“Yes, whenever you try something new, there’s always a higher risk of making mistakes with the proportion of the ingredients in the products or food, having to make it over again because it didn’t work very well, or it may just not work as well as expected. It’s also hard finding good, healthy, ingredients that work well but I’ve always been able to work through these problems.”

“Has there ever been a point where you felt like giving up?”

“I’ve had some difficulties, but I’ve never felt like giving up because being healthy and

This is a picture of the apple cider vinegar that Priscilla loves to use in her products!

creating a healthier world around you should be a lifelong pursuit and you should never give up because I honestly believe that in the end, you’ll be happier you did.”

After interviewing her, it made me much more confident and determined to continue making healthy products! I hope you guys got as much helpful feedback and information as I did! Continue forth on your own journeys to healthy living!

Tips for creating your own products

From my past blogs I’ve realized that I haven’t really given you guys good tips for making your own products! So, let me help you all out by giving you a list of all the things that have helped me and will hopefully also help you recreate your own world too!

1. Make your own ingredients for products:

You can go and buy your own ingredients, but I’ve found that by doing that, you’re running the risk of getting something that has weird preservatives or those crazy chemicals I’ve talked about before and you might not even know it. Although it may be more difficult, as often as possible, you should just try to grow or make your own ingredients.

2. Use glass containers instead of plastic:

These are some average looking glass jars that may just be laying around the house to use for your products! Thank you Blog Free people for the image!

This is a big problem. Many plastics containers have BPA lined in them and it will seep into almost anything you put in them. To fix this issue, try to buy more glass containers to put your products in.

3. Grow your own plants for products:

So many different types of plants like lavender and rosemary are awesome for lots of products, so growing your own plants is really beneficial. You also have easy access to the plants since you’re growing them yourself!

4. Buy products with simple ingredients that you understand:

Like I said before, you shouldn’t buy your products or the ingredients at the store very often unless you absolutely have to. However, if you do, try to look at the ingredients label to see if there’s anything weird in it. One rule I like to go by is to buy ingredients with simple, easily understandable, ingredients because they tend to be the less toxic and more natural products.

5. Research things before you put them into your products:

I always say if you’re making your own products, it’s best to make sure that what you’re putting into your products and how much of it, should be well researched before hand. Some ingredients can cause skin irritants or allergies. So I always make sure it’s okay to use the ingredients in my products.

6. Look up some cool natural recipes:

This is a really good natural recipe I found thanks to the Nerdy Farm Wife!

You can always have fun making your own concoctions for your products, but sometimes I find some really awesome recipes that work very well. One of my products that worked particularly well from an online recipe, was my dishwasher soaps. They work so well! So, go fourth and have fun looking up those recipes!

7. Get rid of those old nasty products:

If you’re going to make all these wonderful products you don’t need those old chemical ridden products in the back of your mind! Best advice, just toss those bad guys in the trash! This helped me by really giving me the push I need to make those natural products.

8. Use things like essential oils:

Essential oils are priceless to me. You can use them in so many different ways, not just in the products you make but also in cooking! They help with so many different things, from headaches, to the common cold so of course they’re good to use in your products! They come in little glass jars of happiness so I’d go get some for yourselves!

 

Here’s a picture I found of essential oils and medicinal flowers from Essential Wellness!

 

9. Get ideas from people who make their own products:

From researching online and reading about many people’s experience’s and journeys to their natural products, it has helped me get ideas to make my own products and I really recommend you guys do too!

10. Test out your products:

Of course you’re going to test out your products but what I mean is put a little bit of the product on your skin first to see if it’ll be irritating to your skin or cause an allergic reaction.

After using these tips I promise, your products will be better and will make you feel like you’re living a much less toxic, healthier life.

 

Progress So Far!

My progress has been absolutely awesome so far into my natural product journey! I’ve made 6 products that make me feel like I’m finally braking away from the average unhealthy, chemical ridden products I used to use day by day and they’re so easy to make!

My first natural product is a shampoo that has a base of peppermint, Dr. Bonner’s olive oil based castile soap, that’s been around since the 1850’s! I also added some coconut milk for softer hair and some essential oils like lavender, lemon, purification, and cedar wood that help hair growth.

 

 

 

Here’s a picture I took of my natural, and let me just say, amazing smelling shampoo!

This is the castile soap I used in my shampoo for anyone who has never seen it before!

 

Next I made Fruit spray which is amazing for cleaning off the outside of fruits from pesticides and dirt. This consists of thieves essential oil, lemon essential oil, and water.

 

A picture I took of the best cleaning fruit spray I’ve ever used!

I also made a non-stick cooking spray which is good for keeping the food on pans from being caked on! I used very simple ingredients which were just olive oil and water.

 

This is the picture I took of the non-stick cooking spray.

Since all purpose cleaners are filled with so many toxic chemicals, I created a cleaning solution for floors and counters that is much more natural and less toxic. This solution consists of thieves cleaner and water and let me just say it works really well.

 

My natural wonderful non-toxic cleaner!

These are some of the dishwasher soaps I made out of a concoction of baking soda, vinegar, lemon, thieves cleaner, coconut oil, and borax soap. These are really cool because they don’t leave soap residue and the dishes look surprisingly cleaner!

Here are those awesome working dishwasher Tablets!

For anyone who hasn’t used thieves cleaner or knows      what it looks like here ya go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last natural product I made was conditioner. Surprisingly again, this only consists of a few ingredients but works great. These ingredients are water, lavender, and organic apple cider vinegar .

 

Here is the picture of my surprisingly well working  conditioner!

 

 

 

 

 

How Have Our Household Products Changed Over Time?

Our household products have changed rapidly in the last century. It’s only been recently that humans have been living the way we are today with our products.

This picture, thanks to My Baby Brilliant, really describes the devastating effects of our products.

 

 

We didn’t used to have these mass products because all we could get were things that we made ourselves or we went without them. Shampoo for example, is a great example.  Not only did woman not use very much shampoo, they also didn’t have to wash it as much because the harsh chemicals in today’s shampoos didn’t strip their natural oils like ours do.

 

This image, from Andrea Reed, shows the form of rosemary that would’ve been used in those natural shampoos!

 

 

 

 

They used things like vinegar, rosemary, rum, and even egg yolks for their hair care, which were all very natural and light on hair.  However today, we have created more and more chemicals and preservatives for the amount of people who want to buy them, and that’s a lot of people.

 

Here’s a photo that depicts how horrible our cleaning products are as being poison with the skull and cross bones on the spray bottle. Thank you Shawana for designing this!

 

Our bodies are not built to be able to cope with all these crazy chemicals. But what can we do about it? Well, that’s where I come in. There are so many ways of making wonderful natural homemade products that are so much safer for our bodies. Using more of the old fashioned natural ingredients is how I plan to make my products.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Natural Product Goals!

 

My Natural Product Goals!

Thank you, Girl With A Natural Glow for these shampoo ingredients.

I discovered a very shocking reality a couple weeks ago after looking at the back of my shampoo bottle and seeing all these hard to read ingredients. I then decided to look up some of these ingredients and found very disturbing issues that they might cause. Parahydroxybenzoates or paraben, is just one to name.

This can cause skin aging and there may even be a connection to breast cancer. So many of our shampoos, cleaning agents, deodorants, etc. have lots of crazy chemicals that can cause many problems. These problems are things like reproductive issues, kidney problems, and even the possibility to lead to cancer. Because of this, my goal is to start creating more natural products that we use everyday.

Throughout the next 8 weeks, I plan to make two products each week. This will result in 16 products and recreation of all the products that have the most chemicals and preservatives. I plan to get support from people with similar blogs and DIY products like mine and I also contacting a friend of mine that is starting a business with this same goal.

However, I expect to run into some problems along the way. Being able to finish all 16 products in time, getting the money to buy the natural steps in making the products, and realizing that some of my projects might fail, are some of these issues. Although those challenges may get in my way, I plan on preventing them by putting aside T.V and games to make sure I complete two projects each week, raising money or getting a part time job, and testing the products to see if they actually work.