Why I'm Going All-Natural

I've never been one of those people who is super worried about toxins in cleaning supplies and body-care supplies. It's not that I don't care; it's more that I've grown up without worrying about it and am simply used to what I can buy at the store. After getting married, I remember reading books and looking through blogs filled with ideas to keep house and self clean with natural and organic products a person could make at home. I started compiling a list of what I would need and realized it would be incredibly expensive to start up the process, so I put it aside and essentially forgot about it.

This idea re surged when I was looking up a better way to clean my oven top. I could mix a tablespoon each of salt, baking soda, water, and elbow grease, and it was as clean as I could ever get it with 409. I was so pleased, I spent a day looking for various cleaners and body-care products. I wanted to be able to buy limited ingredients for a variety of products.

These were the products I looked for:

• Shower cleaner
• Toilet cleaner
• Floor cleaner
• Carpet deodorizer
• Laundry detergent and softener
• All-purpose cleaner
• Liquid dish soap
• Shampoo
• Conditioner
• Deodorant
• Body butter
• Shaving cream
• Body wash
• Hand wash

This is what I needed to start up:

• Baking soda
• Washing soda
• Cornstarch
• Cedarwood essential oil
• Lavender essential oil
• Lemon essential oil
• Shea butter (pure unrefined raw)
• Coconut oil
• Olive oil
• Dr. Bronner's soap bars
• Castile liquid soap
• Glycerin
• Disinfecting essential oil mix
• Vinegar
• Borax

Notice that the list of things I need is nearly the same amount of things I wanted to be able to make for myself. That's amazing to think about! Most of the recipes I found were four ingredients or less. I only looked for things I use regularly or would like to use regularly but don't want to dish out cash for. A great advantage of having the internet is that I could quickly weed out what people said didn't work, and I could buy a lot of what I needed from Amazon or Walmart.

So why do this at all? The honest truth: it's cheaper. I love cheap. I also love all-natural, though I don't like to pay for all-natural, and I was worried that starting up this journey would be too expensive. So the low down:

What I paid to start this: $79.76 – and that was the start up cost. I don't need to buy these things a lot, nor will I use huge amounts of them at a time. Some things I had already. It will probably get a little closer to $100 by the time I get storage containers, but I'll be getting those cheap if I don't already have them, and I can reuse them.

If I paid for the same items at the store (we'll go with Walmart, since they're usually cheaper, and I will select the brands I already use): $120.29

I just saved myself a lot of money. If you try to only buy natural products already, you would save much more! In addition, I feel really good about less exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxins, I'm happy to protect my family from the same, and this will simplify my life a great deal.

I'm excited! Are you excited?

Feel free to follow the links if you want to see the recipes I chose and the places I bought the necessary items.

Check out how it's been going!