The Chemical Free Journey

In June of 2012 our family made a change to the Paleo lifestyle. It took a while to get the eating, food prep, etc. down pat. At the same time we had started CrossFit and Olympic Lifting. Big changes were happening for the family to get healthier.

Through all of this I've often thought about how healthy we were making out bodies on the inside and physically on the outside. However we were still surrounded by chemicals. I've tried over the years to improve our cleaning supplies, somewhat unsuccessfully. As we approach our 2 year anniversary of our Paleo lifestyle I challenged myself and the family to remove what we could chemically. Kind of a 'paleo on the outside' sort of thing. The family is eh about it but they've done good overall.

The changes are netting out to be less expensive in most cases. I'm tracking the costs and will post at a later date. In the mean time here are the changes we've made.

 

Tide and Bounce for Lamb Wool Dryer balls and Naturally Green Soap Berries. I wrote a blog here about it. The dryer balls are working ok, not totally sold on them yet. Besides the fact they are leaving white stuff all over my black work out pants :( but we'll keep working with them. The soap berries however are doing great.

 

Cleaning supplies have went from these on the left, among others to Soap Berries and Baking Soda. Soap Berries I'm still working with but baking soda is the best ever! It cleans the bathroom like there's no tomorrow. It took me a while to figure out how to make a workable paste for the bath tub. Get this piece of rocket science…..dump a pile in the back of the tub then run some water in the front and plug the tub. Then you can wet your scrub brush and dip in the baking soda at the back. Novel eh? Yeah that took a while. lol

Totally a TMI section here but I'm putting it all out there. About 6-9 months ago I started having issues with deodorant not working, itching and overall just becoming an unpleasant experience. I was changing every few weeks and Kevin was getting a bit touchy because I was spending so much money changing. I finally found the two on the left that are more natural and meant to detoxify your system. It took a few weeks to make the change but in the end all the issues went away. Soooo much happier now. I'm not totally settled on the natural brand I'll stick with. As warmer temps approach I'll work with this more.

Another TMI topic is 'that time of the month'. A friend posted a link about The Diva Cup a while back on Facebook along with her testimonial on the product. Since then 2 of my sisters and I have all switched. I wish I had known about this like 20 years ago. I pass my time of the month like a bump in the road with no cramps or any of the other lovely side effects that come with it. And can I tell you the benefits when it comes to being active and working out?! Wow. Savings calculation here is HUGE! $40 for the cup and it lasts for years. You do the math.

*Photos from product website here for O.B. and here for DivaCup.

 

Moving on to hair products now. On the left are some of the hair products I've used. I wrote a blog about this here. My routine has somewhat stabilized since that post. I wash every 2-4 days and rinse in between with an apple cider vinegar rinse on days I work out. Washes 1 and 2 I use Soap-a-Licious chemical free shampoo bar. Then every 3rd wash I use a baking soda wash. Every few times I'll add coconut oil and leave in for a day over the weekend as a conditioner. This has been one of my favorite changes. I truly enjoy NOT using any products on my hair. I still curl my hair but that doesn't seem to bother it. I go in a cycle of 1st day letting my natural curls hang out, 2nd day curl, 3rd day let it be and 4th day it goes up. My hair has never been more healthy or less of a hassle.

I'm also happy to say that the kids changed from store shampoo to the bar shampoo as well. My oldest son has a shaggy hair style so its a bit longer and he also uses the ACV rinse. His hair is beautiful and full.

 

Teeth was next on the list and the one I was the most worried about. We've had to brush with baking soda before during NAET's cleanings and everyone hated it. Charlie and I made a baking soda paste with peppermint that we liked. It was better after it sat a week or so and he and i now use it several days out of the week. In between we use Earth Paste, which is a wonderful product. The other boys only use the Earth Paste. It's a Redmond Clay based product. Certainly worth a try.

Body soap was another change I was excited about. Have you read the back of the bottles you are using? My main concern here was Charlie because he has horrible winter skin. He's 9 years old, doesn't have that 'boy' smell yet and doesn't wear deodorant. When winter started we moved him to showering every other day to keep the oils on his skin longer. On top of this we changed to Soap-a-Licious natural body bars that don't strip the oils from your skin. This in combination with stretching out his showing time his skin has been wonderful. He hasn't had cracked dry and bleeding hands like in past years. We haven't had to put Vaseline and cotton gloves on his hands at night either. Everyone likes the soaps and it was a win, win all the way around! The only products in the shower are now Soap-a-Licious body and hair soaps, baking soda mix and apple cider vinegar rinse.

I've liked St. Ives for years but have changed this out for good old coconut oil for my hair and dry skin. Works like a charm! I've struggled with dry skin as well, just not as bad as Charlie. Between the soap change and the coconut oil any issues are gone.

Ok face care. I've never had a great routine that I was successful with until a few years ago when I started using Kiss My Face bar soap, that's it. Not much of a routine. I only used Bare Minerals face makeup. I figured that was good. That was until Primal Bliss introduced me to Tasty Face Organics. I won a drawings and that paid for one of my products. I then ordered the other three. We have a cleanser, toner, serum and moisturizer.

My plan was to use this for not only me, but Dawson (teenager) and his acne, and Charlie's fickle skin. It has worked wonders! Dawson still has some acne but it is certainly much better than it was prior to starting. Charlie's face has smoothed out and is staying nice in the harsh winter. My face has cleared up. My red splotches, uneven skin color, oil and dry patches are gone. Two weeks in to using Tasty Face I dropped the face makeup and have just continued with eye make up only. I'm still using bareMinerals as its the only thing thus far that doesn't bother my eyes. I will work towards more natural products here as well over time.

 

Through this process I'm thrilled to see our product labels changing. I'm much happier seeing labels like are on Earth Paste that say 'Rinse or swallow' vs 'Keep out of the reach of children….if more than used for bruising is..swallowed get medical help."

 

I like seeing labels on the left vs the ones on the right.

 

We are FAR from perfect and we still have long way to go to make this second nature in our house, however we will continue to work towards lessening our use of chemicals in our environment.  It's a continual process.

To wrap up this long post I give you a selfie (not fond of these) with no touch ups and no filters, just crappy bathroom lighting.

In the past I would NOT have posted a photo of myself with no makeup and not having 'washed' my hair in over 2 months. I have to say that a healthy lifestyle inside and out pays off. As I near the end of my 40th year I couldn't be happier for myself and my family. I won't lie and say that all of our changes have been easy and go without protest here and there.

In the end my goals are to:

• pass the healthiest lifestyle on to my children
• give them a fighting chance against family health issues on both sides
• provide them with a knowledge and skill base to enable them to make good healthy choices for themselves down the road
• to enable our children to cook, clean and care for themselves
• to fuel our families active lifestyle in the best and cleanest way possible
• to enable us all to live long, healthy, happy lives
• to keep Kevin and I 'young' and healthy for when the boys leave the nest (T-minus 8 years)

and last but not least teach our children to think for themselves and question everything! If we as parents hadn't questioned so many things in our lives, we would be very different today. That's a different that I would not be ok with. 

Thank you God for the guidance in our lives to lead us down this path. 

-Yvonne