Saturday, June 14, 2014

The Experimentation Phase

Some people, when they get into something, are INTO that thing 100%. I am not one of those people. Not right away, at least.

I experiment. I test. I dip a toe in the water first, then another toe, and once I've got my whole foot in I might just jump in all the way.

I have about 3 toes in the crunchy, organic, "clean living" water right now. I know previous posts may have made it sound like I had jumped in, but trust me, I still have a few reservations. To go all the way, there are a couple of issues I haven't yet resolved:

It's Cost Prohibitive (sort of): I do think that in the long term I will save money by making on my own the things I am now making on my own, like cosmetic products and household cleaners, but the initial investment to have the raw materials is kind of steep. However, in the matter of food/produce, I cannot seem to find a way that it is not expensive. Organic produce is pretty universally more expensive than conventional (and I'm not totally sold on the "everything organic" idea yet either, though I'm just about sold on the benefits of eating grass-fed, free-range meat/poultry over farmed meat), and "organic" and "natural" versions of our usual kitchen staples tend to cost a bit more as well.

It's Time-Consuming (very): This is probably my biggest hurdle right now. If I was a stay-at-home mom/housewife, I could do it. It would be cake. As it stands now, I get up in the morning, shower, cook breakfast, unload/load the dishwasher, go to work for 8-10 hours (depending on the day), come home, cook dinner, load/run the dishwasher, and then flop. And since I cut out caffiene, I've been in bed by 10 PM, which for me is way early. Usually on the weekends in my "free time" I do laundry and, if I'm feeling particularly industrious, prepare my lunches to take to work for the week so I don't end up eating out and spending a bunch of money on crap food. As I write this, it is Saturday and I am in my kitchen/"meth lab" (as the husband calls it) whipping up a batch of Mango Citrus Body Butter, because I decided I was going to take some time to play today. But my main point here is that my family (including the husband, who betwen work and college puts in just as many hours as I do and sometimes more with homework) depends on the convenience of packaged foods. I am having difficulty finding the time to cook from scratch, because ingredient preparation (chopping, slicing, of vegetables, etc.) takes forever and I do not have a food processor. Adding to this mix of fun is the fact that I got promoted at work day before yesterday and put on salary, which means they can now extract as many hours from me as they like without paying me my mildly-staggering overtime pay rate. Yesterday was my first day in my new position and I worked about 9 hours. We'll see how this plays out...

Anyway, those are the main problems that I will have to figure out how to resolve before I can jump into this thing completely, but I'll go ahead and give some status updates and tell you some things I've learned so far:

My Butt/Legs - Shrinking: I'm not sure if this is from walking at my breaks, trying to eat better, or both, but the new capris I bought in April are getting seriously baggy in the butt. I'm sure you care.

My Hair - Slowly Normalizing: Yes, I did the thing. I went "no 'poo" a few weeks ago. And what I learned was that my hair is NOT super dry as I had thought it was. My hair was being stripped of any and all oil every time I washed it (and I wasn't even doing that as often as most people do... I've always been an every-other-day sort). When I stopped doing that, my head immediately turned into a greaseball. I had been warned about that, fortunately. All the "no 'poo" devotees will tell you about the "detox period", supposedly lasting from one to eight weeks, in which your scalp, which has been frantically overproducing the oils that you've been stripping out of it every day or every other day for years, calms down, takes a breather, and realizes it doesn't have to do that anymore. The first couple of times I washed my hair with homemade shampoo, it was fine. I thought this was going to be easy. Then around the third or fourth time my hair suddenly turned into a greaseball. It was nasty even 15 minutes after I washed it. I wore a lot of ponytails and nearly gave up on the idea. Then, earlier this week, I threw a small amount of lemon juice into my shampoo recipe as a "degreaser", if you will. This seems to be helping. Another interesting thing is that without the shampoo buildup in my hair, I've discovered that my hair is actually much wavier than I thought. I haven't yet decided what to do about the haircolor situation... my hair is currently bleached blonde, and I haven't come up with a natural way to maintain that. So either I will have to chemically compromise my ideals every four or five weeks and continue bleaching it, or I will have to chemically compromise my ideals just once and dye it back to the natural color and then leave it alone to go somewhat gray. There are supposedly "natural" dyes out there, but aside from henna (which, lets face it, lets you mostly go darker or redder, not blonder) most of them still have some degree of "nasties" in them. This is a matter I will be pondering as I go on.

My Skin - Actually Getting Better!: I have super-sensitive skin. I also have skin that often gets so dry that it gets irritated and breaks out. But if I try to use any commercial moisturizer, it gets irritated and breaks out. It's lose/lose. I've never been one to use much makeup or put much of anything on my face. Now, however, I have discovered the benefit of putting oil on my face. Yes, that's right. I put oil on my face. On purpose. Only in certain areas, though. When I first discovered the idea I was putting it all over my whole face. Then my skin started breaking out on my forehead, which it generally doesn't do... usually it's just the cheek area. That was when I realized I have combination skin... my forehead and nose are fine if I leave them alone most of the time and maybe put some oil on them when they start to feel dry. My cheeks, however, need oil just about every day. I'm using tamanu oil right now, but I may try jojoba oil in the near future. Neither of these were things I had heard of two months ago.

My Energy Levels - A Lot More Consistent: When I first started this process, I cut out caffiene entirely. I realized quickly that this was only going to make me (and my family & coworkers) very miserable. So I got some Spark from The Empress (which is great stuff) and transitioned myself off gradually. Now I go sometimes entire work-weeks without caffiene at all. My energy levels are a lot more consistent throughout the day, though I am likely to start getting drowsy on the couch after 9 PM and I'm usually in bed by 10. I sometimes have Diet Coke, which I know I shouldn't. Mostly on weekends when we go out to eat. Like I said, only 3 toes in. 

Cocoa Butter: Interesting stuff... smells like chocolate, yet is yellowish-white, hard, and waxy, and a real bear to dig out of the container with a spoon. Melts nicely, though, and is an ingredient in a lot of the homemade lotions I've been making.

Shea Butter: Kinda looks like whitish Crisco in the container. Semi-solid in the container, but if you touch it with anything even remotely warm - your finger, a spoon that has recently been washed in hot water, a spoon that was lying within 10 feet of a working stove - it goes gooey. And if you have it on your skin, you may as well just rub it in because not only is it super hard to wash off, but also it's good for your skin. Another ingredient I've been using a lot.

Mango Butter: I didn't even know this was a thing until I found a recipe I wanted to try that called for it. I couldn't find it anywhere. Finally ended up ordering online and having it shipped. It's somewhere between Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter in consistency... it's fairly easy to break up into chunks with a spoon, but you can actually handle it briefly with your bare hands without having to wear it forever. I am tempted to eat some and see if there is anything mango flavored about it, but I doubt it since I think it comes from the mango seed. Just finally tried that recipe earlier today, so more on that later.

Beeswax: Originally I was buying this in 1 oz. bars for my little projects. And then I discovered that they actually sell beeswax in a sort of granulated state like coarse sugar that can actually be measured in tablespoons. No more bars for this girl! This is a common base for lotions because it is solid enough to bind everything together, I guess. 

Coconut Oil: What can't you use this stuff for?!?! I'm using it increasingly in cooking (does not actually make your food taste like coconut, but is much better for high-heat cooking than olive oil), but it's also useful in homemade lotions, homemade toothpaste, homemade sunscreen (yes, that's a thing I intend to try very soon), and even just on your skin by itself as a moisturizer. I also read some pretty fantastical story about a guy claiming that consuming 2 tablespoons of coconut oil per day greatly improved his Parkinson's symptoms, but I take this with a grain of salt. Still, it's great stuff.

Raw Honey: I thought my favorite sweetener was agave nectar. It isn't. And when I need the occasional sweet fix, I am totally not above eating honey from the jar. As well as putting it on my skin, in my hair (I made a mask once, and I found a recipe for honey shampoo that I may try), and in various recipes. I actually made some honey glazed pork chops the other night that were pretty darn good. Now I want to go eat honey... where's that jar at?

Stuff I Have Made: If anyone is wondering the extent of my crazy so far, here are the things I have made successfully (or tried to make, which I will indicate if that is the case): Sweet Orange Lotion Bars (approved by both me and my mother... I have almost used my whole batch and plan on making more today), Coconut Milk/Aloe Vera Shampoo (I have recently added lemon juice to it, which is working quite well), Apple Cider Vinegar Conditioner (I use this also on a regular basis, and you never knew even if you see me every day, because my head does NOT smell like vinegar), Mango Citrus Body Butter (jars are still cooling on the counter, I will get back to you after my mom and I have tested it later), homemade "Carpet Fresh", Homemade Deodorant (I love this stuff, actually. Use it every day.), Homemade Body Spray (my current batch is citrusy, I may try something else next time), Homemade Foundation Powder (I need to perfect the coloring, the last batch I made was too dark for my ghosty skin), Homemade Creamy Foundation (again, too dark for me as the recipe is written... something I will need to play with), Homemade Hand Sanitizer (I now use this exclusively at work rather than the soap provided, which contains I know not what). 

Stuff I Haven't Made Yet (but want to): Homemade Sunscreen, Homemade Laundry Soap, Homemade Dish Soap, Homemade Soap (less urgent since I actually found an acceptable store brand), Homemade Lip Balm, various homemade household cleaners, homemade hand soap, Homemade Toothpaste, Homemade Neosporin, Homemade "Vapo-Rub". 

You should now be sufficiently bored for one blog post, but in the event you aren't and you have questions, please feel free to ask me. On a side note, today was my second day with lemon juice in my shampoo, and my hair is awesome today. :-)
This grew in my yard. I found it while weeding around the grapevine, which is why my hand is dirty. I'm quite pleased about having my own raspberries, because those suckas ain't cheap!

No comments:

Post a Comment