Chemicals and environmental toxins are all around us.   As soon as you walk outside of your home, you are bombarded with air & noise pollutants from cars and trucks. When you get to the office, you drink water from plastic water jugs containing dangerous chemicals compounds  in plastic cups with BPA. When you go to get lunch (if you actually still go out and eat the SAD offerings at restaurants…) you eat chemical additives in the food with plastic utensils & even the receipt you handle after you pay may contain BPA .  This is just a small illustration of what happens to your body outside the home and that is scary enough!  But what about inside your home? Could the products you are using in your home be making you sick and fat as well?

Yes.

From our tap water, the plastic food storage containers & cans, the beauty products and cleaning products most people use on a regular basis. our bodies are being exposed to many toxic chemicals. (Didn’t we learn anything from The Incredible Shrinking Woman??) These range from endocrine disrupting plastics to cancer-causing agents lurking in your hand lotions and shampoos. There are even common household items and products that are identified as obesogens. Yes, your  shower curtain can literally make you fat!

If you have made the effort to clean out your pantry to eat a clean diet, it is time to make the same effort to detoxify the rest of your home. If you are trying to live a healthy lifestyle or lose weight by cooking whole foods yourself, making your own household products can be another example of living the life you desire. It will also help make you that much more successful in all your health endeavors. Throw away all the toxic cleaners, lotions, shampoos, & detergents and replace with natural products you can make yourself in a few easy steps (I will detail how below.). Remove all plastic food containers and replace with glass containers. Not only will you have a less toxic home environment, this will also teach your children the importance of using homemade products instead of dangerous commercial ones. It teaches clean living and self-sufficiency to all your friends and loved ones – and once you can make all these products yourself, not only will you be healthier & wiser, you will even save money.

THIS WEBSITE  changed my entire approach to caring for my home and my body, hair, clothes, etc. Check out the extensive list of DIY household products that you can make from natural ingredients! I feel like I won the lottery with this information and couldn’t be more inspired to try to make all of these items! There truly is no reason to use harmful chemicals to clean your home or your body! This weekend, I made my own moisturizer for the first time. I used ingredients from HERE and instructions from HERE .

I also experimented with another moisturizer recipe given to me by a colleague which I absolutely love! All I used in this batch was raw organic cocoa butter and organic cold-pressed olive oil. No essential oils. The cream smells divine – like chocolate! Even the man of the house is not afraid to use it for fear of smelling like a woman. He loves it! Who doesn’t want to smell like chocolate!?? On top of that, since the lotion doesn’t contain drying chemicals and compounds, even on cold New England winter days like this, I only applied it once. I have washed the dishes since then and still do not need to reapply to my hands. Double Fantastic!!! Plus, I love the feeling of being able to create such a healing and heavenly substance myself – and it’s so darn simple. Thanks Joanna!

So if you already have cleaned out your pantry of toxic food and cleaned up your diet to embark on the journey to live the life you desire, then why not try the same for your home? Once you start making your own household & beauty products, you will gain confidence, be healthier, save money, and make a even more of a statement against the large companies who are poisoning you with not only frankenfoods, but with toxic home & body care products as well. We have grown so accustomed to depend on these products that most of us don’t give them a second thought. Just like the processed foods you threw away, go ahead and check the ingredients on these products. Go ahead — be shocked and disgusted. While you can buy greener versions of these items, they are often NOT greener, using deceptive advertising and labels. Plus they are much more expensive. Be empowered and make your own! At least you can trust the ingredients and the manufacturer 🙂

I have pledged to make one natural household or body product per month on my mission to live wild. I don’t think once per month is much time to ask to reap such a grand reward – to live clean inside and out. Anyone want to join me?