reduce the number of weird chemicals in my life

Ok, so I decided to start with my skin care stuff. I got so in depth with it that I wound up writing a whole long article about the ingredients in my Pond’s Cold Cream and what they are. Even if you don’t use Pond’s, some of the ingredients are in a lot of different products so you can check it out and find out just what the heck they actually are. I’m probably going to look into either some of my makeup next or my body scrub.

I haven’t done very well with this the past few days since I was working on my car and cleaning it. Ick. However, there’s not really a lot of alternatives for brake cleaner and engine degreaser and such.

My plans at the moment for this goal are to go through my makeup and skin care stuff and see if any of that needs throwing away or replacing with less nasty products. I also want to start eating more fresh foods so I’ll reduce the number of preservatives I ingest.

Ways to reduce your exposure.

I can’t remember the last time I had something dry cleaned.
We don’t really use air fresheners – the closest we come are candles and occasionally Febreze or Nature’s Miracle. I rarely wear makeup or perfume, but I should look into what I have. Most of our kitchen food containers are Pyrex. We filter our drinking water and have finally gotten some good quality plastic bottles instead of buying water bottles and reusing them a few times. (See below…) We almost never use pesticides and only ever use natural fertilizers if any. Oh, and this isn’t on the list but we use Yesterday’s News cat litter, which is recycled newspaper instead of weird crystals or the super dusty stuff.

So I’m doing really well with this goal of reduction already, apparently.

As I was looking this stuff up I started to worry that perhaps the bottles got weren’t so good after all – they have the number 7 on the bottom and that apparently means the bottles MAY contain BPA. However, 7 doesn’t automatically mean it contains BPA. 7 is basically just a catch all category for plastics that don’t fit into the 1 through 6 categories. The bottles also say SAN on the bottom, beneath the 7, and it would seem that SAN isn’t the kind of plastic that leaches the stuff. So if you should decide to buy hard plastic bottles and want to avoid BPA do your research. Don’t just disregard something because it says 7 but do check it out, essentially. Most sites just say ”#7 plastics are bad!” but that’s not actually the case.

Especially since compostable plastics, made from corn and such, fall under the #7 category. It’s a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I suppose.

1. I mostly use my Burt’s Bees natural sunscreen now instead of the chemical filled versions.
2. I put vinegar and water in my windshield washer…fluid…tub…thing in my car. (Yes, that’s the technical term. Anyway, I can’t believe how clean it gets my window, it works really well.)
3. The shampoo and conditioner I use now have no parabens.
4. I use handmade real soap in the tub rather than detergent “soap” from the grocery store.
5. I almost always use baking soda and either vinegar or lemon juice rather than household cleaners. They do a better job on sink scrubbing than the more expensive stuff, anyway.

Obviously, I won’t be able to completely rid my life of weird chemicals, and I do believe some of them have their place, but I’d like to cut down on the amount since everything nowadays seems to have something nasty in it.