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The two types of soap we make: one bar for body & hair, the other for laundry.

SIMPLE GREEN CLEANING
​for Body & Home
by Theresa

Soap needs to air dry for a month before it's ready to use.

From Theresa:

Over the years this is one of the areas of my life in which I've found it easy to simplify. There are only 2 cleaning products I still need to buy, although of course I do need to keep ingredients in stock for the products I make.

My Must Have Resource:

I've read a few books about green cleaning, but this is the one that made it all come together for me.  I learned:

• an easy way to make my own soap with a blender and store bought oil and lye (although it also has instructions on making your own lye

The authors write fabulously detailed instructions that could only be improved by the addition of photographs for each step.

Making It:  Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World
By Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen
2011, ISBN: 978-1-60529-462-9

It's Easy to Make Your Own Soap

I learned to make soap from the "Making It" book above. 

• Soap is chemically created when oils are mixed with lye. "Making It" includes instructions for making soap with store bought ingredients in a blender. It also has instructions for rendering your own lard and making your own lye, so you can continue to make your own soap after the zombie apocalypse.
• Lye:  Some of us shudder when we hear the words "lye soap." It has a bad reputation for being incredibly harsh. However, all soap is made with lye. Lye can be made at home by dripping water through a vat of ashes from the wood stove (or a campfire). When made this way, it is hard to get a consistent amount of lye, which is why our grandmother's soap may be have sometimes been a bit harsh. Now that we can buy lye from the hardware store, we can include exact amounts in our recipes so that there's nothing to be afraid of.


• One batch lasts for about 6 months, so I only need to make soap twice a year.

Other types of soap:

• (Detergent is something different and you can't make it at home.)
• Glycerin soap. You'll see a lot of instructions for making glycerin soap by pouring it into fancy molds.  Glycerin is part of the lye & oil soap making process. It is very good for the skin.... In commercially manufactured soap, it is extracted and made into separate bars that sell for higher prices. If you make your own soap, you'll get all the benefits of glycerin in your regular soap.

Green Cleaning for the Body

Soap & Shampoo Bar:

The photo to the left shows all the products we have in our shower- namely, a bar of beige homemade soap (bottom left).

• This bar of soap can be used to clean both your body and your hair.
• To use a shampoo bar, wet your hair completely, and while the water is still running off your head, gently rub the bar around on your hair. Then use as you would any other shampoo: scrub until you're satisfied your hair is clean and rinse. Unless you've been rolling your head around a pig pen, there's no need to "rinse and repeat," that is an advertising ploy that doubled the sales of commercial products.
• Note the shampoo bar might not make as many suds as you're used to. "Suds" are something that are added to commercially made shampoos to provide a visual clue that we're getting clean.

Homemade Toothpowder:

• The toothpaste I use is simply flavored baking soda. 
• Baking soda is an earlier form of toothpaste that was widely used. 
• Note that it has a very strong flavor if you're not used to it. If you can't take it, I recommend trying Tom's of Maine peppermint baking soda toothpaste first. It still packs a wallop, but isn't as intense. I've been using baking soda toothpowder for years and it doesn't taste strong to me anymore.
• To conserve water while I'm brushing my teeth, I fill the cute blue shot glass shown in the picture  and use only that much water to wet the brush and rinse. Sometimes it's even enough to rinse the toothbrush afterwards. 
• How many millions of plastic toothbrushes are sitting in landfills across the country? To save resources, I bought a plastic toothbrush that has replacible bristles from my coop sold, so that at least I am reusing the handle. I recently read that bamboo handled toothbrushes are available, which would be biodegradable, but I haven't come across any yet. 

To Make Tooth Powder:

• I learned how to do this from the "Making It" book.
• Put a small amount of baking soda in a little jar (I use small jelly canning jars), add 2-3 drops of essential oil for flavor (I like peppermint), put the lid on the jar and shake vigorously for a few seconds.  That's all it takes- in less than five minutes, you've made tooth powder.
• I put the baking soda tooth powder into the blue plastic bottle shown (I'm reusing a store bought tooth powder bottle from the coop). To get it into the bottle, I insert a funnel, pour the tooth powder into the funnel, then repeatedly tap the bottle onto the counter until the powder falls into the bottle.
• When brushing my teeth, I can squeeze the bottle until a bit of powder falls onto my wet toothbrush.

Optional:

Body Lotion

Body Powder

Face Wash

This is something I learned to make in an herbal body product class about 25 years ago. I don't remember my teacher's name, so unfortunately can't give her credit.

Making a separate wash for your face is of course not very simplified, but I like to keep this around for when I feel like pampering myself. It's so easy to make I thought I'd include it for those of you who aren't yet ready to give up all your body products yet.

1. Grind the desired amount of organic rolled oats in a coffee grinder (one you don't use for coffee, unless you want your face wash to smell like coffee).
2. Also grind up dried lavender blossoms (available wherever bulk herbs are sold). 
3. Combine lavender to the ground oatmeal until it's scented the way you like it (or skip the lavender if you like things unscented).
4. Also add in a bit of white clay (described under body powder above).
5. To use the face wash, put some in your palm and add water until it's damp, scrub it gently over your face and neck (the oatmeal acts as an exfoliant, removing old skins cells), then rinse off.  
   
6. For an extra deep cleaning, leave it on your face until it dries, and the clay will draw dirt out of your pores.

Green Cleaning for the House

Vinegar water

Baking soda for scrubbing

Non-electric vacuum

Dishsoap

Homemade liquid hand soap

Friction cleans

fingernail brush

scraper

razor blade

​pumice stone

Laundry soap

Why?

- sani straw, advertising, self-sufficiency

Our lips aren't supposed to touch the drink glass, but we're perfectly happy to use the restaurant's plates and utensils?  That's the power of advertising.

What is clean- high tech just increased our standards of cleanliness

​freedom from advertising

​simplicity- shower is easier to clean- soap doesn't make soap scum that then needs to be cleaned out of the tub


It makes you sensitive to chemicals